The Lions of Sloth: An Apologetic for Inaction Text: Proverbs 22:13
Introduction: The Age of Imaginary Lions
We live in an age that has perfected the art of the excuse. We have elevated it from a mere personal failing to a sophisticated, therapeutic, and often celebrated art form. Our culture has become a veritable zoo of imaginary lions, prowling the streets of our minds, keeping us safely indoors, huddled on the couch of our own inaction. We have pathologized diligence and valorized victimhood. Men are told that their natural, God-given drive to build, to strive, and to conquer is actually "toxic," while at the same time they are encouraged to cultivate a rich interior life of anxieties, grievances, and fears. The result is a generation of men who are terrified of lions that are not there, and consequently, they are being devoured by the very real wolves of sloth, despair, and uselessness.
The book of Proverbs is a book of applied wisdom. It is not a collection of abstract platitudes for needlepoint pillows. It is boot-camp instruction for living in the real world, God's world. And in this world, there is a creature far more dangerous than any lion that might be roaming the streets. That creature is the sluggard. The sluggard is not simply a lazy man. He is a master rhetorician, a skilled apologist for his own inertia. He does not simply fail to do his duty; he constructs an elaborate, and to his mind, entirely plausible, justification for why his duty cannot possibly be done. He is not just idle; he is an ideologue of idleness.
This verse is a sharp, satirical jab, a pinprick to the balloon of our self-justifying lethargy. It exposes the sluggard not as a victim of circumstance, but as a creative author of his own paralysis. And as we will see, this is not just about getting the chores done. The sluggard's excuse-making is a profound spiritual problem. It is a failure of faith, a rejection of dominion, and a slander against the providence of God. It is an attempt to live in a world where the lions of our imagination are more real than the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
The Text
The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside; I will be killed in the streets!”
(Proverbs 22:13 LSB)
The Sluggard's Sermon (v. 13a)
The verse begins by giving the pulpit to the sluggard himself.
"The sluggard says..." (Proverbs 22:13a)
Notice that the sluggard is not silent. Sloth is not a quiet, passive sin. It is garrulous. It talks. It preaches. It has a message, a creed, a gospel of inaction. The sluggard is constantly explaining himself, to his wife, to his employer, to his pastor, and most of all, to himself. His mouth is always at work, precisely because his hands are not. He is a fountain of justifications, a geyser of explanations. The energy that a diligent man puts into his work, the sluggard puts into his words.
And what does he say? He is not giving a reasoned argument. He is making a declaration from the fever-swamp of his own fears. His speech is not the product of careful observation, but of morbid imagination. He is not reporting on the world as it is; he is reporting on the world as his sloth requires it to be. For the sluggard, the world must be a terribly dangerous place, because a safe and opportunity-filled world would present him with a terrifying demand: the demand of duty.
This is the first diagnostic tool. When you find yourself spending more time explaining why a thing cannot be done than you spend trying to do it, you are holding the sluggard's microphone. When your conversations are filled with all the reasons the deck is stacked against you, all the potential pitfalls, all the worst-case scenarios, you are preaching the sluggard's sermon.
The Doctrine of Outdoor Lions (v. 13b)
Next, we get the central tenet of the sluggard's creed.
"...There is a lion outside..." (Proverbs 22:13b)
The excuse is, on its face, absurd. While lions were a real danger in ancient Israel (cf. Samson, David), the likelihood of one just wandering down the main street of a town was, to put it mildly, remote. This is the point. The sluggard does not need a probable excuse; he just needs a plausible one that is terrifying enough to shut down all further discussion. The excuse is not designed to be fact-checked. It is designed to be emotionally overwhelming. Who can argue with a lion?
This is a direct parallel to the report of the ten faithless spies in Numbers 13. They saw the giants in the land, the sons of Anak, and reported back, "we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight" (Numbers 13:33). Their fear magnified the obstacle until God's promise seemed irrelevant. The sluggard does the same thing on a domestic scale. The giants in Canaan and the lion in the street are cousins. They are the boogeymen that faithlessness conjures up to justify disobedience.
What are our modern lions? "If I take a stand on this issue at work, I might get fired." "If we homeschool our children, they might turn out weird." "If I start that business, the economy might crash." "If I speak to my neighbor about Christ, he might get angry." "If I discipline my children biblically, someone might call social services." The list is endless. Notice that each of these contains a kernel of possibility. People do get fired. The economy does crash. Neighbors do get angry. But the sluggard takes a remote possibility and treats it as a roaring certainty. He is a victim of his own catastrophizing imagination. He lives in a world of "what ifs" instead of a world of "God is."
The Personal Apocalypse (v. 13c)
The sluggard's sermon reaches its dramatic, self-pitying climax.
"...I will be killed in the streets!" (Proverbs 22:13c)
Here the sluggard casts himself as the tragic hero in his own little drama. The focus shifts from the lion to himself: "I will be killed." This is not about civic duty or the safety of others. It is about radical, fearful self-preservation. The sluggard is the ultimate narcissist. His own safety, his own comfort, his own ease are the highest goods, and any risk to them must be avoided at all costs.
He will be slain "in the streets," in the place of commerce, community, and duty. The street is where life happens. It is where men are called to work, to provide, to lead, to engage. By declaring the streets a death trap, the sluggard is declaring all of public life, all responsibility, all dominion work, to be impossible for him. He has successfully used his fear to shrink his world down to the size of his bed. As Proverbs 26:14 says, "As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed." He is active, but only in turning over. He is not paralyzed; he is just confined to a very small, very safe, and very useless circle.
The Gospel for Sluggards
If this proverb simply diagnoses our excuse-making, it is a word of condemnation. But the wisdom of God in Christ is always a word of redemption. The problem of the sluggard is not, fundamentally, a problem of motivation or time-management. It is a problem of faith. The sluggard believes his lions are bigger than his God.
The gospel answers the sluggard's fear with a greater reality. Yes, there is a lion out there. The apostle Peter tells us, "Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). The sluggard is right to be afraid of a lion, but he has mistaken the location and the identity of the true threat. The real lion is not the one that threatens your physical comfort, but the one that threatens your soul. And the devil's primary strategy is to use the fear of imaginary lions to keep you from your duty, making you useless to the kingdom and thus easy prey.
But the good news is that there is another Lion. Jesus Christ is the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5). He did not stay indoors. He went out into the streets of this fallen world, and He confronted the roaring lion of Satan, sin, and death. On the cross, He met that lion head-on and broke its jaw. He was, in fact, "killed in the streets" outside Jerusalem. But He did not stay dead. He rose again, having conquered the only lion that could ever truly harm us.
Therefore, for the Christian, the sluggard's excuse is not just foolish; it is blasphemous. It is a declaration that the lion of circumstance is more powerful than the Lion of Judah. It is a profound failure to believe the resurrection. Because Christ has conquered, we are called to a life of faithful, lion-disregarding duty. We are called to go out into the streets, into the world of work and witness and warfare, not because there are no dangers, but because our conquering King is with us.
The cure for sloth is not a new productivity app. The cure for sloth is a robust faith in the resurrected Christ. It is to look at the imaginary lions in the street, to laugh, and to say, "My Lion is bigger than your lion." And then, to open the door, and get to work.