Elaine Tambunan It’s already late, but fortunately, you’re still upbeat and energetic! Good thing too, because there’s a maths test coming up and it’s pretty important that you take some time to study the material. Everything is set up nice and neat as you pick up your pen. A few maths questions solved, the motivation starts to decline rapidly. Your phone starts buzzing – it’s a text from your best friend. With a moment’s hesitation, you pick up your phone intending to answer it quickly, but before you know it, you’ve wasted an hour texting!
Relatable, isn’t it?
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, procrastination is to delay doing something until a later time because you do not want to do it, because you are lazy, etc. Rather harsh, isn’t it? Yet it’s all too true.
The number of experiences with laziness and ‘putting off something because I don’t want to do it’ that I myself have commited will be able to stretch all the way to the moon and back.
The reason? Idleness. Which in other terms, defines to “WE DON’T WANT TO WORK.” How many times have you made an excuse whenever your parents ask you to do a chore? How many times have you sacrificed your homework to play games or hang out with your friends? There’s really no other reason we procrastinate. But the consequences of laziness are far more dire than we imagine.
The ‘fruit’ of laziness
- Presenting an opportunity for sin
A surprising place where we can read about the ‘fruits’ of sin is in the Word of God itself! Many verses, especially in Proverbs, talk about the consequences reaped by the idle.
“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man” (Proverbs 24:33-34).
There are numerous of these frightening warnings scattered throughout the Bible, even being mentioned in Paul’s letters to the churches! “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat ” (2 Thessalonions 3:10). These instructions still apply to us today. There are many who are lazy to work or study that are reaping the physical consequences even as you read these words.
But idleness does not only hold punishment for our physical selves. Idleness is able to destroy our eternal spiritual selves. In order to grasp the full extent of this, we need to turn to 2 Samuel 11. In the beginning of the chapter, we see that “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army.”
It is unknown the exact reason David chose to remain behind, but we know that this decision was most likely only the product of his own laziness.
“One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace.” Doesn’t it seem unacceptable that David is able to sleep and take walks while the rest of his army was fighting tirelessly?
“From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful.” And here arrives the temptation! And as we read on, we see that his sin of adultery with the woman (Batheshba) led to a whole chain of punishments and negative outcomes – murder, not the least of them.
And this all started with David’s choice to not fight with his army! This leads to the second spiritual consequence.
- Neglecting God’s instructions
We know God has a will for our lives – to bear our cross and complete our duty to the best of our ability. How many times have we uttered the words – “Your kingdom come, Your WILL be done” in church?
But practising this is far harder, which we discover after countless falls and stumbles. Not only is it inconvenient and difficult to work, it’s also unpleasant compared to the fun stuff that we know we could be doing.
We already know all that. But what we often don’t realise or think about is that not doing what God tells us to do is actually a sin. There are sins of omission – and there are sins of commission. Put in simpler terms, there are two types of sins: the sin of neglecting His laws, and the sin of not doing what He commands. “If you were blind,” Jesus replied, “you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains” (John 9:14).
But if you stop to think about this deeper, you’ll start to discover that there’s no big reason that stops us from carrying out His Will in our lives. We recognise that God is sovereign, the holy and pure King of the world.
If God is holy, then everything that comes out from His mouth, no matter how strange it may seem to us, is something that can definitely be trusted and that we must obey.
This is one of the things that make the Christian faith so unique to all the other religions in the world. The Christian faith requires an active response to our conversion, reigning over our worldly lives and leaving no room for idleness.
So, to work or not to work? Laziness is a sin that won’t magically disappear from our souls. In fact, it will lurk around continuously, staring up at you captivatingly as you desperately try to do your everyday duties that are ordained by the Lord. Really, it is only by God’s grace if we are able to resist and complete the duty He gives us. How great is He! He helps and guides us every step of the race we take, and as we get closer and closer to our final glorious destination, let us not be hindered by the mountain of procrastination!