Impatience is agnostic

Jul 24, 2009

Patience Patients

Don’t you just love queues? Or how about holding on the line, listening to a four-track recording of “chariots of fire” for 47 minutes and 23 seconds!!!? My guess is that your blood is boiling already from all those suppressed memories being triggered. This blog is about the godliness of patience and the sinfulness of impatience.

Point #1; We are impatient.
Period. Agreed? Yes, others are impatient, but how about you?

Point #2; You are impatient
You too are impatient. Agree again? Let’s move on… I’m not interested in getting you to confess impatience. Our whole dilemma lies in our ease to admit this.

Some evidence of epidemic impatience.
On-demand TV and remote controls, “Idol’s”, Credit Cards, 2-minute noodles, twitter, road rage all tell a story.) When I pick up my remote, I can move swiftly through channels, I wait for no one, I take no prisoners. The reality-show “Idols” made a way for someone to become famous in weeks. The Chinese found a way to make pasta in a minute, and road rage ultimately is not about someone else being rude in driving, but rude in stealing my 2 second advantage on the highway. Many people today choose against having children, claiming that they would never have time or patience for raising kids. Impatience is the modern way. It is our inalienable right.

What exactly is the sin of impatience?
We could easily dismiss impatience as a behavioural or personality trait, and laugh it off as a small sin. I hate to say it, but looking at my own life, I’ve realized the actual demon in impatience.

Impatience is distrusting God. Impatience is unbelief. Impatience is treason against God Almighty. Impatience is momentary agnosticism. Impatience is forsaking hope in God. Every single time I am impatient, I am acting out of unbelief. And that unbelief says
•    God cannot be trusted with my future
•    I have my own agenda and it contradicts with what God is doing
•    I will take matters into my own hands, since God has not met my expectations and deadlines
•    I am more sure of my good will than God’s good will

Why are we not ashamed?
We lost tomorrow. We are somewhat like Henry Nouwen’s “nuclear man”, who lives as wild as he can for now, because we don’t have a good eschatology. We are not sure about tomorrow, like previous generations, who saved and worked at one company for decades. We don’t want to pay now and inherit later. We want to get now and owe forever.
We lost a theology of suffering. The original word comes via Old French from Latin, meaning ‘not bearing, impatient,’ from in- ‘not’ + pati ‘suffer, bear’. We cannot bear to wait, or suffer, or be done in, or lose something. We have clearly lost touch with the true heritage of the church throughout centuries, who knew how to wait and bear and fight and stand.
We live in a man-centered morality. As a matter of fact, we have changed impatience into an admirable quality. Impatient men get things done, we say. Impatience is entrepreneurial and ambitious. If only getting things done was the point.
We’ve reduced impatience to personality definitions. So, some people are born slow and restful, while others are edgy and irritable, we think. However, not only does this take our sin away from hellfire and into psychology books, but it also helps us to resign and never fight impatience as an enemy of good.

How do we make our way back?
Let’s realize our true losses if we cling to our impatience. Impatience delays our inheritance, because we are taking matters into our own hands, while inheritance comes from the Father’s hands. Impatience keeps us far from our calling, because we choose to listen to our own thoughts and ignore the Caller.
Let us repent of our unbelief. God is worthy of our patience. We have a opportunity to live with patience and attract peace.
Let’s obey scripture. Psa 27:14 among many other scriptures, charges us to wait. Waiting is trusting. Patience is faith, and faith pleases God.
Believe that God is effective, proper and desirable. This is the definition of a believer. We only collapse into impatient sin because we doubt these.

May God give us grit to believe, to fight and to bite our lips, so we can grow in faith, trust and patience.
I’ll end this blog with the famous wit, “Lord, grant me patience, and grant it now.”