Lessons from Sloths

Last school year I read and did a presentation on a book called Life of Pi. Written by a Canadian author in roundabouts 2001, this is the story of a young Indian boy who survives a shipwreck and drifts through the Pacific in a lifeboat for an incredible amount of time (at least a couple hundred days) with a tiger, a hyena, an orangutan, and a zebra aboard with him. Finally it is only he and the tiger and they must survive together in a kind of symbiotic relationship, while in the meantime he instructs the reader in some gooey postmodern hash about understanding animals, and relativism, and how every major religion is just wonderful and should learn to get along.

I bring up this book because it starts by talking about sloths. As I recall, it praises their slow-moving and contemplative natures, encouraging the reader to step back and take a look at life and the world and all that typical guru stuff. This is a common call. Close your eyes. Step back from the rat-race. Contemplate nature. See deep inside yourself. Get in touch with the good energy out there.

I thought about something this morning that was very convicting for me. Recently, in how many concrete ways have you expressed your faith? I knew that the number was painfully and ridiculously low. I knew also that the ways in which I had expressed concrete actions or thoughts contrary to my faith were very many, whether laziness or selfishness or gluttony or any number of other things. The point being, that if someone analyzed my life over the last two weeks or month, other than attending church and reading the Bible a few times they would find it hard to point to something that explicitly identifies me as a Christian.
This was, as I said, a convicting thought. And it made me think of those sloths.

I think it is a great error and even a great heresy to teach that the key to right living and healthy spirituality lies in severance from the world. It lies in severance from the actions and attitudes of the world and the total embrace of the actions and attitudes of Christ. Let's take a doctor as an example. Christ said that He came to heal the sick, so I figure it will make a decent analogy. Doctors strive through any means possible to prevent death by repairing the body and treating unwholesome symptoms. They themselves do not partake of the disease if they can help it. Infecting yourself with rabies does not in the slightest help a rabies victim. But ignoring rabies and letting it rage unchecked in someone's system will not help any more, and in the end that doctor will be held accountable for making no attempt to save his patient's life.

I feel that this latter option is what the proponents of a "batten down the hatches" spirituality are doing. I'm thinking of more than just Christians here, although of course I would apply it most specifically to them. Various Eastern religions seem to contain aspects of this as well. But I think we know best those Christians who interpret the Bible's words about being "not of this world" as meaning that it's okay for them to just sing praise songs and to preach daily, not to the lost, but to the found. It's like a trail guide running around the shelter at the end of the trailing, joyfully shouting to those inside: "You found it! Isn't it great! We're such privileged people because we found it! Now let's warm our hands over the fire."

Meanwhile all over the forbidding country outside the shelter men and women are struggling through dark forests, drowning in bogs and falling into pits. It's not wrong to rejoice with someone at having found the light--in fact, the Bible commands us to--but we need to rejoice together as we go out into the world and use our unique talents to show that light to others. What does Jesus say about putting your light under a basket? He says it's not the way to do it. Not only is light smothered under something of no good to anyone else, it is swiftly no good to itself either: it runs out of oxygen to burn and snuffs out.

There is plenty of room for contemplation. In this land of plenty, this America, we have plenty of time to ponder the wonder and glory of God and the universe and the imago Dei in man if we simply take the effort to make that time. It is the helter-skelter, submissive, uncontrollable activity that these gurus are warning against, the Eastern mystics who want us to just close our eyes and breath: senseless activity, a scrabbling for nothing, appointments and deadlines and 8-hour jobs that ultimately have no meaning or purpose as we descend into retirement and then finally into death. A tale full of sound and fury.

But, though they are right to dislike purposeless action, they are not right to advocate the life of the hermit, the life of distance and separation. There is another kind of action that is crying out for fit instruments for its application. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this kind of action is worth a million. It may not be a missionary journey to Cambodia (though I'm sure they need missionaries there), but it had better be something, friends. It is action born not of selfishness or the inability to control our schedules, but of the belief that there is work yet to be done, work that cannot be left to others. Others will work, sometimes more and sometimes less, but that couldn't be less important for our own duty to join in. If my friends, or my family, or my pastor--or almighty God--were to take a review of any given week in my life, what would I want to hear? Would I want to hear, You blew it? Would I want to hear, Good talker but not a deed to show for it? Or would I want to hear, This man lives, speaks, thinks, works, worships, helps, hinders, as he ought?

Here's the tough question: what would you hear?