Welcome back to the One Another Podcast. My name is Josh Squires. I'm your host, and with me as usual is my co-host, Josh Fleming. Josh, thanks for being with us. Absolutely. Always a pleasure. And our special guest, Mary Louise Bowers. Mary Louise, thanks for being with us. So glad to be here with y'all. Okay, so we are talking about sin. That's right. We did an intro podcast talking about why it is that we chose to do this particular series. So if someone sent this to you, we're sorry. And maybe you want to go back and watch the intro to figure out kind of what we're doing here. But we're making our way up through 10 sins that we see in our ministry areas as particularly besetting people struggle with. last time we talked about pride. And so what are we on to in this episode? Today we're talking about laziness. I'm really familiar with that. Laziness is one of these... Yes, aren't we all? It takes a lot of different forms, even the words the Bible uses, it can vary somewhat. We see sometimes sluggishness, the sluggard, in the Proverbs, certain translations will call it the sluggard. One author put it like this, he called it the sin of inertia. You can't get going, I guess, is sort of a... New Testament uses the word idle a good bit, so there's just different words that you can say. These probably point to this sort of sin pattern. Could you give us maybe a little bit of a definition of what we're talking about, though, when we talk about laziness? What actually... What are we talking about? And let's think through what it looks like in our lives. Yeah, first off, just a counseling note. If someone in your life struggles with laziness, sluggard, probably not the word. What you want to call it. Yeah, probably not the first card out of the chute for you. You know? It could be like a play instead of like, hey slugger, it's like, hey sluggard. Wait, did you say slugger or sluggard? Sluggard. I don't. Yeah, like a champ. I didn't let you decide what it was. It's up to you. No, I said sluggard. Yeah. But seriously, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines laziness as a disinclination to action or labor. So that really resonates, I think. It's like, I am just really not interested in doing any work today. And I mean, y'all, I first experienced that when my alarm goes off. That's right, yes. Each and every day. Yes, it was the Bible says a sluggard turns in his bed like a hinge. That's right. Right? Like the doors. Yeah, and it's like, yeah, I totally get that. The alarm goes off and I just want to hit snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze, right? Rather than getting up and just putting two feet on the floor and going about my day. Yeah. Right? One of the definitions highlights especially strenuous work rather than just any work or any activity but anything strenuous and strenuous when we think of strenuousness we tend to think of physical labor right which I think largely when we think of laziness or being a sluggard is about physical but it's not always just physical laziness there's also it can be mental laziness if it's strenuous mentally to do a thing And actually, I think in today's society, that's more and more an issue, where people's attention spans are shrinking and shrinking. And so to stay focused requires strenuous mental activity. Or it could be strenuous emotional activity, where you're trying to stay with somebody who, say, is grieving, and you're trying to resonate with them and really just continue to be a support for them. You can be like, no, I'm checking out. This is way too tough. So I think it's really interesting that it's that strenuousness piece, and that it can be in any three of those avenues. It can be physical, it can be mental, or it can be emotional. And I probably should add another one, which is spiritual, which is really when it comes to fighting sin, in our lives, we find ourselves often very lazy about fighting sin, and we want the Holy Spirit to do it all for us. Right? You go do all this work and let me reap the benefits. That's right. I think mentioning that last category of spiritual is important, because Often what we might think of as the opposite of the sin, maybe we'd use a word like diligence or something along those lines, but so much of the scriptures are calling us to diligence in not just physical or emotional, but in spiritual work. I think of Proverbs 4, and there's this talk about watching over your heart with all diligence. And it's that hard work that we are often unwilling to do, the strenuous even even spiritual labor. We're not willing to put in the time, the spiritual disciplines, you might say. So it really does affect that avenue as well, even though we tend to think of probably laziness as being something merely physical, it very much can plague us in our spiritual lives as well. It's the temptation to turn on Netflix, right? And to, or to scroll through a social media feed rather than, I mean, you know, like it's much easier for me to click on a social media app rather than my Bible app, though each are equally accessible if I'm sitting in the waiting room. So, you know, I think it's, that's where I notice my own laziness is that It's the temptation to just check out rather than to check in. Yeah, and I think that we've always struggled with this. I think our current cultural context has