Secular Progress and Spiritual Sloth

THE weeds of spiritual sloth tend to thrive in the sunlight of secular progress. Little wonder that this modern world confuses technical knowledge with wisdom. It assumes that secular or worldly progress automatically raises intellectual and spiritual standards. The opposite is generally true. Secular progress has promoted the weedlike growth of intellectual immaturity and spiritual sloth, a dearth of true wisdom and a vacuum in spiritual vitality. Secular progress has deceived people into believing that happiness and life result from the things they possess. At the same time secular progress has blinded people to the widespread spiritual sloth, which, in turn, leads to perils of far-reaching consequence.

One of those perils was described recently by Dr. Arthur Clinton, director of the New York city Bureau of Attendance, who explained that the luxuries of secular progress have so preoccupied parents that they tend to neglect the spiritual lives of their children with a disastrous result: child crime. This is because a spiritually slothful home, explains Dr. Clinton, is just as much a breeding ground for delinquency as a home physically broken by divorce.

Agreeing with this is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. Speaking from thirty years’ experience he said: “Invariably when you analyze the reasons for criminal actions, certain facts stand out, stark and revealing—the faith of our fathers, the love of God, and the observance of His Commandments either have been thrust aside or they never existed in the heart of the transgressor. The secular way of thinking must give way to the spiritual, if our nation is to stand. What we need most in this country are the things unseen . . . spiritual development, moral power.”

Those words of F.B.I. chief Hoover were quoted in Pennsylvania’s Altoona Tribune of March 25, 1955, after which the newspaper editorial went on to say: “In short, we, as a people, simply are ignorant in matters of the spiritual. We are incompetent. We do not know how to go about it! We acknowledge the vital importance of the spiritual, as attested by the vast and increasing church membership in this country. We superficially, perhaps, accept and practice certain religious precepts. But, how pitiful is the sum total of our spiritual knowledge and development as compared with our secular progress!”

If spiritual sloth, nourished and camouflaged by secular progress, is dangerous to children, it is deadly for adults. Yet myriads of people today make financial security their final goal in life. Others make their life consist of a futile quest for happiness through possessions. Where nations produce abundantly, few persons are able to lift themselves above the vacuous mental state of a nation of shoppers. Subtle advertising induces moderns to believe that the highest virtues are the pursuit of pleasures and material possessions. Advertising creates a promised land to be gained by alert purchases and prompt installment payments. And so moderns push zestfully toward their goal of a gadgeted Utopia of streamlined, plasticized beauty in which there need be no human effort except to be worthy of the bright new mechanical perfections.

It is a delusion, this belief that possessions and the blessing of financial security will more than adequately compensate for spiritual losses. Many persons allow the delusion to mushroom into a Frankenstein that destroys all spiritual life; others let it dictate their lives till they think that real living means keeping up with one’s neighbors in the possession of gadgets and that parental duty requires protecting one’s children, not from the danger of spiritual sloth, but from the sense of inferiority certain to follow the selfish retention of last year’s car. It is a deadly delusion. Many will not find this out until it is too late.

Certainly the Founder of Christianity never taught that possessions brought spiritual enrichment, happiness or life. Rather he taught that, unless one places God’s kingdom first, possessions can lead to loss of life, losing out on the hope of everlasting life in God’s new world. So Jesus’ warning applies with protective force in this day when secular progress fosters the growth of spiritual sloth: “Be on the alert and on guard against every kind of covetousness, because even when a person has an abundance his life does not result from the things he possesses.”—Luke 12:15, NW.

Preaching by Seven-Year-Old Bears Fruit

It happened in a country school in Italy. When asked by his schoolteacher to write on a religious theme, a certain young minister of Jehovah would always write about the true worship of Jehovah God. At times he would come home with tears in his eyes because his teacher had torn up his essay. At Christmas time this young minister was required to memorize a poem about Christmas. However, when it came to reciting it in class, before a miniature manger, he stood his ground, giving as the reasons for refusing to do so quotations from Psalm 115 and Exodus 20. The teacher, upon looking up these texts in his Bible, was surprised to note that what this young minister had told him was indeed the truth. Interested in knowing more about this strange religion, the teacher visited the parents, who were only too glad to answer his many questions. He continued to take in knowledge concerning Jehovah and his purposes and as he progressed he overcame the obstacles presenting themselves because of fear of man. Before long he took his stand and dedicated himself to Jehovah and was baptized. Today, not only are he, his wife and his child regular attenders at the congregational meetings of Jehovah’s witnesses, but both he and his wife are zealously preaching the good news from house to house; the fruits borne by the preaching of a seven-year-old.