The Silent Murderer

Feb 20, 2026

The Silent Murderer a blog by Gary Thomas

Last week’s two posts focused on Richard Baxter’s insightful thoughts on sloth. It reminded me of a chapter from a book I wrote over a decade ago, and this week, I’d like to share that chapter with you. When Jesus tells His disciples, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8), it’s an implicit warning that laziness is one of the greatest spiritual temptations we face--and yet one I rarely hear mentioned in the church today. I’ve probably heard 25 sermons on the Sabbath for every one sermon I’ve heard that addresses laziness.

Laziness is the great spiritual assassin of our time. It kills our bodies; it kills our bank accounts. It kills marriages and parental relationships. It kills businesses and governments. It kills everything it touches.

It usually acts slowly, taking its time to carry out its venomous assault that often proves deadly.

Laziness is more than a sin—it’s an attitude that undercuts our sense of duty to God and our obligation to our neighbor, and an attitude that wastes our lives. Julian of Norwich, a medieval anchorite, warns that “sloth and time wasting” are the “beginning of sin.”[i] Brother Giles, an early Franciscan monk, advises that “the lazy man loses this world and the other, without doing any good to himself or others.”[ii]

Laziness is an attitude that puts one’s personal comfort above all else—if I don’t feel like it, why do it? If it’s uncomfortable, why bother? If it’s not fun, what’s the use? Laziness ignores any sense of obligation and defines sin exclusively as something we shouldn’t do (conveniently forgetting all that we are commanded to do), and it ends up wasting our lives in a spectacularly nonscandalous fashion so that we don’t see just how destructive it is.

When we are neglectful with our physical bodies, part of us dies. We can avoid the wisdom of exercise and responsible eating, but we do so at our peril and accordingly will miss many opportunities to do good works. An out-of-shape Christian loses the will, inclination, and ability to enjoy much of life because physical activity becomes too taxing. He or she wants to sleep more, eat more, and lie around more rather than be truly engaged in life.

If we are lazy in parenting, we will have less of a relationship with our children. If we are lazy in marriage, we will grow distant from our spouses. If we are lazy in our business, our finances will gradually erode until we become charity cases instead of generous givers. If we are lazy in our faith, we will even drift from God. Neglect and laziness kill the best things in life.

This entire book is focused on becoming “holy, useful to the Master, and prepared to do any good work.” Laziness is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, enemies of this pursuit. Good is never an adjective that a slothful person would put in front of work. Fourteenth-century hermit Richard Rolle argues that the rise from death to life is, at least in part, a rise “from laziness to exercise in the service of God.”[iii] A Christian fully alive is active in every sense of the word, as much as she or he is able to be so under the providence and care of God.

In one very real and intense sense, laziness undercuts the image of God in us. Johannes Tauler makes precisely this point:

The Heavenly Father, in His divine attribute of Fatherhood, is pure activity. Everything in Him is activity, for it is by the act of self-comprehension that He begets His beloved Son, and both in an ineffable embrace breathe forth the Holy Spirit … Now since God has made His creatures in His likeness, activity is inherent in all of them.… Is it surprising, then, that man, that noble creature, fashioned in God’s Image, should resemble Him in His activity?[iv]

Ask yourself: What is the opposite of God’s activity and generosity? Wouldn’t it be doing nothing and giving nothing?

In other words, laziness and neglect!

The Bible is ruthless in condemning laziness and in warning against its consequences in various arenas of life:

“Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! …A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.” Proverbs 6:6, 10–11

“The craving of a sluggard will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work.” Proverbs 21:25

“We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” Hebrews 6:11–12

The ancients tackled laziness (which they called “sloth”) with the same earnestness that they tackled excessive eating. Lorenzo Scupoli, a sixteenth-century priest of the Theatine order, whose book Spiritual Combat was deemed so insightful that it was adopted by the Orthodox Church as well as the Roman Catholic Church, wrote of the “miserable bondage of sloth, which not only hinders all spiritual progress, but also delivers you into the hands of your enemies.”[v]

Did you catch that? Scupoli argues that laziness constitutes “miserable bondage” and hinders all spiritual progress. If we don’t address this failing, everything else we do will be threatened. Laziness is that serious.