really strengthened the desire, and especially in that COVID moment where everyone was forced to kind of stay home, and it was like, what are you going to do? And pretty much everyone binged something on Netflix. If you ask somebody like, what did you binge during COVID? They'd be like, oh, it was seven seasons of this and five seasons of that. And, you know, everybody has something. And so we were already kind of bent that way. And I think what people have done is they have added the dysfunctional coping mechanism. They think it's rest, right? But how you measure rest is, does it enable you to work and be the kingdom worker Christ is calling you to be better, right? And oftentimes it's not rest, it's just distraction. and therefore falls into that category of laziness. That's a good point. I'm wondering, do you think there's something even just about our culture and where we are with technology, where we are with affluence even in the Western world that enables this? One of the authors I read mentioned something about having You know, just access like cultures that reach a certain point that have access to food easily and have, you know, sort of the basics met on some level. Those tend to be the ones where you all of a sudden you start seeing laziness creep in because it's not like you just, you know, in some places and sometimes in the world, if you don't go put food on the table that day, it doesn't happen. You go hungry. But now it's like, yeah, I mean our, so much of our work is, a remote or done electronically. So it's like, ah, is anyone really know if I'm doing what I'm supposed to do? I, you know what it is, whatever it is. So there seems to be something about the place we are in society that just encourages, um, this, I don't know, are we, we, this lavish lifestyle we have, we've adopted. It's inward focused all the times, not outward focused, not thinking about the needs of others and how I can maybe meet their needs. It's just focusing about me and how can I distract myself from this or that or yeah. One of the ways we see this with women especially, and this may be the case with men too, but is in this push towards self-care. And self-care at its, I'll say, truest form is not a bad thing, right? Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and we should care for it. I would never downplay the importance of you know, eating a nutritious diet and staying active and getting enough rest and, you know, things that really do take care of our bodies. But it becomes like self-care. If I'm taking care of myself, I've got to, you know, make sure that I have all of these spa appointments or, you know, all this aesthetics care. I think begs the question of, is that really where I need to spend my time and money? And I'm not answering that for anybody, but I do think that it's easy to be, I'll say, lazy in the name of this self-care, as if like, I just need a day where I sit around in my pajamas and don't do anything and order pizza. That's self-care, when actually, that might not be providing gospel rest for you. That's right. And again, if we go back to the metric that is, is this helping me to be more the kingdom worker that I'm called to be, or less the kingdom worker that I'm called to be? That's a general framework that's helpful, but also, Scripture doesn't talk a ton about self-care. it does talk quite a bit about self-denial. Now, I'm not trying to say that you should only do self-denial and never worry about having some self-care, but self-care looks in Scripture usually like the ordinary means of grace. It usually looks like going to the Lord and praying and spending time in prayer to Him, pouring out your heart That can be frustrations, that can be sadness, that can be boredom, whatever it is, but just pouring that out to the Lord, receiving Him back to you by His Word, by His Spirit, and by His people, so that you can therefore be more and more focused on who? The Lord and others, right? So that we are loving our neighbor and the Lord more. So if self-care, which, and again, I'm not against the idea of self-care, but if the self-care is in its right proportion with its right focus, should help me to be more the Christian I'm called to be, right? And if instead, it's this idea that if I just do enough, For me, if I have enough days off, if I go to the spa enough, if I make sure I'm manicured or whatever it is enough, I'll finally be able to go out and do something for someone else. It's never going to be enough. Well, Josh, how do you see this playing out with men? That's a good question. I think men it comes to laziness, you know, there's all the duties and responsibilities that we are given as both protector and provider, and that's kind of our role that God would give us, especially in the family. And the sense is, I think, when laziness comes up, like, I need time for me before I'm willing to do that for others. Before I'm willing to do something like an Ephesians 5 call to die to myself that my wife may be built up, well, first I need to be in a good spot to do that. And you hear this in kind of a—and again, I'm not anti-counseling, I'm not anti-therapy, I'm not anti any of that. I've got a clinical background and degree. But sometimes the language—and I think we have to be very careful with our language—I'm going to focus on me, and when I get better, when