Diligence as Love

Why diligence isn't the same thing as hard work

Last Monday, Abby and I talked well past the hour when the sky turned dark. We were sitting outside a local coffee shop, whiling away the hours, and though I’d told Ryan to expect me home by 9, I walked in after 10. The house was dark and quiet, everyone asleep.

It’s been a gift to work alongside Abby Murrish these last many months. She was a primary conversation partner when, last fall, I decided to turn more concertedly toward my Substack writing. In the rule of life workshops, Abby has contributed both practical help and theological input. (I introduced her here, to this Substack community, in case you missed it.)

Though I am almost twenty years older than Abby, I marvel at her wisdom and courage. This is a woman who knows her mind far better than I did at her age, who lives into the boundaries of life with a great deal of settled realism and honesty. She’s a woman who can lay hold of God’s invitations in a particular life season and answer them, which is likely why a rule of life practice has been so life-giving to her. It has provided even more structure and support for a capacity she was already exercising.

Abby asked me a good question last week, as the sky was getting dark and the breeze turning cool. We were preparing for a follow-up call with rule of life workshop participants. “I’d really like to know how to discern when, in a rule of life practice, it’s a moment for exercising greater diligence and when it’s a moment to reevaluate, possibly even revise our commitments.”

The question is a good one, whether you have a formalized rule. Maybe I could restate it like this: is there a way to be sure that quitting something or downsizing a responsibility is a right and reasonable response—and not just the impulse to give up when things get hard?  How do we know when we simply want to ghost on something difficult either because a shiny new opportunity has come along or because we’re wrung out and discouraged? When is it simply time to just keep slogging, keep persevering—and when is it time to say this isn’t working and something’s got to change?

I didn’t fully have an answer to her question then, and I’m not entirely sure I do now. This is a question requiring time and discernment, which is to say that there are no formulas and, outside of Scriptural commands, fewer hard-and-fast-rules to follow than we might like. I liked how John Mark Comer talked about the distinction between discernment and decision-making in his recent conversation with Russell Moore. Decision-making is often a very logical enterprise. It's pros and cons and a requisite wisdom. Discernment, on the other hand, requires attunement to the Spirit of God. It may not always suggest things that initially make sense.

I got excited when Abby used the word diligence—because it’s a word that conjures what I want for my own life. I have wanted to be diligent. To be committed and consistent. I have wanted to keep showing up to the things that matter most: my life in God, my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, my creative work, my community. There’s a maddening pace to my slowness at times, I’ll admit, and it reminds me of a short poem Hilary Yancey read at the Festival of Faith and Writing. It’s “The Prayer of the Tortoise” from Prayers From the Ark. “A little patience, O God, I am coming.”

I told Abby that I thought the word diligence had a Latin root meaning love. But it took a Google search the next day to remember that the source of the insight was from Rebecca DeYoung’s Glittering Vices, in her chapter on acedia, or the deadly sin of sloth.

“Sloth opposes the great Christian virtue of diligence,” writes DeYoung. “The telltale root of our word ‘diligence’ is the Latin diligere, which means ‘to love.’ Sloth on this view, expresses pernicious apathy—comfortable indifference to duty and neglect of others’ needs. If you won’t work hard enough, then you don’t care enough. On this view, we should label sloth a sin not merely because it makes us lazy but because of the lack of love that lies behind that laziness” (89).

From this angle, we can begin to see that diligence is more than industry—and sloth, more than laziness. As DeYoung writes elsewhere in the book, acedia is “resistance to love’s demands.” It’s the refusal to accept the burdens involved in loving God, loving our neighbor, even loving ourselves. It’s a refusal to be implicated in the fallenness of this world and the service involved in service. It’s a pernicious (to use DeYoung’s word) pursuit of ease. Acedia can’t be bothered to lift a finger for the sake of greater good.

To be clear, diligence, as the opposite of acedia, can’t be measured by busyness, by activity, by hours logged behind a keyboard or desk or counter. It’s certainly not the same thing as naked ambition, which we so often confuse (especially in American contexts) with something holy and admirable. The virtue of diligence has, as its core motivation, the commitment to love: God, others, ourselves, creation.

I have to confess that for as hard-working as I might appear, I’m not as diligent as I’d wish to be.

I will take writing as an example. I am not diligent simply because I have spent hours of the day behind my desk. My diligence can’t be measured by word count. True diligence aims at love: love for the God who has given me work and capacity to do it; love for neighbor, that I might clearly explain the true and beautifully evoke the good; love for my family and community, that I avoid the rhythms and patterns of a binge-writing life that keeps me inattentive to their needs; love for myself, that I aim at “amending” my faults (as Benedict would suggest I do) and cultivate better habits of study, clear expression, trusting work.

This question of diligence prompted me to make the kind of list I often like to make when I’m exploring an idea. When do I recognize myself at my most diligent? Maybe that’s a reflection exercise you take up in the week ahead. (List-making is a wonderful spiritual practice, according to Marilyn McEntyre.)

Here’s what I’ve got so far, all of it a bit haphazard and most of not explicitly “spiritual,” in case you’re looking for it. I’m at my most diligent when I am:

Keeping my rule of life

Taking initiative with others

Saying proper goodnights to my family

Making doctors’ appointments

Calendaring with Ryan

Planning my work month

Avoiding the mall

Sending a thank you card

Reviving a flower bouquet

Handwashing a sweater

Praying without ceasing

Outlining a tricky writing assignment

Using a thesaurus

Cleaning out the refrigerator

Answering email

Reading every day

Taking a meal to a neighbor

Waiting to order a book

Reviewing my journal and commonplace book

Speaking honestly, even when I’m afraid

Visiting a museum

Taking my mom to T.J. Maxx

Using what I have, doing what I know, finishing what I start (I heard this formulation from Myquillin Smith on The Next Right Thing podcast)

Celebrating birthdays and special occasions

Memorizing Scripture

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Now what about you: When are you at your most diligent? I’d love to know!