C. S. Lewis (and Friend) on Sloth

This is how Dorothy L. Sayers, a contemporary and friend of C. S. Lewis, defines sloth.

It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing. lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for. (Dorothy L. Sayer)

In C. S. Lewis's book, The Screwtape Letters, a senior demon, Screwtape, writes a series of letters to his nephew, Wormwood. The purpose of the letters is to advise Wormwood in the finer points of temptation in order to keep his patient, John, from finishing the course as a Christian. The following passage is part of a letter where Screwtape advises Wormwood how to keep his patient from doing spiritual disciplines, especially prayer.

You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked." The Christians describe the enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong.” And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years, not in sweet sins but in dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, .... It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.” (Letter XII, Screwtape Letters)

The following quote from C. S. Lewis's most famous sermon summarizes well the missed opportunities that we have when we give into sloth.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staqgering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." (pp. 2-3, The Weight of Glory)