Raising Sons to Fight GiantsMostră

A boy who learns to settle into his laziness is being prepared by his parents for a life of frustration. “The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat” (Prov. 13:4). Nothing ever seems to go right for him; the breaks always go to the other guy. The ball always bounces away from him. He is adept at making excuses, and so he continues to do so—but this does not make the frustration go away. Frustration in the hands of a spin doctor is still frustration. Why is the other guy always so “lucky?” The answer is that everything comes to the one who hustles while he waits.

A boy who is allowed to drift downward into this sin is also being prepared for a life of poverty. God does not just promise poverty to this young man; He promises that it will come upon him like a thug with a gun. In the good providence of God, the lazy man is not going to be treated with tenderness. Parents who allow this pattern to develop while their son is under their oversight are asking the providential hand of God to work him over with a baseball bat.

In addition, parents who allow their son to neglect work are trying to arrange a rotten reputation for him. When employers are irritated, they do not keep their opinions to themselves—nor should they. When someone fills out a negative job evaluation, or tells a prospective new employer that Billy here needs to learn what “get the lead out” means, he is not gossiping. Work is a public activity and should be publicly evaluated.

In the end, laziness is intended by God to be an object lesson. This means that other mothers get to point at your son in order to warn their boys not to be like that. As my grandmother once put it to her six sons, “Be good. Don’t be like other boys.” The results of laziness are obvious for all to see, and they should be pointed out. Diligent parents use lazy boys in the community as a negative object lesson, and they labor to keep their own sons from being used by other parents the same way.