The church is a spiritual community of Jesus’ disciples committed to sharing life together on a journey of faith, hope, and love. It is a dynamic and fluid reality that is profoundly relational. It involves walking together on a spiritual journey toward a common goal. It calls for strong commitment and tender devotion to God and one another. The selfish and proud need not apply. Cowards and those afraid of change will certainly not last long.

The journey will transform us completely. The process will be difficult, painful, demanding, and draining. We should expect no less in the way of discipleship, especially when this discipleship involves denying self, bearing the cross, and following Jesus.

We need to build strong Christian character to stay the course. Numerous faith-muscles must be flexed to develop virtues to sustain us on this long journey together. One virtue in particular must be acquired or all is lost. This one virtue is often neglected. Yet is the foundation for growth in all other virtues. All good works involve this virtue. All loving relationships are built upon it. Without it, we will certainly harm ourselves and others. It is the head and feet of love, the direct product of God's Spirit in our lives, and central to God's character and dealings with people. The virtue I am speaking of is patience.

The Importance of Patience

Patience is the head and feet of love. Paul’s well-known description of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 begins and ends with patience: “Love is patient… bears all things… endures all things.” Patience is at the heart of the Spirit’s work in our lives: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience…” (Galatians 5:22). Patience is central to God’s revealed character. In God’s self-description to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7, patience is at the top of the list, “Yahweh, Yahweh Elohim, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger…”

The importance of patience cannot be overstated. It is foundational for the growth of all other virtues. There can be no love, peace, discipline, or self-control without patience. All good works are sustained through patience. Any good work will always involve inherent obstacles – obstacles that can only be overcome with patience. Loving relationships are only maintained through patience. In order to love others we must learn to forbear others in regard to their irritating qualities, odd behaviors, and personality quirks. Patience is at the heart of truly engaging with another person through open communication. Listening – real listening, and not just quiet preparation for the next chance to speak – is fueled by patiently waiting for the other to speak. One of the reasons we often don’t hear what others have to say stems from the fact that we don’t have the patience to really listen.

A lack of patience – impatience – is ultimately destructive to self and to others. It is a root sin that leads to other sins. Outbursts of anger, discontentment, ingratitude, and selfishness have their origin in impatience. Murder, theft, and sex crimes are the foul fruit of impatience out of control. Lack of patience is no small sin, having implications for all life.

The Need for Speed

Our current cultural climate also makes it necessary to underscore the importance of patience. We are “the fast and the furious.” We live in a frenzied and frantic world. The contemporary conveniences we once thought would simplify our lives – television, washers, dryers, dishwashers, microwave ovens, computers, cell phones, internet, pagers, satellites, etc. – have simply sped up our lives to a frenetic pace. They have caused us to expect speed in every situation. And the pace shows no sign of letting up. Consider the latest war coverage. We actually heard and saw the bombs as they were dropping. And if we could not get instant access, we expressed disappointment and disgust.

In Life on the Vine: Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit in Christian Community, Philip D. Kenneson aptly describes our current craziness:

When was the last time you heard somebody say, “My life is wonderful. Just the right balance of things to do and time in which to do them”? If we as a society share a common story, one of its story lines is surely how the pace of life keeps increasing, almost exponentially. Yet I often wonder if we notice how we contribute to this increasingly frenetic pace. We get up in the morning and eat our instant oatmeal and drink our instant coffee. If we’re not feeling too rushed, we quickly scan the headlines of the newspaper and read our One-Minute Bible. On our way to work we fill up our car with gasoline at the pay-at-the-pump service station, drop off our film for one-hour photo development and our clothes for one-hour cleaning. After what is inevitably a “busy” and “hectic” day, we rush home to a meal of instant rice, microwaved vegetables and instant pudding. Whatever conversation we manage with our families is likely rushed and superficial as we hurry off to our evening activities. Finally, we climb into bed mindful of all the things we failed to get done and even more mindful of all the things to be accomplished the following day when the proverbial rat race begins all over again. (p. 121)

Needless to say, we have been impacted more than we wish to admit by the fast and furious culture in which we live. It is difficult to extol the value of patiently waiting and enduring difficulties with peace and contentment in such a world.

