Laziness

The counselee who is lazy can come to us in a variety of ways. A mother might bring her teen won’t stop playing video games and make his bed. An out of work who can’t find work might ask for help. You might just come across a homeless guy sitting on the side of the road asking for handouts. Or it might be the person sitting next to you at work who spends hours checking out Facebook or Twitter instead of working.

How do you help someone who is committing the sin of laziness or as some translations call it slothfulness? Well, as always, we need to begin by understanding what the sin actually is and then ask a lot of questions to see if we can understand what the person is doing and why. Then, we need to figure out how we can help the counselee understand what we’ve come to understand and then work with them to come up with ways to honor God in the future.

When I did my Bible study, what I found is that in both the Old Testament and the New, the words used in the original all have the sense of holding back, being reluctant, being slack, not following through, forsaking, refraining, letting alone, being idle, lagging, being quiet, doing nothing, etc.

The English definitions of the word are similar: disinclined to activity or exertion, not energetic or vigorous, inactive, slow, sluggish, etc.

So, laziness is the kind of sin where the person doing it is actually not doing things. His hands are empty, void of activity or at least helpful activity. He’s just sitting around not doing anything. I suppose a person who starts a thing and then stops might also be considered lazy, but it is the cessation of work that identifies him as being lazy.

In Matthew 25:14-30, the Apostle Matthew related a parable Jesus told where he said, a landowner had three servants, to which he gave various amounts of money and then went on a trip. He gave five talents to one servant, who made five more during the time of his master’s voyage. Another servant received two talents and made two more for the master. The third servant was given one talent, but he dug a hole and buried his talent in the ground. When the master came home, the third servant brought the one talent to the master. When the master saw it and asked why the servant hadn’t used it to make more money, the servant said he was afraid of the master and so he made sure the talent was safe by burying it in the ground. The master called him a wicked and lazy servant. 

The point here is that Jesus called the servant lazy because he buried the talent in the ground. Also, because he didn’t work hard to make the talent into two talents. He didn’t even try. His wickedness was illustrated by his laziness, his lack of industriousness.

Here’s the thing to notice. There is an element of fear in all the definitions of the words for lazy and in this instance, fear is a factor in why the servant didn’t work hard for the master. He was afraid. He was afraid of what would happen, “you are a hard man….” And because he was afraid, he froze and buried the talent in the ground to “keep it safe.”

So, in asking questions of a person who is accused of being guilty, I would look for areas of his life where fear pops up. Why aren’t you working hard at your job? Why don’t you finish what you start? Why don’t you get up, find a job and become somebody? What’s going on?

I wouldn’t give them an out by saying something like, “What are you afraid of? But if it is true that fear is the beginning of laziness, then fear should pop up somewhere in their story.

So, I would ask about family life. “What was your relationship like with your father? Your mother? Your siblings?” I would want to know if the person’s upbringing was devoid of positive feedback for things they did, or if they could never do anything right. People who can’t please their parents and who are criticized or yelled at for “getting it wrong,” are probably filled with fear of even trying. And the fear of trying looks like laziness. I’ve heard parents say that their kids can never do anything right. I’ve heard parents say to their kids that they don’t know why they even try, they’re such failures. So, if a child grows up in that kind of environment, they grow up afraid to try and the result looks like laziness.

They see a possible work opportunity, but believe, for whatever reason, that they can’t do it or do it well (or even do it the best), they let their hands hang limp and don’t try at all.

The thing is that the description of why the situation exists doesn’t look like laziness, but it is actually fear lived out. Or we could say that laziness is a result of fear.

Please note that I’m not saying that the sin of laziness is the result of bad parenting as if the lazy person can blame his mother for how she treated him. I’m simply pointing out that when Jesus warned against “causing one of these little ones to sin” this might be one of the things he had in mind. Children can be raised in such a way that their sin is orchestrated by their parents. They are still, however, responsible for their sin. This is actually a glorious thing because God can change their hearts.

There are probably other reasons people are lazy. But if you are going to help people, it is important to ask questions so that you know how to help effectively.

If you were to assume that the laziness is a stand-alone problem, you might simply tell the lazy person to “get to work, you lazy bum.” And that might be the encouragement they need to get off the dime and get to work. “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat” (2 Thess 3:10). But if the reason he isn’t working is because he is afraid, he might work temporarily because he’s more afraid of you (or not eating) than he is of being a failure, but he will eventually fall back into his slothful ways. You would be healing the wound lightly (Jer 6:14).

I mentioned that the lazy person’s situation might originally have been because he was afraid. Ten years into it, however, the inaction or laziness might be who they have become. They are still afraid, but that isn’t what motivates them to sit around and do nothing. Now they are truly lazy people. That’s just who they are.

But there’s more that needs to be thought about now. What do we mean by “that’s just who they are”? What we mean is that the person has believed the story about themselves to the point where they don’t even think about it anymore. What was said, what they believed, has become so common to them that they live their entire life in the light of those things. But notice that we’re talking about belief. It is faith. They have faith that this is who they are. They believe that this is who they are. They live their lives trusting that this is who they are.

