I don’t have enough. I need more. I’m losing my patience.
What is it about the quality of patience that causes many to respond to the very word with a sense of deficiency? This last Sunday we were studying in the book of Ephesians and reading Paul’s urging to walk in patience and tolerance. Based on the response I think I underestimated how much we all struggle in our relationships when it comes to a little P and T. So, I thought I would recap with some Cliff Notes.
You can’t talk about patience without talking about anger, because the word patience means “slow to get angry.” The Greek word for patience is “macrothumos” where macro means “long or slow” and thumos means “anger or wrath,” is literally long-temper (as opposed to short tempered). So patience means; you have a long fuse, you don’t blow up easily, you manage your anger. It conveys the idea of a long holding out under trial before giving in to frustration or anger. Our old nature is so quick to take offense that we need longer “fuses.” It expresses the capacity to be wronged and not retaliate. It is the ability to hold one’s feeling in restraint. To not magnify imperfections and become so irritated you explode or say things you regret. The ability to give others space to grow, or even fail. Patience is the ability to absorb the mistakes, failures and suffering of others and the world. It refers to what we might call “staying power,” to endure hard events and obnoxious people.
Tolerance is different than patience. We live in a society where tolerance has become an idol. Political leaders are measured by their degree of tolerance, not their degree of rightness. Tolerance is a Godly virtue and something we should aspire to but what has creeped its way into society is an unhealthy view of tolerance. Healthy and unhealthy tolerance can be compared in this way:
Healthy Tolerance: Everyone is valued and respected
Unhealthy Tolerance: Everyone’s belief is equally right.
When you play unhealthy tolerance out to its potential, the logic just doesn’t make sense. Not everyone can be right, no matter how much we claim that truth, its subjective and determined by one’s personal claims. Try telling Hitler he was right and that his personal lifestyle was his prerogative. Unhealthy tolerance just leads to anarchy and chaos. At some point, everyone’s “right belief” will collide into conflict. We live in a society where, God forbid, that you not approve or disagree with someones choices and be labeled prejudice, intolerant and bigoted.
Understanding healthy tolerance begins by clarifying what Biblical tolerance is and is not. Godly tolerance says that no matter who you are, what you are in to, what political camp you are in, what sports team you cheer for, what sexual preference you have, what color of skin or gender you are…tolerance says you have intrinsic value. Why? Because tolerance recognizes that every human being is part of the Imago Dei created in the image of God. It’s seeing one another through the eyes of God. We may disagree with everything about someone else, but we cannot deny that every life, every soul, possesses deep value. Moving on from here we can summarize what tolerance is not:
- Tolerance is not making excuses for other’s sins
- Tolerance is not approval
- Tolerance is not indulgence
- Tolerance is not indifference
- Tolerance is not grudging acceptance
- Tolerance is not about compromising
- Tolerance is not without limits…enough is enough
- Tolerance is not dismissing truth
