Slaying our Secret Sloth Pt 1 © 2021 WF Cobb Truthbase.net  DailyTruthbase.blog

I. Recognizing Sloth & Its Results: Lit: “without care” {whatever}; Habitual disinclination to exertion, or laziness.  Dictionary.com

A. ‘The sluggard is no freak, but, as often as not, an ordinary man who has made too many excuses, too many refusals and too many postponements. It has all been as imperceptible, and as pleasant, as falling asleep.’

We might be industrious in our public lives, but sluggardly in our private {esp spiritual} lives . Kidner

Sloth is the desire for ease/{comfort}, even at the expense of doing the known will of God.

Whatever we do in life requires effort. The slothful person is unwilling to do what God wants 'cz of the effort it takes to do it.

There is such a thing as weariness in well-doing.

Sloth becomes a sin when it slows down and even brings to a halt the energy we must expend in using the means to salvation.

Sloth is mainly psychological...not the same thing as fatigue. We need a break and relaxation from work. But we give in to Sloth when we are unwilling to pay the price of exertion in doing what reason and faith tell us Gods wants us to do. Catholic Catechism slothwerks.com/SlothSin

B. Pr 6:6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: [=a fool lacking observational/reflective/applicational skills]

7  no captain, overseer or ruler, 8 provides supplies in summer, gathers food in the harvest. [no motivation nor foresight/planning]

9  How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? [overindulges in escapism; zombie/sleep-walks thru life]

10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep – [self-deceived, minimizing/rationalizing self-destructive behavior]

11 So your poverty come on you like a prowler, and your need like a bandit. [inevitable consequences result in poverty/shame & loss]

Ant vs Sloth. The ant takes initiative to do what work needs to be done (plow/plant-weed-harvest) which requires not only planning,

but knowing why, what, when, how (TOYL Life Mgt). The sloth sleep-walks thru life indulging desires of flesh/mind and loses at life

Eph 2:3 we all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of  flesh & mind, and were naturally children of wrath

C. Sloth not only subverts livelihood of the body..no care for its day-to-day provisions, also slows down the mind {stupifies}, halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders man in his righteous undertakings and becomes a path to ruin. The work/effort involved in exercising one’s will to make moral and spiritual decisions seems particularly undesirable and demanding. Thus slothful person drifts along in habits of sin, convinced that he has no willpower {BC forged own chains to inertia – mind ruts}

For Chaucer, human's sin consists of languishing and holding back, refusing to undertake works of goodness because, he/she tells him/her self, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of good are too grievous and too difficult to suffer. Wiki

Sloth ignores 7 gifts of grace given by HS (wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge,piety, fortitude, fear of the Lord) {cf Pr}; such disregard slows spiritual progress towards life- to neglect duties of charity towards others, and {resultant?} animosity towards God. Wiki

Mt 25:26 You wicked/destructive and lazy* <3636> servant, you knew...28 take the talent from him 29 from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. 30 cast the unprofitable servant into outer darkness....will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Rm 12:10 kindly affectionate to one another in brotherly love...11 Not slothful* in diligence, but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord

II. Revealing and Rooting out Sloth in our desperately wicked hearts Jer 17:9 heart isdeceitful above all things & desperately wicked...

A...Our heart exploits our mind to justify what the heart wants. our deepest desires precede the rational functioning of our minds and incline the mind to perceive and think in a way that will make the desires look right...we feel powerful desires or fears in our heart, and THEN our mind bends reality to justify the desires and fears.  He may even believe the creation of his mind.

Deception can cross from moral depravity to mental derangement - from deceiving others to deceiving ourselves. DesiringGod.org

Thus Pr 26:16 lie-on sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than 7 men who can render a reason. ...(sin) makes resistant to any truth that exposes their laziness/(sin). 7 men say: 'no lion in the street', the sluggard cannot concede.

He must insist that his own answer is wiser: There is a lion in the street. Otherwise his laziness is exposed for what it is.

Thus truth is sacrificed on the altar of self-justification. It is an old tale. From Cain to Clinton, truth has been sacrificed to desire, and the mind has been shrewdly employed by the darkened heart to shroud its passions. We are all given to this.

B. Our only hope is the transforming work of God in our hearts to free us from the bondage of a hardened heart that produces a futile mind (Eph 4:17-18 ignorance thru blindness of heart; Rm 6:17 slave...obey from heart). Rm 1:18: they hold down/surpress the truth in unrighteousness.

Truth is held hostage by the unrighteous commitments of the heart....then employs the mind to distract and deceive. "Everyone who does evil hates the Light" Jn 3:20. Doing the evil we love makes us hostile to the light of truth. In this condition the mind becomes a factory of half-truths, equivocations, sophistries, evasions and lies -to protect the evil desires of the heart from exposure and destruction.

Pr 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.cf Mt 7