Solomon on Idleness

Solomon, the wisest of men, plainly points to this fault of idleness in many passages. He says, “Whoever follows idleness will be filled with poverty,” whether visible or invisible poverty. An idle man, entangled in various faults, is sure to be caught up in it, and he will always be a stranger to the contemplation of God and to spiritual riches, of which the blessed apostle says, “For in everything you were enriched in him, in all speech and all knowledge.” And elsewhere he writes this about the idler’s poverty: “Every sluggard will be clothed in torn garments and rags.” For whoever is overpowered by lazy sleep or by acedia, and prefers to be clothed not by his own labor and diligence but in the rags of idleness, will certainly not deserve to be adorned with that garment of incorruption. Of that garment the apostle says, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and again, “being clothed with the breastplate of righteousness and love”; and of it the Lord himself also speaks to Jerusalem through the prophet: “Arise, arise, Jerusalem, put on the garments of your glory.” The idler tears his rags from the solid cloth and body of the Scriptures, and fits them onto his sloth not as a garment of glory and honor, but as a shameful cloak and excuse. [a]

For those who are affected by this laziness, and do not like to support themselves by the labor of their own hands as the apostle constantly did and told us to do, usually make use of certain proofs from Scripture to cloak their idleness. They say that it is written, “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life,” and “My food is to do the will of my Father.” But these proofs are, so to speak, rags torn from the solid cloth of the gospel and taken up for this purpose: to cover the disgrace of our idleness and shame, rather than to keep us warm and adorn us with that costly and splendid garment of virtue which the wise woman in Proverbs, who was clothed with strength and beauty, is said to have made either for herself or for her husband. Of her it is said soon after: “Strength and beauty are her clothing, and she rejoices in the last days.”

Solomon mentions this evil of idleness again: “The ways of the idle are strewn with thorns,” that is, with these and similar faults, which the apostle declared above spring from idleness. And again: “Every sluggard is always in want.” The apostle mentions these when he says, “and that you may need nothing from anyone.” And finally: “For idleness has taught many evils.” The apostle has clearly listed these in the passage he set out above: “not working at all, but meddling out of curiosity.” To this fault he also joins another: “and that you make it your aim to be quiet”; and then, “that you mind your own business and walk honorably toward those outside, and that you may need nothing from anyone.” And from those he marks out as disorderly and rebellious he tells the earnest to separate themselves: “that you keep away,” he says, “from every brother who walks in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us.”