Proverbs tells us, “As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed” (Proverbs 26:14). You can envision the man there, rotating like a stuffed pig roasting on a spit. He’s being fattened up for the slaughter. This lazy man is not happy. He is not at leisure. He is not recreating. There is no re-creation here, but de-creation. The sloth is unpleasantly immobile, digging himself deeper and deeper into an abyss, down there where satan is bound. Very often he spins downward while mindlessly scrolling on a smartphone. There is nothing particularly tantlizing about sloth. You may be tempted to it, of course. But you are not tempted to it like the sins of pride, greed, and sexual immorality. So you must know what this particular sin is up to.
R. J. Snell has wisely said that “Boredom is a heresy, declaring God was wrong when he saw the goodness of the world.” The slothful man retreats into himself, refusing to see, taste, hear, smell, and touch God’s created world with gratitude. And it is not as if the world, from which the slothful man flees, is stagnant or passive. This good creation speaks to him in a thousand ways. It reaches out to him. The birds sing to him. The sawdust assaults his sense of smell with its pleasing aroma. The apples beckon him to taste and see that they are good. They hang from the tree as if to politely request to be put into a pie.
But the slothful man trusts his own words more than these words from God. He opts to trust his lying words of despair, hopelessness, and meaninglessness; rather than the true word of God, brought to us by slimy slugs, laughing children, and rhubarb springing up from the ground.
To all of this, the bed-bound sloth says, “But, there is a lion in the streets.” To which we must reply, “Perhaps so, and if there is, I really would like to go and see him shake his golden mane. We might even get to hear him roar.
Jared Longshore – April 14, 2024
