Slothfulness

Sir Charles Warren, perhaps next to Winston Churchill, was one of the more colorful, political, military, civic leaders of England. Head of the police during the famed Jack The Ripper Case, leader of the Warren Expedition in South Africa with its involvement in the Transvaal, and later as a co-founder with Baden Powell of world-wide Boy Scout movement.  He was in every way a man of valor and confidence. I first saw a memorial to him in the Transvaal in South Africa and one later at Canterbury Cathedral, where he is buried.

One of the seven deadly sins is slothfulness, or laziness as we prefer to name it.  Once, when speaking at a college where a group of ministers were meeting, I heard the pastor of the largest church in that denomination say (and I was just an onlooker, I am not a minister or a pastor), “I cannot stand a lazy preacher.” One who is an alpha personality, one who stayed busy all the time when young and energetic, always took two or three stairsteps at a time. I cannot stand a lazy anything, even a lazy dog. I have never had a Seeing Eye dog because I do not have money I wish to spend on a dog psychiatrist!  I have heard of people who step over their lazy dog and I had one bookkeeper who cooked for her dog every night after she returned home from work. If she did not cook something exactly the way the dog liked it, the dog would not eat anything and would cry and pout.  Then she would have to go through the entire ordeal again, trying to please her lazy dog.  This is what the scripture refers to as “unnatural affection.” 

I can tell within two weeks if a new employee will work out, little things such as keeping their work area clean, picking up trash, appearing on time, not yawning from staying up too late, not jumping up ready to run out the door at the end of the day when there is still work incomplete.  Parents should realize the rearing of children involves more then just food and clothing, it is a training process, believe it or not, children are not born with the capacity to understand behavior.  Just as important as coming to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, just as important to learn to love one another, just as important as learning the skills of education (reading, writing, arithmetic), so important it is for a child to learn the honor of work, the honor of being dependable, the honor of self confidence.

I truly believe that most people, even believers, think God is joking when he instructs them in human behavior.  Slothfulness is just one of the Seven Deadly Sins, pride, anger, greed, gluttony, envy and lust, all are sinful in their own way. Pride is the beginning of every sin and I do believe there are those who take pride in laziness. I hear able-bodied, well-adapted men talk about retirement. I cannot imagine retirement, I cannot imagine sitting around and doing nothing.  Often, on holidays, because I do not have family, I was invited to a retirement home for a holiday meal.

Now I have not had any eyesight for over 40 years. My eyes have totally deteriorated.  There is nothing there.  But, there were all these older people seemingly healthy, seemingly sighted who just camped outside the dining room door from one meal to another. The last thing an older person needs is food, just enough for survival. Most older people could survive just eating from a saucer. Excess food puts a tremendous strain on the entire metabolism of the body.  I have been on cruise ships, known for meals and gourmet at the rate of at least six dining calls per day.  It was obvious that many of the older, overweight voyeurs went to the dining room every time the door opened and then they could later sit and talk about joint replacements, a direct result of being overweight and inactivity.

The greatest thing about the human psyche, from birth usually to death, is the need for learning. You look into a microscope and learn things. You increase the magnifying power and you learn more.  With an electronic microscope, more and more power, you increase your learning. The same with the telescope. The greater the depth of focus, the greater the exploration a field, whole new worlds open to you.

I have been a collector of rare books my entire life.  There is a world of knowledge beyond compare in books.  At the present time I have over 5,000 first editions. Every child wants to read, It is a rare child who cannot learn to read.  Children will soak up knowledge like a sponge.  They must have the encouragement, the books are readily available.  Even far out in the country (Boonies) when I was a child, my Mother would take us to the book mobile on its weekly trip into the countryside where it stopped at my cousin’s country store.  My very bright, smart Mother encouraged us to read and she encouraged all the children in the neighborhood to read.  She would tell the mothers of the black children in the community to read every book in the book mobile. 

I still remember the lady who drove the truck.  Just as I loved all of my school teachers and can still call each of them by name, I met this lady many years later, I was already a doctor, and she was thrilled beyond words that I knew her and could talk with her about the books she had encouraged me to read as a small child. This lady, Ms. Barnes, never made much money in her life. The only time her name was ever in the newspaper was probably her obituary but she left a cadre of opportunity for children who could have been lazy, sitting around doing nothing. At that time, there was no television to pollute their minds. 

As an old, warn out totally blind veteran WHO GAVE HIS EYES FOR YOUR COUNTRY, I am embarrassed to talk with adults nearing my age who know nothing about anything.  I am more embarrassed to talk with young people who’s knowledge is limited to the “drug addicted” hip-hop recording artists and bed hopping movie and TV stars,  most of whom have the morals of a dog in the alley.  Over 200,000 new books are published each year.  Very few make the best seller” list.  The bestseller usually must be the worst smeller.  But still, there are many books written at great effort by people of scholarship (religious, scientific, political) in which the author has a world of knowledge to share. 

For anyone who has lived a long, active life, with expanded knowledge of human nature, travel, history, there is probably a book within the heart and mind.  Aristotle said “the human mind is a vast cosmos.”  At death, all the experiences and knowledge of your life is gone forever. Stop being so lazy, dictate into a recorder or write in your computer or by hand in a tablet family history and secrets, knowledge of events which you remember.  Get the old photographs and write on them the names of the people and places involved in the photograph.

Young people, often look through photographs and have no idea about the people or subjects involved.  Do you realize how many babies are born in this world to single mothers (37% of all live births to single mothers, 60% of all live black births to single mothers).  These individuals do not even know their father.  Thank God, most children know their mothers.  But the height of all slothfulness, I personally cannot believe that God will forgive such slothfulness, is the bringing to life a live child to live in this world with all the challenges of life involved, who does not even have the advantage of knowing parents, grandparents, family history.

The most horrible act of mankind is the abortion of the unborn. That child, as soon as conception takes place, has within each cell of the new life, the DNA molecule, which possesses the life history of the 2 parents, mother and father, for many generations, enough information to fill an estimated 5,000 pages.  Such is the greatness and sovereignty of Almighty God.  And this new life, was known by God before the very foundation of the world.  Now the atheist, the backsliding Christian, the pseudo academic-sophisticate, evolutionist, does not believe this.  But, to date, not one of these heathen non-believers has been able to prove otherwise. 

The height and depth of laziness (slothfulness) is your refusal to study this magnificence of God’s creation, this magnificence of God’s redemption of this individual soul.  This magnificence of your refusal develop the full potential of the human being.  Think of the soulc the potential, the love which God has expressed and a new life will express for those that the liberal, anti-life, political party in this country have chosen as an anti God holocaust.

No Tomorrow
by Angel Towe

I am going to die tomorrow,
But yet I haven't been born.
My mother shows no sorrow,
For I am a product of love torn.

I will never see the light of day,
I will never smell a flower,
I will never walk along a waters bay,
Or feel the drop of an Aprils shower.

It hurts for no one to show me love,
I will never be hugged or kissed,
When I have gone to the heavens above,
I wonder if I will be missed.

Today is my last day to live,
My last thought, my last breath.
Just think of all I could give,
But tomorrow I'll be put to rest.