In contemporary society it is common to point to one of two contrasting factors, depending on your politics: laziness or injustice. The book of Proverbs recognizes both of these, but has kind of a different take on them. Rather than helping me focus on what’s wrong with other people, the text helps me focus on what’s wrong with me.

It gives me the opportunity to recognize my own folly, when I’m having a hard time getting going and want to make excuses for not doing my work, giving me a proverb to poke fun at myself and get me motivated: “The lazy person says, ‘There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the street!’” (Proverbs 22:13). That could be the inspiration for a modern-day contest: who can come up with the best barely-plausible excuse for staying home from work?

Yet laziness is not the only item that needs to be pointed out. “Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself, and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss” (22:16). Throughout history there have been easily-recognized instances where people have ended up in poverty not because they were lazy, but because in order to keep their families from going hungry they were forced into working extremely hard for extremely little, while others profited greatly from that labor. Perhaps there are instances like that in the world today as well.

It’s easy enough to pin the blame on others: but the key is to recognize that all of this wisdom is for me to apply to my own heart. “Who can say, ‘I have cleansed my heart, I am purified of my sin’?” (20:9). The chief problem that I have to deal with isn’t that other people are sinners; it’s that I am.

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Teach us diligence, O Lord, to cure our laziness; teach us to care for those in need, rather than taking advantage of them; and teach us to live in repentance, rather than self-righteousness. Purify our hearts, we pray, for you are the only one who can.

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