Living By The Spirit - 8

8 - PATIENCE

As we have seen, "flaming" on the Internet amounts to telling one another off in no uncertain terms. One person says something the other doesn’t like; so that person retorts with increasing intensity. Subsequent exchanges often descend to the level of person insult.

Here is a sample of what happened in one instance. The names are fictitious. The excerpted dialogue came from people with denominational affiliations ranging from Roman Catholic to Quaker. The discussion centered on Martin Luther’s view of sin and grace.

Alan quoted Luther’s saying that we should "sin strongly." Brent had some difficulty with that. He admitted that he had never understood Luther on this point. Suddenly, Cindy, a Roman Catholic, accused Luther of having taught what she called "cheap grace."

Don immediately jumped to Luther’s defense. "You do all of us of the Protestant tradition wrong, Cindy," he wrote sharply. "Where do you get the idea that Luther claimed cheap grace? To a Protestant that is tantamount to saying to a Roman Catholic that Thomas Aquinas depended too much on the philosophy of Aristotle."

Then he castigated Cindy for being generous to some faiths, but not to others. He added a caustic anecdote about a professor who chided his class, "The denigration of great intellect is the disease of small minds."

Cindy retorted, "And you sir, are arrogant to decide that those who disagree with you have small minds. Who made you the judge and jury of my own personal opinion? And your snobbery is not attractive at all. Your bias is as biased as my bias."

This is a rather mild example of "flaming." Internet forum moderators constantly remind participants to be respectful in expressing themselves or warn them to desist when the flames get too hot. Online, patience is the key to good communication.

A Peculiar Greek Word.

The New Testament word for patience is somewhat odd. It does not occur in classical Greek and very rarely in later Greek literature. Makrothumia is one of those delightful words created from two others: makros meaning "long or far" and thumos meaning "passion." A now obsolete English word describes exactly what it means: "longanimity." More common is the word "forbearing." It means to abstain or desist from speaking out.

The Roman army never admitted defeat. A passage in the apocryphal First Book of Maccabees described how the Romans built their empire and gave the Jews the opportunity to rebel against their Syrian overlords in 166 BCE. "They had gained control of the whole region by their planning and their patience." (1 Macc. 8:4) The way they captured the rebel stronghold of Masada in 72-73 CE is a case in point. For three months they assembled all they needed to build a narrow ramp for their siege tower on top of natural rock spur. Once it was in place, they forced their way over the wall.

Several commentators on patience in Paul’s list of the fruits of the Spirit refer to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. There Paul wrote about how love behaves, often in the most aggravating circumstances. Endowed with love, the person with patience can afford to wait, cannot be provoked by opposition, incited to do injustice or humiliated by contempt because she knows that God sustains her.

John Chrysostom, patriarch of Constantinople, in the early 5th century, spoke of the patient man as one did not seek revenge when he had the opportunity to do so. Historians of the 20th century point to revenge motivated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 at the end of World War I as a major factor in the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany. Had the leaders of the Allies followed the advice of one of their support team, future US President Herbert Hoover, patience and generosity might have avoided the deaths of millions in World War II.

Patience in personal.

Patience may be much more effective in personal relationships. A young woman in love was angered that the man who had been courting her did not seem to want to become engaged. Her college roommate reminded her of a proverb she had learned from her father: "More flies are caught with honey than with vinegar." This proverb may have originated in the rather amusing, but frightfully sexist legend of Samson’s failed suit of a Philistine woman told in Judges 14.

Patience enables one to endure whatever ills life brings upon us. Social analysts tell us that much of modern technology increases efficiency but also increases stress.

A friend in western Canada can send me an e-mail a message in seconds. One day, he noticed that the e-mail conference he was moderating had not been functioning properly. He asked a technician to help sort things out. In doing so, she inadvertently hit the wrong button. Before she could correct the mistake, more than four hundred copies of the same message had been sent to every computer address on a list of hundreds participants scattered around the globe. Whenever someone on that list signed on to get their e-mail messages, all those hundreds of copies came through to their computer. The moderator himself suffered the same fate.

Naturally, both he and the technician immediately extended profuse apologies. When we got over our dismay, those of us on the receiving end willingly forgave them. But it took more than a little patience to delete all those messages.

My wife and I bought a car - unexpectedly. One afternoon we wandered into a used car lot and saw exactly what we wanted. We made a hasty decision, signed the deal and picked up the car three days later. We then sold our older car to our daughter and son-in-law for the same amount as the dealer had offered us on a trade-in. That’s when our patience was stressed to the limit.

