Slothfulness casts one into a deep sleep, and the idle person shall suffer hunger. – Proverbs 19:15, Amplified Bible (AMP)

It is not terribly hard to spot people who are habitually slothful. Habitually lazy people are virtually allergic to work, and like all good allergy sufferers, they try to avoid that which causes them pain. The industrious folks of the world often look at the slothful with contempt, and understandably so, because they look at the slothful through human eyes. If we were to look at the slothful through spiritual eyes, however, we might realize that the slothful don’t deserve contempt so much as they deserve intercessory prayer. You see, slothfulness is a symptomatic sin that has a root sin we all battle daily, and that root sin is selfishness.

In Matthew 22, Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was in the Law. In response, Jesus cited the two greatest commandments:

37 …You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (intellect). [See Deuteronomy 6:5]

38 This is the great (most important, principal) and first commandment.

39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as [you do] yourself. [See Leviticus 19:18]

40 These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the Law and the Prophets.

In these verses, Jesus gives us the proper hierarchy of life: serve God first, serve others second, and serve self last. Work is all about serving God and serving others out of love for God and out of love for others. Rest is all about serving self out of love for self.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We all must rest in order to have the strength to serve God and others well. However, when rest becomes an addiction, it becomes slothfulness, and for such people serving God and others is much less important then feeding self with the pleasurable dainties of rest. It feels good to have a lot of extra sleep. It feels good to enjoy our favorite forms of entertainment when we should be working. It feels good to dream about the grand plans of tomorrow in order to avoid the menial tasks of today. It just feels good to focus on what we want rather than what God and others want from us, so the lazy set aside service to others in favor of service to self.

The cure for slothfulness is the same as the cure for any other sin: our repentance plus God’s forgiveness plus God’s enabling to overcome future temptations. When we find ourselves prone to slothfulness, we ought to reacquire our focus on God and on others by following God’s plan for curing sin. And, when we find others enslaved by the sin of slothfulness, we will do more good by praying for their victory over selfishness than by showering them with contempt for their laziness.

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