7. A Spiritual Sloth Ignores the Greatest Commandment

7. A Spiritual Sloth Ignores the Greatest Commandment.

“Just then a religious scholar stood before Jesus in order to test His doctrines. He posed this question: ‘Teacher, rabbi, what requirement must I fulfill if I want to live forever in heaven?’ Jesus replied, ‘What does Moses teach us? What do you read in the Law?’ The religious scholar answered, ‘It states, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor as yourself.’ Jesus said, ‘That is correct. Now go and do exactly that and you will live.” (Luke 10:25-28).

Spiritual Sloth: (Greek, “Acedia”); spiritual laziness; indifference and apathy at the deeper levels; lack of spiritual ambition; joyless in sacred pleasures; spiritual ennui; careless attitude toward spiritual matters; a dispassionate lack of mindfulness and soul-care; a listless ignorance of what is eternally important; empty of the energy to escape self-centeredness; a lack of motivation to follow through on spiritual duties and activities; a spiritual sluggard; a sickness of the soul that results in boredom with God; a vague sense of dissatisfaction with anything spiritual; a cold sin of omission that drifts away from any hope of locating life’s true purpose and meaning; the unwillingness to be a diligent seeker of God and His Kingdom; a strong temptation from the evil one to remain spiritually empty and unfulfilled. A spiritual sloth is content to, spiritually speaking, follow the pace of the real sloth by moving at ten feet per minute, 1/9th of a mile per hour, and sleep twenty hours a day.

Descriptions of Spiritual Sloth: 

1. “It is like dying in advance.” (Pope Francis);
2. “It is a deflation of the soul that hinders spiritual resolve.” (anonymous);
3. “It renders a person idle and useless for every spiritual work.” (John Cassian);
4. “It is a sort of heavy, oppressive sadness that presses down on a person’s mind in such a way that he wants to do nothing and no activity pleases him.”  (Thomas Aquinas);
5. “It is a joylessness when faced with God as our supreme joy.” (Peter Kreeft);
6. “It is a supernatural torpor that doesn’t want to take the trouble at asking the great spiritual questions.”  (Blaise Pascal);
7. “It is the sin that is so dead that it doesn’t even seem to rise to the level of sin; a sin so sinful that it isn’t even sin.” (Peter Kreeft).

Context of the Story. (Luke 10). A lawyer comes to Jesus to put him to the test. A lawyer at that time was an expert on Jewish law, a scholar of the Jewish religion. The lawyer asks a theological question, to spur debate, a religious conversation. The lawyer wanted to see not only how orthodox Jesus was in his beliefs, but also to tempt Jesus into giving a controversial answer to a difficult question. The scholar “stood up” to address Jesus, much like a student of that time always stood up when talking with a teacher, out of humility and respect. He then referred directly to Jesus as Teacher, or Rabbi. Jesus had evidently earned the lawyer’s respect through his words and actions. Jesus took the question seriously. The lawyer asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. In the other two versions of this story, the scribe asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, and which commandment was the most important. He was a pious man who wanted to earn his way to life everlasting, mostly through his actions. In the other versions in Matthew and Mark, the scribe wanted to ask in different ways to draw Jesus into the discussion of which commandments were the heaviest and which the lightest, which were the most important commandments to keep and which had less importance.

JESUS. He responded by asking a question of the lawyer. Jesus referred him to Scripture and asked him if he could find his answer there. Jesus didn’t want to merely state the answer to the question. Jesus instead helped the lawyer to find the answer for himself. He did what good teachers do: Help the student to think for himself, to become an active learner.

LAWYER. He gave the best answer possible, the Shema, found in Deuteronomy 6:5. The Shema is the first prayer taught to children in a Jewish household, and it is prayed twice daily by every believing Jew, every sunrise and every sunset. Love your God, with everything you got, heart, soul, strength, mind, everything. The lawyer then adds Leviticus 19:18 to the Shema, something that Jesus himself said many times. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Yair Levi – Shema Israel (Deuteronomy 6) | יאיר לוי – שמע ישראל (דברים ו’) (youtube.com)

THE FULL SHEMA. “Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone! The Lord is One! And you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart; you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and shall be immovable before your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

SHEMA (sh’ma): The first Hebrew word in the essential prayer of the Jews in the Hebrew Bible, found in Deuteronomy 6:4; is usually translated “hear,” but actually means hear and do, listen and obey, hear and respond, listen and take action, take heed; there is a traditional Jewish saying that “to hear God is to obey God, and to obey God is to hear God.” Hearing and doing are two sides of the same coin of faith, and is a vital aspect of biblical spirituality.

SHEMA / The Greatest Commandment (Joshua Aaron) LIVE at the GARDEN TOMB (CC for lyrics) – YouTube

Descriptions of the Shema: the foremost of biblical commands in the Hebrew Bible; the biblical Pledge of Allegiance; the central creed of the pre-Christian faith; Scripture’s “greatest commandment,” according to Jesus Christ (Matt. 22:36-40, Mark 12:29, Luke 10:27; Judaism’s most essential prayer; a believer’s statement of faith; the marching orders for a faithful parent in the home; the most important passage in Deuteronomy, Moses’ final address to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land.