Spiritual Laziness

Being a Christian is the highest joy imaginable for any human being. It is also, however, hard work. Listen to Paul’s account:

“One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things.” Philippians 3:13–15

Consider the phrase “all of us, then, who are mature should.” Paul isn’t showcasing his piety here or nominating himself for a Christian of the Year award; he’s laying down a standard to which every believer should aspire. According to his inspired words, a mature Christian will strain toward what is ahead. Commentator Jac. Müller writes, “The verb used here is very descriptive, and calls to mind the attitude of a runner on the course, who with body bent forward, hand stretched to the fore, and eye fixed on the goal, strains forward with the utmost exertion in pursuit of his purpose.”[vi]

The great Puritan Jonathan Edwards was as blunt as a man could be about this: “We are nothing if we are not in earnest about our faith, and if our wills and inclinations are not intensely exercised. The religious life contains things too great for us to be lukewarm.”[vii] He takes it one step further when he adds, “If there is a fight to be fought, or a race to be won, then it must be done with utmost earnestness. Without this there is no way of traveling the narrow road that leads to life. Sloth is therefore as damning as open rebellion.”[viii]

I mention this because many will say getting in shape physically, changing the way they eat, making time for exercise, being disciplined to work out even when they don’t feel like it, is too much effort. It sounds like works-righteousness. It might even lead to legalism. And since laziness and overeating don’t seem like scandalous sins, we let them slowly but steadily steal our health away.

This concession fosters an attitude that will eventually erode our spiritual life as well. Laziness is like pride—we can’t turn it on and off. It becomes a part of who we are. If we coddle laziness in one area of our lives, we’ll succumb to it in other areas too. Sins are, by nature, self-reproducing. Selfish people are selfish in every way. How they drive, how they spend their money, how they talk, and even how they serve is marked by selfishness. In the same way, if we become lazy with our physical health, we are likely to become lazy with our spiritual health. The reverse is also true. Cultivating discipline in physical fitness can make us more apt to be disciplined in spiritual fitness.

Can we value work as Paul did? I love his comments in 2 Timothy 2:6, when he tells his young protégé to “reflect” on the fact that it’s the “hardworking farmer” who gets the first share of the crops. This is such a brilliant metaphor that it’s sad I’ve never heard a pastor preach on it. Much of a farmer’s work—unlike, say, that of an athlete, solider, or politician—is done behind the scenes, without any glory, applause, or excitement. Ancient farming, particularly in the days before mechanized harvesting, was grueling work based largely on perseverance and consistent effort. That’s the metaphor Paul uses to describe the hard, often anonymous work of a Christian as he or she pursues God and is used by God.

The renowned John Stott warns, “This notion that Christian service is hard work is so unpopular in some happy-go-lucky Christian circles today that I feel the need to underline it … It may be healthy for us to see what strong exertion [Paul] believed to be necessary in Christian service.”[ix] Indeed, as Stott points out, Paul—the champion of salvation by grace through faith—gloried in the fact that “I worked harder than all of them,” explicitly referencing his hard work in 1 Corinthians 15:10, 2 Corinthians 6:5, and Philippians 2:16. Paul always ties his labor to God’s energy and provision but never in a way that God’s provision puts Paul to sleep, and certainly not as an invitation to a life of neglect.

Physical fitness is like farming. Much of the work that produces it is unseen. No one is applauding or even recognizing our efforts. But the life it creates can be used by God to bless and serve many. The “planting” is grueling; the harvest can be great.

Just a few verses later in 2 Timothy, Paul tells Timothy, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed …” (2:15, emphasis added).

