The Great Gospel of John
Volume 10
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Der Herr in der Stadt am Nebo
- Chapter 224 -
The Lord warns against laziness.
The supreme judicial city officer said: "Lord and Master, You know all ways and paths on Earth better than I. But I know that from this city - but more to the north - one can also come down into the Jordan valley via a rather good passable way."
2
I said: "My friend, I know this, and I still know many other things which you do not know. And one of the many other things that I know is also that I know which way I have to take, which place I have to visit and at what time I have to arrive in that place that I have to visit. Because I am not like some people when they have to do a work and say: 'Well, I do not absolutely have to start this work today. I will still have the time for that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.'
3
But I say: what you can do today, you should not postpone till another day. For if some hungry and thirsty person would come to you, asking you for some food and drink, and you would say: 'Just come tomorrow, for today we do not have the time to give you', do you think that the poor man will be helped by that? And does such postponing of a point in time for doing a good work also belong to the subject on neighborly love that I proclaimed to you?
4
But if this does not belong to neighborly love, then a work that has been postponed till the next day and which could very well have been done a day earlier does not belong to neighborly love, but such postponing of work belongs to the category of the laziness of people. And laziness is always the beginning of all kinds of sins and vices, because someone who is always busy with right and good things will have little time to commit one or the other sin. But a lazy person will in his laziness think more and more about how to chase away his boredom which is the result of his passivity. And since every person is constantly surrounded by good as well as evil spirits, it is obvious that the evil spirits will have an easier access to a lazy person than to an active person. And once those evil spirits receive access to a person, they soon entangle his mind in all kinds of useless fantasies and will pull him more and more down into their dirty and dark spheres.
5
Now that you know that, you should not postpone a work till the following day if you easily can do it today."
6
On this, the supreme judicial city officer said: "But I also thank You for this lesson, Lord and Master, for I concluded from this that also I as a gentile was not wrong when already for a long time I made this lesson of Yours as one of my most important principles of life. Every one of my servants has to also very strictly follow that principle of life, and we thus never have any troublesome arrears in our work."
7
I said: "Yes, yes, I know your Roman laws, they are good, and he who will heed them will not fare badly in the world. But now the sun is almost rising. Let us concentrate on that."
8
Then everyone observed the light clouds in the east that looked completely pink-red and became brighter and brighter, which all enjoyed, especially the 3 Apollo priests, so much so that they almost spoke out the sayings of praise for the god Apollo, but they soon restrained themselves and began to praise Me, saying that I was the actual, true, eternal Apollo who let the sun go up and down, as well as the moon and all the stars.
9
I said to them: "My dear friends, My name is only 'Lord and Master'. So spare Me the name Apollo, for I thoroughly explained this name to you yesterday."
10
The Apollo priests were satisfied with that and they thanked Me for this admonition.