Self-Care or Sloth: How to Know If You're Resting or Just Being Lazy

You come home exhausted and tell your wife you need a nap. Is that wisdom or laziness?

Scripture won't settle this for you. In 1 Kings 19, a man fleeing for his life gets fed and put to sleep, twice, before God says a word about his mission. Proverbs warns that a little more sleep invites poverty in like a robber breaking in at night. The Bible seems to want you standing in both truths at once.

Some men will lie to themselves, calling doom scrolling and sleeping in self-care while poverty closes in. Other men are doing the opposite, grinding until he is irritable and calling exhaustion faithfulness. You can rationalize almost any rest, or any refusal to rest, and still feel spiritual about it.

This conversation pushes you past whether you're tired. Are you resting from the work you were given, or resting for it? One is escape. One is stewardship. You may not be able to tell the difference alone.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

All right. How do you know if you are tired or if you're just lazy or some combination of both? One of the difficult things we see in the scriptures are where there appears to be contradictory or at least intention commands or observations, either wisdom principles or commands you're trying to make sense of. For example, in 1 Kings 19, there's a man who's on the run after having a really difficult go of it, and he goes up a mountain, and the angel of the Lord or the Lord via a messenger comes to him and has him eat and take a nap, and then he wakes up, then he eats, then he takes a nap, and then he does business with the Lord. And so 1 Kings 19 looks like a great example of what modern people call self-care. You have to know your limits, live within your limits, uh, recognize the cards you're dealing with as far as what you've been played on the day, uh, biologically, neurologically, emotionally. You got to play those cards as you have them. At the same time, you see in the book of Proverbs, like Proverbs chapter six, verses 10 and 11, says, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want, like one who's breaking and entering. And so you go, okay, so the Bible seems to kind of support both approaches. One approach where you're kind of sensitive to your needs, you are doing the self-care thing. Another one that is repudiating or pushing back on slothfulness, lethargy, easygoing, sleeping in. Uh, and so you kind of have to ask yourself, which one is it? And so I do think that there is a self-knowledge piece of this. There's a communal feedback piece of this. There are times when I've come home after uh church on Sunday, three services, and I'm completely out of gas. And I tell my wife, you know, I think I need a nap, and she goes, like, all right. And so then I go to the room, try to lay down, catch 20 minutes or so, pop back up, and it's uh ripping roaring the rest of the day. So you could ask the question, is that Seth doing 1 Kings 19, or is that Seth doing Proverbs 6? Is he abdicating on his role as a present father, uh, asking his wife to do more than she's already been doing, or is that Seth trying to steward his limits, like 1 Kings 19 comes to ground? And this is where I think you have to know yourself a bit and need to have positive feedback loops from the people who are closest to you. Generally speaking, if you're under the age of 30, you're gonna be inclined towards sloth and lethargy. That's just the way of the world, of doom scrolling, of uh, of zoning out, of video games, of pornography, this kind of like half engagement with life. And so I will say that basically believe the age of 30, if it's a best move to assume that you should take Proverbs 6 more seriously. Uh, and past the age of 40, you should probably assume you're in the first Kings 19 section based on how you've lived your life a little bit. But also, there's just this recognition that sometimes faithfulness isn't a black and white situation. It has to be discerned through wisdom and feedback and communal uh dialogue. And so if I came home from work every single day and it was like told my wife I need a nap, at a certain point, she's gonna say, I think you need to be a big boy and power through. And other situations, I might grind and grind and grind and get more and more irritable and she say, I think you're powering through too much. You maybe need to go take a nap. And so some of that requires a good relationship between a husband and a wife, uh, or a husband and or father and his kids, or uh co-workers, even at certain times, you have to get that feedback loop on it. But I think you have to actually make your decisions in fear of the Lord and try to recognize am I trying to steward my life and time to be as effective as possible, or am I trying to skate by by doing the bare minimum and just coast through life without doing any take the hill? Remember, men were put in the garden to work the ground, which is applying creative force. Am I trying to uh skate out of doing creative force, or am I trying to really engage? Am I resting because I don't like my labor, or am I resting to energize my labor that I'm called to do? And so resting from something is like a means of escaping versus resting for something that's charging up a battery. And so ask yourself, am I trying to avoid something through this rest? You know, I'm gonna sleep in because I fear taking on the day, or because I don't really feel purpose in my calling, or am I gonna sleep so that I can maximize my productivity later or the next day and things like that? And so try to ask yourself, what's the goal here? Am I just trying to pursue this billionaire lifestyle without being a billionaire? Or am I trying to actually manage myself so I can maximize my effectiveness for the kingdom? And so, whenever you see these wisdom principles that are intentioned in the scriptures, almost always it requires some thoughtful self-reflection through prayer of the Holy Spirit, but also some good communal feedback from the people who know you the best. I'm having trouble, you can ask it like this: I'm having trouble figuring out if getting nine hours of sleep a night is stewardship or sloth. Sometimes you need to have that dialogue with someone and have them poke holes in your reasoning and see the different ways that you're trying to rationalize or support things. Now, if you're gonna do that, probably you're in a good place. It's the people who lie to themselves and assume they're doing the best that avoid communal feedback anyway. So get after it and then don't get after it and hold that tension between properly stewarding yourself or doing self care and trying to kill sloth and grind it out and do the most you can with your life.