Our culture views waiting as a sign of weakness. In technological times we demand an instant response to every situation. We assume that quicker is better. We want problems solved instantly. We do not feel we should have to wait for anything: We want what we want, when we want it, and that is almost always now!

Waiting usually brings out the worst in us. Why do we get so frustrated waiting in a line at a grocery store? Why do we get so irritated if the person at the stoplight in front of us doesn’t accelerate the instant the light turns green? Why so much irritation from simply “slowing down”?

If waiting is a sign of weakness, then busyness is a badge of honor in our culture. We pride ourselves on being people of action—productive, efficient, using all “our time” in the most economical manner possible. We measure our life and worth by time and activity. We feel important to the extent our Daytimer is full. Some of us even have to schedule in personal time with our spouse, children, and friends. (I wonder, do we realize how much we have capitulated to our culture when we have to resort to such drastic measures?)

Our extreme obsession with speed, efficiency, and productivity spills over into other areas of our lives — including our spiritual lives. Herein is the problem: Relationships aren’t always efficient. Religion isn’t always productive. Godliness is not instant. Much of the time we spend in relationships and spirituality can appear “useless,” “unproductive,” and “inefficient.” Consider how “wasting time” is viewed with such disgust. Yet “wasting time” is the stuff of real relationships – with God and others. We “waste time” with those we love (which is really not a waste of time at all). We “hang loose” and “shoot the breeze” with lovers and friends. We generally don’t meet to be productive or efficient. The goal is not to speedily accomplish a to-do list. Witness a table discussion among friends: the conversation weaves in and out among a variety of topics of interest with no apparent goal other than enjoying one another’s company. This is the “stuff” of authentic relationships and shared lives.

Our obsession with speed is choking the life of God out of us. As slaves to efficiency, we end up loveless, lifeless automatons. As prisoners of “busyness,” we wind up harried, discontent, bored and lonely. Without patience, our own inner restlessness and resultant busyness becomes all-consuming, all-pervasive, and soul-destroying. Our capacity to truly hear and love others is lost. Even worse, our capacity to truly hear and love God is drastically diminished.

A Wake-Up Call

The last song of Radiohead’s excellent album OK Computer, “The Tourist,” is a wake-up call to stop the madness and truly start living. Lead singer, Thom Yorke, explains that the idea for the song arose when guitarist Johnny Greenwood was “in a beautiful square in France on a sunny day, and watching… American tourists being wheeled around, frantically trying to see everything in 10 minutes.” Johnny was shocked at how people could be in a place so beautiful and special and not realize it because, in their hurry to see everything, they neglected to actually stop and enjoy the moment. In response, Johnny penned these words,

Sometimes I get overcharged
that's when you see sparks
You ask me where the hell I'm going
at a thousand feet per second?
Hey man, slow down, slow down,
idiot slow down, slow down.

Along the same lines, Thomas Merton, in his book, No Man is an Island, invites us to recognize our limitations and make the most of our present opportunities:

“We do not live more fully merely by doing more, seeing more, tasting more, and experiencing more than we ever have before. On the contrary, some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual. A tourist may go through a museum with a Baedeker [a German guidebook], looking conscientiously at everything important, and come out less alive than when he went in. He has done a great deal and it has only made him tired. If he had stopped for a moment to look at one picture he really liked and forgotten about all the others, he might console himself with the thought that he had not completely wasted his time.” (122)

Why are we fighting to experience so much, when we hardly enjoy what we presently possess?

We need to recover patience as a godly virtue, a fruit of God’s Spirit, and the essence of love. To do so would be extremely counter-cultural. Who or what in our society encourages us to wait?

In order to begin, we must intentionally choose to slow down. We must realize that a full life and a fast life are not the same thing. A deeper and more meaningful life is not necessarily a faster life.

Are you up to the challenge? Are you willing to be a revolutionary Christian by pursuing patience? Can you slow down enough to try?

© Richard J. Vincent, 2006