idleness

• weak indulge in resolutions; the strong act

48:7.119. Ac­tion achieves strength; mod­er­a­tion even­tu­ates in charm.

• weak indulge in resolutions; the strong act

48:7.1311. The weak in­dulge in res­o­lu­tions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the con­se­quences God’s.

• should never be tolerated

69:8.11While the ideal of so­ci­ety is uni­ver­sal free­dom, idle­ness should never be tol­er­ated. All able-bod­ied per­sons should be com­pelled to do at least a self-sus­tain­ing amount of work.

• should never be tolerated

71:3.8No so­ci­ety has pro­gressed very far when it per­mits idle­ness or tol­er­ates pov­erty. But pov­erty and de­pen­dence can never be elim­i­nated if the de­fec­tive and de­gen­er­ate stocks are freely sup­ported and per­mit­ted to re­pro­duce with­out re­straint.

• disgust for i. in continental nation

72:5.12These peo­ple are also be­gin­ning to fos­ter a new form of so­cial dis­gust—dis­gust for both idle­ness and un­earned wealth. Slowly but cer­tainly they are con­quer­ing their ma­chines. Once they, too, strug­gled for po­lit­i­cal lib­erty and sub­se­quently for eco­nomic free­dom. Now are they en­ter­ing upon the en­joy­ment of both while in ad­di­tion they are be­gin­ning to ap­pre­ci­ate their well-earned leisure, which can be de­voted to in­creased self-re­al­iza­tion.

• supporting his family safeguarded Jesus against

126:5.9As he grew up to man­hood, he passed through all those con­flicts and con­fu­sions which the av­er­age young per­sons of pre­vi­ous and sub­se­quent ages have un­der­gone. And the rig­or­ous ex­pe­ri­ence of sup­port­ing his fam­ily was a sure safe­guard against his hav­ing over­much time for idle med­i­ta­tion or the in­dul­gence of mys­tic ten­den­cies.

• evils of inaction

130:6.3By this time the young man very much de­sired to talk with Je­sus, and he knelt at his feet im­plor­ing Je­sus to help him, to show him the way of es­cape from his world of per­sonal sor­row and de­feat. Said Je­sus: “My friend, arise! Stand up like a man! You may be sur­rounded with small en­e­mies and be re­tarded by many ob­sta­cles, but the big things and the real things of this world and the uni­verse are on your side. The sun rises ev­ery morn­ing to salute you just as it does the most pow­er­ful and pros­per­ous man on earth. Look—you have a strong body and pow­er­ful mus­cles—your phys­i­cal equip­ment is bet­ter than the av­er­age. Of course, it is just about use­less while you sit out here on the moun­tain­side and grieve over your mis­for­tunes, real and fan­cied. But you could do great things with your body if you would has­ten off to where great things are wait­ing to be done. You are try­ing to run away from your un­happy self, but it can­not be done. You and your prob­lems of liv­ing are real; you can­not es­cape them as long as you live. But look again, your mind is clear and ca­pa­ble. Your strong body has an in­tel­li­gent mind to di­rect it. Set your mind at work to solve its prob­lems; teach your in­tel­lect to work for you; refuse longer to be dom­i­nated by fear like an un­think­ing an­i­mal. Your mind should be your coura­geous ally in the so­lu­tion of your life prob­lems rather than your be­ing, as you have been, its ab­ject fear-slave and the bond ser­vant of de­pres­sion and de­feat. But most valu­able of all, your po­ten­tial of real achieve­ment is the spirit which lives within you, and which will stim­u­late and in­spire your mind to con­trol it­self and ac­ti­vate the body if you will re­lease it from the fet­ters of fear and thus en­able your spir­i­tual na­ture to be­gin your de­liv­er­ance from the evils of in­ac­tion by the power-pres­ence of liv­ing faith. And then, forth­with, will this faith van­quish fear of men by the com­pelling pres­ence of that new and all-dom­i­nat­ing love of your fel­lows which will so soon fill your soul to over­flow­ing be­cause of the con­scious­ness which has been born in your heart that you are a child of God.

• Jesus kept busy awaiting his hour

134:9.6The next morn­ing Je­sus went to the chest con­tain­ing his per­sonal ef­fects, which had re­mained in Zeb­e­dee’s work­shop, put on his apron, and pre­sented him­self for work, say­ing, “It be­hooves me to keep busy while I wait for my hour to come.” And he worked sev­eral months, un­til Jan­uary of the fol­low­ing year, in the boat­shop, by the side of his brother James. Af­ter this pe­riod of work­ing with Je­sus, no mat­ter what doubts came up to be­cloud James’s un­der­stand­ing of the life­work of the Son of Man, he never again re­ally and wholly gave up his faith in the mis­sion of Je­sus.

• destructive of self-respect

159:3.4Take care that you do not wound the self-re­spect of timid and fear­ful souls. Do not in­dulge in sar­casm at the ex­pense of my sim­ple-minded breth­ren. Be not cyn­i­cal with my fear-rid­den chil­dren. Idle­ness is de­struc­tive of self-re­spect; there­fore, ad­mon­ish your breth­ren ever to keep busy at their cho­sen tasks, and put forth ev­ery ef­fort to se­cure work for those who find them­selves with­out em­ploy­ment.

• Jesus did not countenance i.

165:4.7Je­sus did not teach nor coun­te­nance im­prov­i­dence, idle­ness, in­dif­fer­ence to pro­vid­ing the phys­i­cal ne­ces­si­ties for one’s fam­ily, or de­pen­dence upon alms. But he did teach that the ma­te­rial and tem­po­ral must be sub­or­di­nated to the wel­fare of the soul and the prog­ress of the spir­i­tual na­ture in the king­dom of heaven.