Common grace, or common goodness if you prefer, are good examples of God’s grace. Those of us within the kingdom, must remember to give thanks to the King that, while the creation yet groans, while death has not yet been banished, He has in many ways made us somewhat comfortable. We, for all the tears this side of the vale, ride toward eternity on eagle’s wings. As western civilization continues its long slouch downward we are witnessing a different kind of grace, an antithetical grace. Now the broad culture has sunk to such depths that by God’s grace, more and more Christians no longer confuse it with Christian culture. The only bad news is that the west is less and less a place a Christian would want to live.
There are any number of ways to measure this decline. Some years ago I wrote a piece, Land of the Lots about a fundraiser in the small, southern city. One could argue that it was a veritable slice of Americana, the teenage version of the lemonade stand. The cheerleaders from the local high school were putting on a car wash. What was both telling and shocking was that these teenage girls, with the full support of their parents and their school, advertised their event as a “bikini car wash.” Lecherous old men could get their cars cleaned, while their dirty minds were fed. We may not, however, go out with either a bang or a whimper, but with a “Dude, where’s the remote?” Our sign of the apocalypse may not be our lust, our avarice, our selfishness or our perversion. It may just be our sloth.
The medieval theologians, when they concocted their list of the seven deadly sins, included therein, as we might expect, lust, greed, hatred, and gluttony. We might be embarrassed by it, but we aren’t really surprised that gluttony would make the list. But sloth? Sloth? That’s an attribute we celebrate. From Rip Van Winkle’s power nap to Tom Sawyer’s multi-level marketing job on whitewashing the fence, to Beetle Bailey outsmarting his boss, we are at best amused by the lazy, and at worst envious of them. Everybody’s working for the weekend.
Work is perhaps the very core of the imago dei. We were made to copy the God who made all things. To stop the work is to deny the image, to lie about who God is, and to descend, both culturally and individually into the demonic realm of entropy. The failure, of course, isn’t confined to those outside the kingdom. We are all lazy. We are all, even within the church, shocked at the call to go the second mile precisely because we live in a culture that can’t be bothered to go the first mile.
Two thousand years ago we who belonged to Christ were known for our courage. We faced death with dignity and it wasn’t long before those in the coliseum who came to cheer our deaths learned to cheer the One who died for us. Would we not, in this time, be a city on a hill, were we willing only to be those who were known for working hard? May God help us to pick up not just our cross, but our hammer, our hoe, even our computer, and follow Him.