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The Noonday Demon: Recognizing and Overcoming the Deadly Sin of Sloth
Even in our frenetic lives, we are all guilty of sloth, the sin of being superficial and ignoring and not caring about what is good and important in life. In these elegant and thoughtful essays, Dr. Blackwell takes us on a spiritual journey through the Bible, history, and culture to reveal what sloth is and how we can overcome it in our modern lives.
168 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2004
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September 1, 2017
I only read half and won't be reading more.
He quotes CS Lewis in Abolition of Man pointing out that for every child who needs to be cured of an excessive sensitivity, three need to be cured from indifference. In context, Lewis is referring to an inability to appreciate poetry. The writer twists it to Nazi SS soldiers bayoneting babies while laughing.
This is not the first such instance. I am 65 pages into a thin paperback book with large font, and so far we've gotten Nazis bayoneting babies, fathers burning their children for the joy of seeing them scream, dogs "trained" with cattle prods, a shooting, a man driving his truck through a grocery. And the entire chapter dedicated to the Columbine shooting is still coming.
What does this have to do with sloth? Good question. There is a thin tangent, enough to justify a chapter late in the book on sloth in extremis. But that's not what we have. Instead, the author returns almost at random to gruesome psychopathy every five pages or so. There is almost nothing about sloth in the context of an ordinary human life. The author leaves the impression that unless you torture children and small animals for fun, you can safely assume the "noonday demon" lacks interest in you.
He quotes CS Lewis in Abolition of Man pointing out that for every child who needs to be cured of an excessive sensitivity, three need to be cured from indifference. In context, Lewis is referring to an inability to appreciate poetry. The writer twists it to Nazi SS soldiers bayoneting babies while laughing.
This is not the first such instance. I am 65 pages into a thin paperback book with large font, and so far we've gotten Nazis bayoneting babies, fathers burning their children for the joy of seeing them scream, dogs "trained" with cattle prods, a shooting, a man driving his truck through a grocery. And the entire chapter dedicated to the Columbine shooting is still coming.
What does this have to do with sloth? Good question. There is a thin tangent, enough to justify a chapter late in the book on sloth in extremis. But that's not what we have. Instead, the author returns almost at random to gruesome psychopathy every five pages or so. There is almost nothing about sloth in the context of an ordinary human life. The author leaves the impression that unless you torture children and small animals for fun, you can safely assume the "noonday demon" lacks interest in you.
Displaying 1 of 1 review