I'm in a healthy place, I'll focus on you, right? And that's the antithesis to what Paul says in Philippians 2, where he says if there is any I mean, if there's a fume of love, if there's a fume of joy, then do what? Count others more significant, as we talked about last time in our Pride episode, right? And so I think I see with men a sort of laziness that is, when I get home, I just want to sit in front of the TV, I want to be served my food, I want to just be able to think about me, and I've done all my hard work at the office, right? When the truth is, is that when we walk in, that's when our primary job starts. Oh yeah. Right? The other job is to provide what we need in order that we might have a family that's safe by way of provisions, but being present for my wife and for my children, that's my primary job, that they may see Christ by way of character in me. That's very helpful. I think, as I, you know, I'm thinking about the same question, how do we see this play out in different ministry areas for, you know, young adults who I work with a good bit is, a lot of people have this desire for autonomy and, you know, they don't want any outside influences telling them what they should do or what they must do at any given time. And so the idea of spiritual disciplines can be a very, almost a, you know, buzzword or something, they're gonna just naturally resist. When it's actually going back to what you're saying, that would actually be the thing that brings life and joy and love. It's like, you're actually acting counter to your own happiness if you neglect to these things. Yeah. Um, what do you think, I mean, what are the lies? And I think there's probably multiple that lead us to, to pursue laziness or slothfulness or whatever we want to call it. Um, what are the different things that, what are the promises that like, this is going to get me this, or I'm going to achieve this through this. Um, what do you think? I would say that the lie for me is that, you know, for instance, I'll use the morning. I tend to be a night person. And so mornings are often challenging for me. And I think the lie is that if I hit snooze, I will feel better about getting out of bed in eight minutes. Those eight minutes will make a lot of difference. Huge difference, right? And it sounds ridiculous, and yet this has been, I'm 42, this has been a struggle my whole life. And so that, I think the lie is really actually pretty simple. It's kind of like if you sit here, if you just click through and watch one more episode, then you'll be in a place. Then you'll feel like going out and doing the yard work. Yeah, I agree. I had a friend who used to call it bed math. His head did bed math, so he would hit snooze. He needs to be to work in 15 minutes, and he would hit snooze. He needs to be to work now in nine minutes or whatever, and he hits snooze. And he need to be to work 10 minutes ago, but his mind says, no, I can still hit snooze, right? Like, it doesn't actually work once you put your feet on the floor, but in bed, the bed math, it always works. And so I think one of the promises of laziness is actually you deserve this. You deserve to just be able to take it easy and to not work hard. Look at all the other hard work that you've done. Look at everybody else. They don't seem to be working as hard as you're working, right? Other people are getting ahead and they don't seem to have to do what you have to do. You can throttle down. That's interesting it to me. It sounds like there's even a connection to what we talked about last week with pride Yes, and there's a self indulgent like well, yeah, but you're doing really really good work over here Yeah, so it's okay to maybe cut a corner or to relax a little bit here Yeah, and that's such a you know, we're so inward focus We're so willing to let ourselves off the hook hold other people really high accountability and resist accountability in our own lives Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Yeah, okay, but so here's a question for y'all Okay Luke 10, Mary and Martha kind of turns what we're saying on its head, right? So here you have, you know, Mary is sitting, you have Martha busy working, and yet Martha has actually chosen the lesser portion here. Explain. You want me to go? Yeah, I think you go. So, I mean, you can take anything and make it a bad thing, and I think that there's a way in which idleness, laziness is bad, but also in which busyness and busybodiness can also be bad. And here's this decision, and the decision isn't between doing no work I mean, at some point, like, this stuff has to be put out in front, and you have to show hospitality, so you've got to put out whatever this meal or whatever the things are that are being placed before Jesus and His company, and then all that's going to have to be cleaned up at some point, right? But Martha is so focused on the work in front of her that she's missing the opportunity to have direct teaching from God Himself. and that fellowship. And if your heart is so bent towards, I need to check all the things off my list, I need to get everything squared away in its box before I can rest, then actually you've made that the idol versus time with the Lord, right? And so I think that's really the hinge there is it's not like, oh, don't work hard or being a hard worker is bad. It's make sure