Do you know the hidden sin of Sodom and Babylon?

One candidate: idleness.

We’re not talking about the kind of idleness forced upon us by illness, age, or the pandemic. We speak here of indifference– an aspect of sloth.

In one version of the Bible (Ezekiel 16:49) it says, “Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

It also says, in Scripture, about King Nebuchadnezzar and his punishments, “For four years the capital of my kingdom did not rejoice my heart. In all my dominions I built no high place of magnificence, nor did I gather any treasure. In Babylon I erected no building for myself nor for the glory of my empire. In the worship of Bel-Marduk, my Lord, the joy of my heart, in Babylon, the city of his worship, I did not sing his praise. I did not sacrifice victims on his altar. In four years I did not repair the canals.”

Those four years of joyless, unreligious idleness, the Bible tells us, were years of Divine punishment.

The dictionary defines “idleness” as sluggish, lethargic, slothful, lazy, and inactive. The synonyms include “frivolous” and “superficial.” It can mean spiritual apathy. An idling car only eats up gasoline, polluting the air in the mix (human idling is often words — gossip — that contaminate).

In modern society, with longer lives and long retirements, there is an abundance of idleness when a person does not set out to do things — whether volunteer to help the needy, reach out to others on the phone or by mail, seek a part-time job if able, help at church, evangelize, or pray long hours for a cause.

Doing nothing at all tends toward evil. The devil targets the idle. At its extreme, idleness can lead to indifference toward everything.

This is noted in a splendid new book by Father Robert Spitzer (Ph.D.) called Christ Versus Satan In Our Daily Lives: The Cosmic Struggle Between Good and Evil. Good and deep and very readable Lenten reading.

Let’s take just a snippet to do precisely with idleness. “It is seen as one of the most serious sins,” notes Father Spitzer, “because it reflects a general disinclination toward care, love, contribution, and faith that open upon our dignity, purpose, and eternal destiny. It stands at the root not only of underlining life, but of wasting it — along with our talents and the potential to develop them to make an optimal positive difference to our families, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, institutions, communities, and churches with which we associate.

“Unlike other deadly sins that require tempering of our passions, sloth reflects the absence of passion — healthy passion that comes from beliefs, convictions, ideals, principles, empathy, and conscience. Oftentimes, sloth can become so deep that one not only does not care, but does not care that he does not care.”

Find something — including and even especially prayer — to do in your idle time, or it will become the devil’s hour.

The Lord means for us to do His Will (in whatever way we can) until the last breath.

Upon greeting us, He will want us to describe what we did with what He gave us (including time).

“Stated differently,” says the Jesuit, “if we do not care that we do not care — and we do not care about what the Lord thinks about our apathy and laziness — then we may be given a future similar to the life we have created in the past: a wasteland, filled with emptiness and darkness. Though at first glance sloth appears to be a lesser sin than the more aggressive sins — lust, greed, anger, envy, and pride — the Lord teaches otherwise; for the sin of sloth can lead to the undermining of all virtue, particularly the virtue of love — charity, contribution, compassion, and self-sacrifice.”

Don’t panic! We all have time to kick out of lethargy. Just do something, even if simple prayer, of benefit to His flock. Christ calls us to carry a cross and follow Him, not simply watch Him carry His.

He calls us not to be spectators but participants.

It is when we are idle that we are especially prone to envy, jealousy, harsh social discourse, and wrong fantasy.

Love and cherish and use in some way every moment you have left on this testing ground called earth.

[resources: Christ Versus Satan In Our Daily Lives: TheCosmic Struggle Between Good and Evil]