June 10, when Reason serves Rebellion.

The sluggard says, there is a lion outside, I shall be killed in the streets.

Proverb is 22 13. This is not what I expected the proverb to say.

I would have expected it to say, the coward says, there is a lion outside, I shall be killed in

the streets, but it says sluggard, not coward. So the controlling emotion here is laziness,

not fear. But what does laziness have to do with the danger of a lion in the street?

We don't usually say, this man is too lazy to go to his work because there's a lion outside.

The point is that the sluggard creates imaginary circumstances to justify

not doing his work and thus shifts the focus from the vice of his laziness to the danger of lions.

No one will approve of his staying in the house all day just because he is lazy,

but they might excuse him if there's a lion in the street.

One profound biblical insight we need to learn from this is that our heart exploits our mind

to justify what we want. That is, our deepest desires precede the rational functioning

of our minds and incline the mind to perceive and think in a way that will make the desires look

right, even if they're wrong. This is what the sluggard is doing. He deeply desires to stay at home

and not work. There's no good reason to stay at home. So what does he do?

Does he overcome his bad desire, his laziness? No. He uses his mind to create unreal circumstances

to justify his desire. Jesus said, the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness

rather than the light because their works were evil, John 319. We love the darkness

so that we can keep on doing what we want without exposure. In this condition,

the mind becomes a factory of darkness, a fountain of half-truths, equivocations,

sophistries, evasions, lies, anything to protect the evil desires of the heart from exposure

...