We did not realize that since we had purchased our previous car the regulations for insurance coverage and selling a car privately had changed. Because had not checked those details first, we had to make two trips to the licencing office, two trips to the bank, a trip to a garage for a safety and exhaust emissions check, and a trip to an agency which inspects and photographs the car for an insurance operations study.

Add to that several calls to our insurance agent. An electronic answering system constantly put our calls on hold, played supposedly calming music in our ears or asked for voice mail messages so the agent could call us back at her convenience. That meant waiting for several hours before getting our questions answered to our satisfaction. Muttering to myself, I sat down to write these paragraphs.

Developing patience.

Stress isn’t all bad for us, of course. It pushes us to develop patience, although not always without some scars. Healing from an injury takes lots of patience, but may leave a scar.

A well-to-do lady went into a furniture factory to order a large sofa, insisting that it be upholstered in real leather. When it was finished, she came back to inspect it. Instead of giving it her approval, she became very upset.

"Why, there are scars and lines in the leather," she exclaimed. "I don’t like that!"

The manager called the master upholsterer, a grizzled older employee with years of experience. He looked at the leather carefully for several minutes, all the while moving his experienced hand over the defects the customer had pointed to.

"Ma’m," he explained, "no critter ever lived long enough to grow a hide that big without getting some scars. Those scars prove that the leather is real. The places where the scars are is tougher than the rest of the leather. If you tried to cut the leather through the scar, you would see that it is tougher there. So...do you want this sofa, lady? Or would you prefer a one made of vinyl?"

Near the high school in Montreal I attended as a teenager was a large Roman Catholic oratory honoring one of French Canada’s saintly heroes, Brother André. Tourist buses drive right up the door of this great domed shrine situated on the mountainside high above the city. But thousands of pilgrims going to pray at the shrine make their way up long flights of stairs from the main street. Many do not walk up the stairs; they go up on their knees praying their rosary at each step. To do so is regarded as an act of unparalleled piety. It also develops patience few less pious people possess.

The patience of Job.

In his book The Message of Galatians, John R.W. Stott wrote about patience being directed toward people rather than God. Those who have spent many days or months waiting for answers to fervent prayers might well differ about that. In the Old Testament book of Job, neither patience nor prayer nor seething anger brought an answer to Job’s struggle with undeserved suffering. In the end, God did speak to him, but not in the comforting words he hoped for. A flood of rhetorical questions out of a whirlwind served only to humble Job and turned him to repentant trust. The issue of why the innocent suffer remains unresolved.

The first Sunday of every month I conduct worship for a small congregation in a seniors’ residence in the town when I live. One of the regular worshipers is a woman of middle years stricken with multiple sclerosis. She knows that there is little hope of her recovery even if a sudden discovery should give medical science the key to overcoming this disease. Each time I see her she is a little weaker, a little more restricted in her movements. She introduced me to a moving little book, Tuesdays With Morrie, by a well-known Detroit sports columnist, Mitch Albom.

The book tells of Albom’s weekly meetings with one of his college professors during the last few months of his life after a twenty-five year absence. Morrie Schwartz, a professor of sociology at Brandeis University, had ALS, amyotrophic lateral schlerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease. The professor’s and student’s learning experiences in this one on one seminar form the entire content of the book. Morrie’s funeral was Mitch’s graduation.

I greatly admire the patience of both my friend, Catherine, and Morrie Schwartz. They make me wonder how I would fare if I were in their situation.

We live in such a fast-paced world with so many infectious diseases having been conquered by modern antibiotic drugs that we easily forget how difficult it is for people to live with incurable illness. Persuaded by effective advertising and media coverage of scientific research, we look for the next miracle cure to come tomorrow. We are surprised when scientists offset the latest media bulletins with cautious reminders that the solutions they are seeking are still a long way off.

Patient suffering.

"Longsuffering" was the way the King James Version of the Bible translated macrothumia. When one reads the letters and journals of pioneers in 19th century Canada and the United States, one realizes just what that meant. We may well marvel at the way so many of them endured the ills of life with such good temper and sincere piety. Reconstructed pioneer villages show us the conditions under which they not only survived but thrived. Yet not one tourist visiting such places ever expressed a desire to live under those conditions - without electricity, running water, central heating, air conditioning, prepacked foods - all the comforts we take for granted in our modern homes and workplaces.

For our pioneer ancestors patience was an active response to real life, not a passive aspect of strong character. It was the only way they could triumph over incredible odds with broad shoulders and indefatigable perseverance.