you're prioritizing the Lord. He's always going to be first. And when you're given the opportunity, it's not like Martha has the opportunity to work and Mary has the opportunity to watch Netflix. Right. That's not the contrast, right? But sometimes that's how it feels in our hearts, right? It's like, oh, well. Mary didn't have to get up and clean, so I'm going to put on scrubs," right? Or whatever your Netflix of choice is. Yeah. I've heard a pastor say once, and I thought this has always been helpful for me, is we need to maintain a merry heart in a Martha world, and just acknowledging the idea that there are things that need to get done. We have tasks that need to be accomplished in some way or another, some form or fashion. We can't just ignore them, and just say, well, I'm gonna spend all day in a quiet time with Jesus, and yet we never want to lose that heart of devotion for the Lord, and that heart of, yes, but I wanna hear his voice speaking into my life, and I wanna have communion with him. And maybe the balance is somewhere along the lines of doing those things, those tasks that need to be done, doing them well to God's glory, and still with a heart that is seeking the Lord and his honor as you do them. It's an interesting thing to look at idleness and rest, and to realize that those two are not necessarily the same thing. That's right. That's a good point. And so just because I'm... If I'm sitting before the Lord in prayer or reading His Word, just because I'm not moving around or typing on a computer screen doesn't necessarily mean that I'm lazy, right? Certainly we can put, we can impute bad motivations into any activity. That's right. But I just think that's a really fascinating thing to look. There really is a difference between rest and idleness is what I'm hearing. Yes, that's absolutely right. So if we recognize in our lives, let's just say there's someone out there, they're listening to this and they say, yeah, I probably do struggle with laziness. Like maybe a lot of us do. What do we tell that person? How does the gospel, how does God's word speak into this? How do we help them to move away from the sin and pursue the Lord? I'll say quickly that one thing that really encouraged me, and I think it was actually in one of Dr. Stewart's sermons recently, was we first look to Jesus and then we turn. I mean, was that in Sunday school, did you say that? Anyway, somebody at church said that that was not me, and it has been in my head. First, we look to Jesus and what He has done, and then we have got to turn and make a different decision. That's right. And so if you think about Jesus in this particular scenario, if you look at the character of Christ, He worked really hard. I remember when we were preaching through the Luke series, and whenever you teach a passage, you just come to know it more intimately. And there's the passage where he goes out for the first time into that desolate place to kind of push away from the crowds, because he had been healing all day and into the evening, and then chooses late at night to go out into the wilderness or into the desolate place to be alone and to rest and to have time with the Father. And predictably, the crowds came and they followed Him, right? Because people want the blessings of Jesus, they want to be healed. And what Jesus did? He healed them. He worked really hard. Can you imagine how exhausted He must have been? He preached the day, He healed most of the night, He's finally trying to get away to do some self-care, right? So it's not bad. He pushes away, He gets in the boat and He pushes away sometimes. But he's trying to do this, and the crowd comes to him anyway, and he says, okay, these are people who need me. I'm going to work hard. I'm going to put that character forward. He worked hard in his life that I might be his. Without his hard work, I would not be redeemed. And so I want to look to him first and be so thankful for a Savior that didn't just come down by divine fiat and say, okay, that's it, it's all done, serve me, bow down, it's over, but actually showed me what it looks like and did it for only one reason, and that's because He loved us. and receiving that sort of love and grace, then turning it around and saying, how do I show that sort of love imperfectly? I'm never going to do it perfectly, but how do I show that in the various frames of life? And that's going to be my spiritual life with the Lord, that's going to be my family life with my wife and my children, it's going to be my vocational life with my flock, and for me, my educational life because I'm still in school. Forever. Forever. I was reading Matthew recently, and one of the things that I was struck by, and this is something that the three of us have discussed before, was how often people were coming up to Jesus, can you heal me? Can you heal my friend? Can you heal my daughter? