No growth of the individual ever came through ease.
“How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?”
Proverbs 6:9
The path of least resistance is popular among weak individuals. In physics, the idea is that a moving object proceeds down some path, and when it has to decide which direction to go, it always “chooses” the one with the least resistance. If a ball is rolling along a path, it will go the direction that has the least friction. Or it will go towards the lower elevation. Or if it has the option of going down two trails, it will pick the one that is the easiest to start going down – This is natural law.
It is natural to want to take the path of least resistance, but we must reject much of what is natural. We must resist the natural urge to impregnate every single female we see. The sexual urge is natural but not moral. We must resist the natural desire to lash out in anger, for anger must be contained. We resist that natural desire to conserve energy and be sluggish.
Many of the actions our human nature pulls us toward must be avoided.
Christians love taking it easy. Everyone loves it. But it does not promote growth of the individual. Ease promotes more ease. More ease promotes decay of body, mind and character. It never gives you what it promises: rest, peace of mind, healing. It only gives you anxiety and stress, because you know you are not accomplishing the tasks you need to be when you are taking it easy. You are not keeping your disciplines. Your character is not being built. You are not growing the mind.
Taking it easy is only comforting if you have earned it.
You don’t earn it by sitting in your 9-5 job, that usually never brings any form of satisfaction. You don’t earn the comfort of ease by taking more of it. Ease is earned by doing something difficult.
It is difficult to work hard enough to earn the comfort that ease can provide. Most weak men do not know what it is like to generate that kind of work. You may not know what it is like either. Unless you really earn it, there is no benefit to ease, and it does not even satisfy.
Reject ease.
Be a Man.
“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life Speech
Mantra
Ease serves no purpose.
Application
Reject most forms of ease. It profits nothing unless you have truly been at the grind for an extended period of time. Remind yourself that it does not build character nor does it improve you. The only time it is necessary is when you are truly fatigued and need a break. Those times will be very infrequent, so do not assume you are fatigued.
Conduct Yourselves Like Men.