In the summer of 1945 I lived in a community of homesteaders in northwestern Saskatchewan. Most of them had come from the drought-stricken prairies of southern Saskatchewan during the 1930s. They had started over from scratch on land covered with poplar trees and alder brush wherever there weren’t shallow sloughs and soggy muskeg. Some of them had made great progress in the few years they had been in the region. A few had cleared full section of land on which they had planted wheat. One farmer had acquired a combine with which he hoped to reap his own harvest and that of his neighbours. But the wheat had to be left a few days longer to ripen so that it could be combined. The day before he was to begin the harvest, a hailstorm swept through the district. Instead of putting his new combine to work the next morning, the farmer turned his herd of cattle to feed on the gleanings of a square mile of wheat stubble. With incredible patience he said, "Well, next year perhaps."

Waiting with patience.

An article in Newsweek told of Ford Motor Co. heir Bill Ford's plan to spend $2 billion renovating a key Ford auto plant that formerly was one of the worst looking artifacts of the Industrial Age. He will have a natural roof (grass, etc.) and all sorts of other ergonomic and environmental friendly aspects.

A sharp-eyed Wall Street analyst was quoted as saying, "That's different. What's the return on investment?" In response, someone else asked, "In what time frame?"

Many corporate directors and executives have the will to wait. Some investments have a negative return over the short term (as even Jesus experienced) but a priceless return in the long term. Those who dig for oil or mine for diamonds must take the same long term approach.

How long has God put up with the human race in its flagrant rebellion and unbelief? In Romans 2:4, Paul wrote of patient as an expression of God’s love. He related it closely to kindness: "Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance." He reiterated God’s inestimable patience in more a sharply worded rhetorical question in Romans 9:22, "What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction ...?"

In recent years the story of a 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, has come to the fore. She was the first woman to write a book in English. A Canadian author and former publisher, Ralph Milton, has produced a novel about her, Julian’s Cell (Wood Lake Books/Northstone Press. 2002). Ralph also moderates an online forum about Julian from the Wood Lake web site, . Under the subject heading "God’s Tolerance," Ralph and Father John-Julian, the author of one of the translations of Julian’s Showings, held an online discussion of the theme of this story with several other participants.

Ralph wrote: "Julian says that God allows evil to happen. More than that, she says that all that God allows is ‘worshipful.’ ... Traditionally, Christianity has spoken of a kind of cosmic dualism between God and Satan. And that idea doesn't really hang together because if God created everything, then God must have created Satan. Julian takes this to its more logical conclusion, I think. She believed in the reality of Satan who appeared to her in one of her visions. Here she says that everything Satan can do, is done because God tolerates it. And this tolerating of evil is ‘rythful’ and ‘worshipful.’"

Fr. John-Julian replied: "The issue that lies behind (this) ... is free will - the ability to choose against good and for evil. And if God did not allow that to happen, then free will would be a joke, and we'd all be automatons, not humans. But, there is that constant hope that somehow God will make things better even if I screw them up. And there is some truth in that. God will certainly not let my choice of evil mess up his ultimate will. Notice: God will always forgive anything that we want forgiven. Compassion and forgiveness are part of his very nature, and he cannot do anything else and still be the God we know, but he will not force forgiveness on anyone. It's there for the taking, but he can't make us take it or he wrecks our free will."

Ralph added: "A God of infinite love and infinite patience will eventually win over even the most evil of people. Until that happens, Julian's prophecy that all shall be well cannot be fulfilled, and all is not well."

Another participant chimed it: "One of the joys of faith is trusting that all is well for us because of God's redeeming love in Christ. Everything will all come out copacetic in the end. Yet there is a dangerous sense of determinism about this. On the other hand, one of the troubling aspects is that God's love is so indeterminate that we have been given free will to mess up and thumb our noses at the offered life of friendship with God for as long as we like. And some may well thumb their noses until the end of time, come what may. I am equally convinced of that God will certainly not let my choice of evil mess up his ultimate will. But there have been and will be a lot of hapless victims before the final denouément of history. What does that say about the divine will and love? Doesn't God care?"

Ralph Milton ended this exchange: "One of the reasons I found Julian liberating is her insistence that God yearns for us and aches for us the way a mother does for her child. And her morality springs not out of fear but out of love for God and her fellow humans.... That, it seems to me, is the struggle Julian was having, all through her book. She finally comes to the conclusion that it doesn't all make sense and we can't all figure it out, but we trust anyway. And if we trust, all will be well."

So patience reveals that we are loved by God. And being patient is another way of showing love for God and neighbor.