The Importance of Patience

Spirituality Column #200
September 7, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Importance of Patience
By Bob Walters

“The passion of our Lord is a lesson in patience.”

St. Augustine wrote that in the fifth century, echoing the even-earlier Christian writer Tertullian of Carthage from approximately AD 200. It is God’s nature to be patient, said Tertullian, and impatience is the primal sin of Satan.

In religious and philosophical writings, there is no shortage of lists when it comes to virtues, those earthly constructs we pursue to try to find God.

We have the Four Cardinal Virtues from antiquity – prudence, justice, courage and temperance. We have the Gospel’s three theological virtues – faith, hope and charity. We have the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:16 - “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Better not leave off mercy, forgiveness, humility, modesty, wisdom, religious devotion and fear of the Lord.

It’s easy to come up with a long list, but patience is a specific attribute of Jesus Christ that teaches us much about God’s love for mankind.

Patience, you see, wasn’t considered much of a virtue by the ancients. Sure, it’s in the Bible, but to the Greeks and Romans “perseverance in adversity” was admired, not Godly patience. What the King James Version calls “long suffering” and “slow to anger” while “forgiving iniquity and transgression” (Numbers 14:18) was the novel lesson of Christ on the Cross.

Patience. When you can be patient, you are being Crucified with Christ. Tertullian taught that patience is not endurance or fortitude, but hope … hope in the Resurrection. And it is a sign of longing for the good things to come; things that are promised nowhere but heaven.

“On Patience” was among Tertullian’s master works, though history tells us he was not an especially patient man. Yet he wrote, “When God’s Spirit descends, patience is always at his side.” Patience, Tertullian redefined, is what it means to be “like God.”

This survey of Christian patience came thanks to the church historian Robert Louis Wilken, who recently put together a terrific work called The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. It landed in my mailbox not long after I renewed by subscription last year to “First Things” magazine.

Wilken has done us an enormous favor by forming this wonderful and clearly written study on the formations of the Christian story.

Otherwise, I’d never have the patience to read these ancient works.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) needs to read everything he can get his hands on about patience. FYI, this is column No. 200.