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And it reminded me of... The joke is that when you have just one baby and the child finally says mama or daddy, You know, it's like you're thrilled and then you have, you know, the child gets a little older and it's like, if I hear somebody say mama one more time, I'm gonna lose my mind. And some of that actually reveals our laziness, right? That, you know, it can be something as simple as the child is like, will you please tuck me in? And I'm thinking you're really old enough to tuck yourself in. Do you really need me to do that? But I really do appreciate Jesus and the way He responded to people constantly calling on Him. Because it was with love and compassion and diligence, rather than saying, I don't feel like it, I don't really wanna deal with you right now, you guys are kinda driving me crazy. And so what a gift to have a Savior who loves and serves us so well, And I mean, that should be our motivation to love and serve our families, our communities, our congregations well. Yeah. It's the call He gives us. Mark 10.45, I often think of that as sort of Jesus's mission statement for His ministry while He's on earth, and it's, you know, even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give His life as ransom for many. Obviously we can't do that perfectly, we can't give our lives as a ransom for anyone, but there is that sense in which we're supposed to look to Him and see His incredible service of His people, His even dying, laying down His life, and there are ways we don't physically die, but we can die to self in order to serve those around us. And as we do that, we're becoming more like Christ. We're being conformed to the image of Him. We're being made what we were originally meant to be. We weren't meant to be these inward-focused creatures, but those who are focused on God Himself, but also the community He's placed us in. So interesting you say that, by the way. I think one of the things that Derek used to highlight in his preaching ministry that was revolutionary for me when I first heard it was that we were designed to work. you know, in Genesis, we were designed to be workers. When we return to heaven, what will we do? We'll work. That was a pre-fall. That was pre-fall. So afterwards, we won't just float around on clouds. We're not just going to be these lazy beings, we're going to be working beings. But work and reward will be perfectly tied. Okay, now one kind of concluding question. What about people who are in seasons where work is difficult, whether it's a physical limitation, somebody who's, you know, I'll say at the end of life, how do they handle, I'll say laziness versus diligence? I think you have to have appropriate expectations for where you are physically, mentally, affectively. Our bodies languish because of the fall. And as we get older, we're not able to do as much as we once were. I was walking the other day, and I've always had a pretty quick gait. And there was a college student in front of me, a female college student in front of me, and they outpaced me. And I realized, I'm over 45. My gait is not what it once was. You know what I mean? I think I get it, yeah. So what I'm able to do physically now is different than I was 22, 25, even 30. But in some ways, actually spiritually, I should be stronger, because I've got more sanctification. I've got more time on task there, right? So I think you want to have appropriate expectations based on where you are and understanding your own self and your own body, your own physicality, but also having appropriate expectations for where you are in your walk with Christ. Yeah, I read or came across this illustration recently, or just a thing about how do you how do you pursue the Lord, and how are you watchful over your heart? I mentioned it probably before earlier, but Thomas Brooks's Precious Remedies Against the Devices of Satan, whatever it is, and he was talking about there, he said, realize that you have an enemy who is tireless, who's in no way laziness as he thinks about your demise and fall and destruction. He's hell-bent on it, you might say. Literally. Exactly. So are you gonna be any less vigilant, diligent in your pursuit of Christ-likeness and defending his wiles, you might say. And I think that's like, kind of as you're saying, there's an appropriate level throughout life of what we can do, where we do it. I mean, you know, Jesus himself had to grow in knowledge and wisdom and in favor of the Lord, which we read that in the New Testament, it blows our mind sometimes. And yet, we know that how we live, how we live is different at different points in our lives. And there is sort of an appropriateness of like, I can't do everything now that I could do before, but there are things I can do now that I couldn't do before. And that will be the case, you know, when I'm at a different season of life, we have young children now, maybe when 10 years, our children are a little older, some of them will be out of the house even, goodness gracious, it's crazy to say that, but. Maybe I'll have more freedom for other things and just thinking about your life in those terms of those seasons and being sort of sober minded of what you can do where and when I think can be helpful. You gotta be real with who you are and where you are in life. Well, thanks for hanging out with us. This is the 1A podcast. I ask you to like, comment, or subscribe. We'd love to hear your thoughts on our thoughts about laziness. If you want to follow us, follow us on Instagram at 1anotherpodcast. And if you'd like to get in contact with us, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us 1a at firstprescolumbia.org. That's the number one, the letter A at firstprescolumbia.org. Thanks for being with us and we'll see you next time. God bless.