The Devil's Workshop

I’d venture to guess that most Americans don’t have to give much thought about filling in those blanks; one of our more common cultural sayings is, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” It’s an idiom so often repeated and so seemingly true that, like “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” it may actually be mistaken by some for a Biblical truth. In fact, if you read the book of Proverbs in The Living Bible, a paraphrase created Kenneth Taylor, you will actually find at Proverbs 16:27, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece.” Of course, if you compare Taylor’s paraphrase with any word-for-word translation of the original text, you’ll struggle to see the connection between the Proverb Taylor inserted and the one that the Holy Spirit inspired. Still, when we think of how often idleness causes us to go awry spiritually, we can definitely see the wisdom in this saying.

When we see a statement filled with such apparent wisdom, it’s easy to connect it with God’s wisdom (even if we don’t mistake it for a Bible verse). We might see “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” in the frequent warnings of the Proverbs against being a lazy sluggard (Proverbs 6:9-11; 10:26; 13:4; 20:4; 26:16). We might see “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” as being the motivation for Paul’s command, “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10), or as a part of Paul’s statement that the one who “does not provide for his own […] has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). We might see an antithesis to it in the statement, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” (Colossians 3:22-23). And we might reach the conclusion that, if idle hands are the devil’s workshop, the solution must be busy hands.

I am a big baseball fan. In baseball, once a baserunner takes his base, he has to keep touching the base or he can be tagged out. Every now and then, a fielding player can perform what is called a hidden ball trick. The aim in a hidden ball trick is for the player guarding the base to convince a baserunner either 1) the baseball has been thrown to another base or 2) the umpire has called time on the play. Convinced that the danger either isn’t here or isn’t now, the baserunner steps off the bag, only to realize that the danger was right there all along when he gets tagged out.

Satan, “more cunning than any beast of the field” (Genesis 3:1), loves hidden ball tricks. He knows that we, like baserunners in baseball, will know that there are some dangers in life. In fact, he is very much prepared to allow us to believe that certain things are dangerous. He loves it though when we think that the danger is somewhere else or will only be a problem at some other time so that he can get us “out” of God’s light and into his darkness (cf. 1 Peter 2:9; 2 Peter 2:20-22).

Even though King Ahab was incredibly wicked (1 Kings 16:30), God tried repeatedly to work on both his heart and the hearts of the people of Israel over which he reigned. On one occasion, he was facing almost certain defeat at the hands of Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria/Aram (1 Kings 20:10). A prophet of God appeared though and guided Ahab to three victories over Ben-Hadad and his armies. God was clear what His aim was in doing this: “…and you shall know that I am the LORD” (1 Kings 20:11, 28). As the battles unfolded, it was equally clear that Ben-Hadad was no friend of Israel and no believer in God.

After three successive defeats, Ben-Hadad was humbled. He determined to make an appeal to Ahab to spare his life. Without consulting God or His prophet, Ahab determined to let him live and further to make an economic treaty with him and his country (1 Kings 20:32-34). The prophet reappeared to Ahab, this time disguised as an injured soldier. He told Ahab that on the battlefield he had been entrusted with a prisoner and that his commander had warned him that losing that prisoner would cost him either his life or a talent of silver, an impossible sum for most people in that time to pay. He then lamented, “While your servant was busy here and there, he [i.e., the prisoner] was gone” (1 Kings 20:40a). Ahab had no mercy on him, saying, “So shall your judgment be; you yourself have decided it” (1 Kings 20:40b). The prophet then revealed who he was and that Ahab had in fact pronounced judgment upon himself.

Ahab did not have idle hands in this Biblical account. No, like the imagined soldier in the story, he was “busy here and there,” envisioning the cities that could be restored to Israel and the marketplaces he could set up in Damascus. He had no intention of doing nothing, but every intention of not considering God as he did what he thought was best to expand his empire. Like the businessmen of James 4, he “boast[ed] in arrogance,” making plans without considering the Lord’s will (James 4:13-17).

Could it be that the devil has done such a good job of convincing us that idle hands are dangerous that we have not stopped to consider just how dangerous busy hands can be? Could it be that in running from the sluggard of the Proverbs that we’ve forgotten that our resources should have been used to, “Buy the truth,” not some shiny new thing (Proverbs 23:23)? Could it be that while heartily working as Colossians 3:23, we’ve forgotten that “as” is an adverb of comparison? It is impossible to work “heartily, as to the Lord,” if you are too busy with life and your job to work for the Lord at all! Could it be that we are so scared of being someone who has “denied the faith” by failing to provide for our family that we have left ourselves with no time to affirm the faith to our family (1 Timothy 5:8)?

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop… but so are busy hands. Busy hands are not the solution to idle hands; they represent another problem. The Lord wants us to cultivate not idle hands or busy hands but “holy hands” which we lift to Him “without wrath and doubting” (1 Timothy 2:8). May God bless each of us as we seek to cultivate holy hands that know the proper place of work and effort, neither “empty, swept, and put in order” for the devil to take advantage of our idleness (cf. Matthew 12:44) nor too “busy here and there” for the Lord (1 Kings 20:40).  

-Patrick Swayne  
patrick@tftw.org