Is laziness a sin? I've asked myself that question throughout my entire life. While nearly everyone else in this world has run themselves ragged, eager to get nowhere in particular, I've more or less reserved my energy, and devoted my time to intellectual activities, which exercise the mind while leaving the body in considerably less pristine condition.
I wasn't always this way. Like my other family members, I was once a workaholic. But an ancient philosophical puzzle changed my disposition. It was known as the Epicurean Riddle, and it asked the following question: If the powers of heaven be both willing and able to defeat evil, then whence cometh evil? In other words, why does evil exist, if the Lord is both able in His omnipotence to destroy it, and willing in His omnibenevolence to see it destroyed?
I agonized over this riddle for years, until I finally realized what the only possible solution was from the Christian perspective: that the Lord in His infinite wisdom was, by the metric of mortals, very lazy by comparison. After all, what are even aeons on this Earth next to the eternity of even a moment in heaven? And what are the riches and labors of our species, but the vain busywork of microscopic ants, by comparison to a single ounce of the Lord's strength?
He is both willing and able to bring paradise to this Earth in an instant. Why then does hell reign so fiercely in our Age? Could it perhaps be a form of spiritual education for such a lowly creation as humankind? Are we being taught the virtues of patience, and of waiting both dutifully and attentively for the Lord's return? Or perhaps we are being taught to rely not on the pitiful power of muscle and bone, but rather on divine strength, a small hint of which lies buried deep within each of our souls?
I don't have all the answers. I only know that what others call laziness, I have been forced through both reason and faith to see as something somewhat more graceful, although not altogether angelic. At the very least though, this philosophy which has gradually come to me over the years is something worth considering, particularly in the midst of this miserably busy world.
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