But all of this is not what God says about them. Thus, they need a new faith, a new belief system, something new to trust in. They need Jesus.

It’s all about faith. Faith in lies or faith in truth? Now, what they believe about themselves might be true. They might be total losers, wicked, evil, lazy. But God wants to give them new lives and he sent Jesus to give them those new lives. When I mention the Gospel in a minute this is what I’m referring to. Lazy people need to think of themselves the way God thinks of them, through the blood of Christ.

So how do we help?

First, the issue of fear needs to be addressed. When we are children, the main people we learn to fear are our parents. We get almost all of our opinions about ourselves from them. We get them from a combination of what they say to us and what they don’t say to us; how they treat us and how they don’t treat us. They might tell us we’re wonderful and then tell others in our earshot that we’re a mess. They might never encourage us at all. They might “fix” everything we do, even while telling us we did a good job. They might simply live and let us live, but we read into everything and take it all personally. How many children think their parents’ divorce is all their fault? My family is a mess and it’s all my fault.

How do we help someone overcome 20 years of real or imagined parental input? Well, we’re Biblical counselors. We know that perfect love casts out fear (1 Jn 4:8). We know that fearing God helps us to not fear anything else. We know that when God sees us, he sees Jesus. This means that our past, who we used to be, is just that, who we used to be. The past is gone. We are new people.

We also know that Christians don’t live to please parents, bosses, wives, husbands, children, etc. We live to please Jesus. We make it our aim to please him (2 Cor 5:9). And when we do things with this as our motive, he is pleased with us. Like a father is pleased when his two-year-old brings presents him with a portrait. It looks like a blob of crazy scribbling, but because it came from someone we love, who did the best they could, and is for us, we are pleased. We live to give glory to God (Is 43:7). And even though we’re small and insignificant, he still receives glory and is glorified by us. We live to worship and make him known. And even though, we aren’t where we will be, he is made known by our worship and our service. When we live to please and glorify Jesus, we don’t need to fear that we’re failures. We can’t be failures because God, our goal, sees Jesus when he looks at us. It is only when we compare ourselves with others that we fail. But comparing ourselves to others is taking our eyes off of Jesus and putting them back on ourselves. And in our sinfulness, we will always come up short in the comparison games. This is because we always pick things to compare that show us to be inferior.

So, the sin is fear, but the greater sin is lack of faith in God. Homework then needs to be heavy on (deeply saturated with) what God says about the person you’re trying to help. It begins with the Gospel and confession of sin. Some sources for homework I use are my video on how to confess sins and also Jay Adams’ booklet, Christ and Your Problems. For both, I ask the person to watch the video (read the booklet), look up all the verses, pick two to memorize, mark up all the passages that stand out (either things they like, need, don’t like, have questions about, or just want to talk about) and be ready to talk about those things when we get together again. They are also supposed to apply anything I (or Jay) say to apply.

I also ask them to read several chapters of the Gospel of John each day (how much depends on how much I think they can get through in a day). I ask them to mark it up the same way they do for the booklet. I also ask them, as they are reading, to ask God to fill them with the same attitude toward their work that Jesus seemed to exhibit in his. What was his goal? Why was he working so hard? Who was he trying to please? What was his attitude when he was working? Who was impacted by what he said and did? And what was it about him that drew others to him? I also tell them to ask God to make them into someone others will look at and say, “Hey, he’s just like Jesus,” particularly in the way they work and live. I would also ask them to notice what the Father thinks about Jesus and to notice that God thinks about us the same way he thought about Jesus. Finally, they should be ready to talk about all of these things when they come back.

The reason for so much Bible reading and study is because we’re working to create a context where the counselee is in the presence of God so much that that presence changes him. Jesus said that a student becomes like his teacher (Lk 6:40) and we want our counselee to become like Jesus. In order to do that he must spend concentrated time with him; listening to him, talking to him, obeying him, and simply being with him. So, we give lots of directed Bible reading. By directed, I mean the counselee is looking for things and interacting with God while he reads.

As part of this process, we also want the culture of the person we are working with to change. The culture he lives in now is one that lends itself to being lazy (for whatever reason). So, as part of the homework, we invite him to church where others are living out the culture we’re trying to work into the counselee. The lazy person needs to be with people who are living in the light of the Gospel and are not subject to the charge of being lazy. The Bible reading does this and so do a lot of new friends who are all working on the same life the counselee is working on. This doesn’t mean they are all “not being lazy,” but they are all becoming like Christ in the same way together. And this is important for the new health of the counselee.

As I said above, the counselee believes things that are not true about God and the world. Through the homework, our goal is not only to put him in a context where God can change him from the inside out but also to give him a new faith base. He needs to change his mind (repent) about what he thought about the world, God, and himself. This new faith needs to be Christian. And God will do it because he is good.

I hope this helps.

Image by Dean Moriarty from Pixabay