JESUS. He praises the lawyer and says, “That’s it! Good job! Now go and do what the Scripture says.” In other words, Jesus is saying that it is not enough to simply believe the right words, to include those words as a part of the law. You must also demonstrate through action that those words are true in your life. His literal response to the lawyer reads, “Do this, and you will come alive,” or “Do this, and you are living.” In other words, eternal life starts now. It’s interesting that Jesus didn’t answer with a little sermonette, something along the line of what he said in John 17:3: “This is eternal life – To know you, God, and to know Jesus, whom you have sent.” He instead referred to the legal equivalent according to Jewish law. In the other versions of this story, Jesus answered the scribe directly, that the Shema and the call to neighbor-love were the greatest commandments, the heaviest commandments, and the most important ones to obey. And Jesus followed that up with the fact that those two commandments sum up the entire Law of Moses and even all the prophets. In other words, loving God with complete devotion and all you’ve got, and loving your neighbor as yourself, are the summary commandments of all the Hebrew Scriptures.

Mind. For the most part, Jesus used the Greek word “dianoia” for mind. It referred to one’s intellect and reason, one’s thought process, one’s mindset, especially as it concerns critical thinking. The dianoia functions as that part of each of us that allows us to draw conclusions about right and wrong, make distinctions, and form opinions.

Jesus Added ‘Mind’ to the Shema! In quoting this most famous passage in all of Judaism, Jesus was not adding something so much as clarifying something for his listeners. The Hebrew understanding of heart (“lebab”) from the Shema included all the insides of a person, including thoughts and feelings, the intellect, the emotions, and the ability to act. The Hebrews believed that whatever a person thought or felt or did, the heart was literally right in the middle of all the action. To the Hebrews, one’s heart included the eyes of the mind, because the heart was considered to be the source of one’s thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Jesus confirmed this with His comment in Matthew 15:19, that “Out of the heart proceeds thoughts…”

A Composite Whole. In fact, the Hebrews didn’t find it helpful to break things down into rigid little compartments. Thus, there is no Hebrew word for mind. Categorizing everything was a specialty of the Greeks, not the Hebrews. The Jews thought of the person as a whole being, and the heart as the catch-all term for the center of one’s inner being, the seat of one’s inner nature. “Why was the mind said to have an eye and not a hand or a tongue? Perhaps touch, taste, odor, sound were linked to the heart rather than the intellect.” (Laurie King).  So the aspects of a person weren’t divided into separate pieces or categories by the Jews. The human person was simply one whole being, blended together: Thinking, acting, feeling, doing, worshiping, were all of one piece. The Greeks loved to separate everything into its parts, such as body, heart, mind, strength, soul, spirit, while the Hebrews liked to think more wholistically. So when Jesus was talking to a mixed audience that included those who spoke Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, He wanted to make sure everyone understood that one’s mind, one’s intellect and logic and understanding, was included in how we were to love the Lord God. Many listeners no doubt needed to hear the idea of “mind” separately because they didn’t necessarily consider the heart to include a person’s place for rational thinking. So, like any good teacher, Jesus understood the audience and made sure things were expressed as clearly as possible.

Love God with Everything You Have. The spiritual sloth will find it impossible to follow this commandment. Those who are spiritually lazy ignore the “all” part of this commandment, the expectation that a believer is completely devoted to God and spends all his energy and strength on loving the Lord. In the Shema and in Christ’s quoting of it in His teachings, it’s clear that Yahweh intended one meaning… Love Me with all you’ve got! Love Me with everything you have been blessed with as a whole person, with everything that makes you a human being! Don’t just love Me with a part of yourself. I need your love for Me to be wholehearted and single-minded. Love Me with your acute vision, your body and actions, your emotions and feelings, with your motivations and attitudes, with your deep spiritual being, with your energies and abilities, with all the workings of your mind! Let your love of Me sink into the marrow of your bones. Let it permeate everything about your life! Love Me with all the resources at your disposal!

Love God with All Your Mind.  The spiritual sluggard could care less about a serious spiritual commitment, so the sloth’s “all” doesn’t even exist. God is commanding us, for our own good, to love Him and devote ourselves to Him with our whole mind. He is telling us… Love Me with your reason, your logic, your intellect. Love Me with your conscience and your moral understanding. Love Me with your imagination and your creative impulse. Submit your intellect to Me and you will be able to understand the truth. Submit your conscience to Me and you will grow in goodness and righteousness. Submit your imagination to Me and watch how I will inspire you and stimulate your creative impulse.  Strengthen your union with Me and watch how the mind of Christ will shape your thinking. Nurture the life of My mind in you out of love and devotion to Me. Offer up the products of your mind to Me, whatever you think about, whatever you write and research and express to others. Cut out of your precious mind that which is not worthy of Me, and offer up all your thoughts, all the workings of your mind for My blessing. Use your intelligence to serve Me out of love, and the life of your mind will be resurrected, renewed in Christ. Let all your thinking spring out of a zealous love for Me. Form your deepest convictions around your love for Me.