The reason spiritual neglect and apathy are so devastating is that the act of pursuing God makes life so much sweeter. When I am seeking and growing in God, my marriage and parenting, my eating and drinking, my laughing and playing and work, take on a holy hue. The delight I have in God seeps into everything I do, and if there is anything that blocks this delight, I lose my taste for it.

But when my heart is spiritually lazy, when I am not pursuing and delighting in God, then even the most pleasurable acts can become points of stress and frustration. I lose the wonder of life; my alienation from God colors everything with a depressingly gray hue. Jesus’ statement that whoever has will be given more, and whoever does not have will lose even that (Matthew 13:12), becomes particularly true for those who walk with or without spiritual delight.

Lorenzo Scupoli warns that “from the slothful, God by little and little withdraws the graces He had bestowed upon them, while to the diligent He gives more abundant graces and permits them at last to enter into His joy.”[x]

Up or Down

The ancient writers of the Christian classics viewed the spiritual life as either an upward progression or a downward spiral. To them, there was no plateau. We are either growing or dying. That’s why they feared, hated, and shunned laziness. Listen to Scupoli again:

This vice of sloth, with its secret poison, will gradually kill not only the early and tender roots that would ultimately have produced habits of virtue, but also habits of virtue that are already formed. It will, like the worm in the wood, insensibly eat away and destroy the very marrow of the spiritual life.[xi]

Henry Drummond also tackled spiritual laziness. He believed an intentional, purposeful effort is essential to spiritual growth:

What makes a man a good cricketer? Practice. What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer? Practice. What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in which we got the body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of moral fiber, nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round Christian character—the Christ-like nature in its fullest development.[xii]

Doesn’t this make sense? Don’t we know from every other endeavor in life that to do nothing is to watch things disintegrate? That a business has to be managed, a garden has to be weeded, a body has to be washed, a child has to be parented? Why should we think it any different when it comes to the health of our souls?

Confronting spiritual laziness doesn’t mean ignoring physical life to tend to spiritual concerns, however; on the contrary, Drummond urges us to use physical life as a primary training ground for spiritual growth:

Do not quarrel therefore with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is the practice, which God appoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is moulding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful though you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection.[xiii]

When I’m not spiritually lazy, instead of resenting petty (or even not so petty) annoyances, I can consciously use them to “practice” godliness and cultivate a Christlike spirit. Being slowed down by an overly cautious driver; cleaning a floor only to have someone accidentally mess it up again; having a coworker make a mistake or call in sick—these are the moments Drummond urges believers to learn from, even to embrace. God is helping us “practice” our patience, our humility, our spiritual maturity. Learning to die to ourselves is never easy.

My friend Candice Watters told me she can have an amazing quiet time early in the morning, with “deep, spiritual thoughts,” but the minute the kids get up, demanding things and bickering, “all that spiritual stuff dissipates.” But this Drummond quote has helped her understand that both the quiet time and the family time are God’s chosen methods for shaping her soul.

“No man can become a saint in his sleep,” Drummond advises, “and to fulfill the condition required demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time, just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires preparation and care.”[xiv]

Here’s the difference: trying aspects of life will happen whether we use them or not. Spiritual laziness leads to resentment; spiritual diligence spawns insight and transformation from the exact same events. Let us become intentional to use personal slights, inconveniences, acts of gossip and slander, times of difficulty, and even sickness as opportunities to grow in patience and understanding and humility instead of bitterly resenting each one.

Living a life of diligent labor, faithfully discharging all the duties God has given us, is the most fulfilling life any of us can ever live. It’s the life we are designed to live. It’s the life that on our deathbeds we will wish we had lived (or be grateful for those times we did live it). In the end, the last thing I want to hear from my Lord is, “You wicked, lazy servant!” (Matthew 25:26). Instead, don’t we all long to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (verse 21)?

Let’s cultivate hearts and bodies that will lead to this end.

Simply Sacred with Gary Thomas

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