verse in Isaiah<\/a> that states,<\/p>\nWoe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!<\/i><\/p>\n
After all, the somewhat humorous way to read this is:<\/p>\n
If you’re going to be an alcoholic, sleep in.<\/i>
\n
\nSimilar themes come up elsewhere in the scriptures (I can’t locate it at the moment, but there’s a similar verse in Proverbs as I recall). It strikes me that we can praise drive and motivation too much. Our rhetoric about not quitting obscures the fact that drive and motivation can be very destructive if they are used for evil.<\/p>\n
Consider, for example, that Hitler was a hard worker. He rose from obscure beginnings to become a major political figure. He wrote while in prison; he rallied and organized his followers; he showed a lot of drive and determination, and he nearly exterminated Europe’s Jews.<\/p>\n
Wouldn’t it have been better for everyone involved if Hitler had been a quitter? If he had been a procrastinator? (“I’d like to exterminate the Jews, but it can wait till tomorrow”). <\/p>\n
Determination and motivation are not unalloyed goods; they merely serve to magnify the good or evil of the ends to which they are applied.<\/p>\n
So if you’re planning on being evil, remember to sleep in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve always thought that one of the more interesting scriptures is the verse in Isaiah that states, Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! After all, the somewhat humorous way to read this is: If you’re going to be an alcoholic, sleep in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5524,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions\/5524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}