My life is pretty good.

Is it perfect?  No, but it is pretty good.  I’m 30, have a wife, a daughter, a good job doing something I am passionate about, and a few toys – not too many, but a few toys.

A couple years ago, the year my daughter was born, I was a mess.  I had just finished my master’s degree, but had been denied admission to all three Ph.D. programs for which I applied.  I had a job through the end of the summer, but nothing permanent, nothing with which I could support a family.  I was working as a teacher and, although my faith was important to me, I was losing touch with God.  While superficially my family finances looked on track, we were living beyond our means, spending enormous amounts of money eating out.  I allowed my friendships to dwindle to exactly one friend and even he thought I was a jerk.  My body had expanded to a full seventy pounds overweight.  In every aspect which is important to life and my life’s fulfillment, I was losing it.  Besides my daughter who was about to be born, I had nothing to look forward to and all my priorities were skewed.  I was not the kind of man I would want my daughter to marry.  I was not the kind of man my wife deserved.

I obviously had problems! – heck, I still have problems – and for a little while, I attempted to use self-help books to repair my life.  But invariably, the help was incomplete.  The self-help industry is all about fixing a problem or finding solutions to a particular problem.  If you are fat, they have a diet.  If your finances are crap, they have a budget.  If you aren’t making friends (or are looking for a spouse), they have a method.  If you are unhealthy, they have a cookbook.

What if all the problems I was having (and many of the problems you might have) came from one over-arching problem: sloth?  The dictionary has a great definition for sloth: “habitual disinclination to exertion….”  Sometimes our problem seems to be that we just don’t want to move, a disinclination to exert ourselves.

Looking at the self-help section in the bookstore, I found six areas of life that seem to have an abundance of coverage:

1) Fitness
2) Finance
3) Family
4) Food
5) Faith
6) Friendship

Can removing sloth from our lives enhance and resolve problems in all these categories? I don’t know, but it seems to me like the following is true:

We ignore our bodies as they get fatter and fatter, but expect to take a pill and one day be at our optimum weight.
We ignore our finances, but expect that we will still grow rich for our retirements.
We ignore our wives and husbands, but expect them to meet us at the door with love, affection, and maybe even admiration.
We ignore our kids, but expect them to respect and revere us when they become teenagers.
We ignore our friends, but expect them to drop everything in our time of need.
We ignore what foods are best for us, but expect our health to hold up well into our nineties.
We ignore God and spend no time connecting with him, but expect to feel close to God and know God’s path for our lives.

Is simply moving, or inclining ourselves toward exertion, enough?

There are six categories to cover: 1) Fitness 2) Finance 3) Family 4) Food 5) Faith 6) Friendship.  144 minutes divided by the six categories is 24 minutes each per day.

For the next 365 days, that is how much time I must devote to each – 24 minutes per day.

Why Tithe Your Life?

Tithe means to give 10%.  In the Bible, tithing begins in Genesis 14 when Abraham returns from battle, having defeated a multitude of kings, and pays 10% of his spoils to Melchizedek, the king of righteousness.  From that point on, 10% becomes biblically relevant.  As is often the case, these ancient numbers have significance.  What the ancients seem to have figured out is that even if you give up 10%, you will still have enough.  Therefore, 10% is definitely a sacrifice, but will (hopefully) leave me with enough.

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