“If we’re not heaven bent on doing more, we’re hell bent on trying to escape all the stuff we have to do.”
In Evan Koons’ concluding vlog on the Economy of Wonder, he tackles the difference between sloth and what Josef Pieper has called “virtuous idleness.”
It turns out sloth isn’t just about being lazy or doing nothing or sleeping in till 2. That’s called college. Sloth, at its core, to paraphrase field scholar Josef Pieper, is when we give up on the very responsibility that comes with our dignity: that we do not want to be what God wants us to be, and that means that we do not want to be what we really, in the ultimate sense, are. His—his very good, gratuitous, useless creations born out of nothing more than his love and abundance.
For more, see Episode 6 from For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles.
