"… patience is better than pride" (Ecclesiastes 7:8).
4. THE PATIENCE SUPER-WEAPON
"… patience is better than pride" (Ecclesiastes 7:8). There may be no quick and easy way to develop patience, but there is a super-weapon that we can employ against impatience – one that can greatly increase our patience if we are willing to accept and use it to the full. That superweapon is simply humility.
In this chapter we will look at what the Bible has to say about how humility increases patience and then focus on some of the ways we can effectively use this weapon.
Ecclesiastes 7:8 tells us that "patience is better than pride," and these are illuminating words if we think about them. At face value they may seem to simply tell us that patience is good – but we need to stop and think about the connection that is being made. Why is patience compared specifically with pride? We would not say "an apple is better than an automobile" because the two are unrelated – but we might say "an apple is better than a lemon" because the two fruits are related, and one is clearly better-tasting than the other.
So, what is the relationship between patience and pride that the wise writer of Ecclesiastes is urging us to see? To find the answer we can turn to the New Testament, to the writings of the apostle Paul. In his letter to the Ephesians Paul makes an important connection between humility, patience, and love:
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love (Ephesians 4:1-2).
We have already seen the connection between patience and love that is clear in what Paul says, but we need to look at his thought carefully to see the connection he is also making between humility and patience.
The semicolon directly before "be patient" in the NIV quotation of Ephesians 4:2 above makes it look like there are two separate thoughts (being humble and gentle on the one hand, and being patient and bearing with people on the other). But the ancient Greek in which the New Testament was written did not have punctuation, and this artificial division does not reflect what Paul is really saying.
That is why most other English translations do not punctuate what Paul says in this way – as we see, for example, in the ESV: "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2 ESV). The difference may seem a small one, but it is important. Paul is not contrasting humility and patience; the sense of the verse is really one continuous subject and thought – with humility, gentleness, and patience being grouped together as related qualities.
When we look at what Paul says in Colossians 3:12-13, we see this same pattern again: "clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another." Here we have humility and patience grouped together in the same way we saw in Ephesians 4, but linked even more clearly. It is through our being humble and gentle, Paul tells us, that we can be patient and thus able to love one another.
The connection Paul makes between humility and patience in Ephesians and Colossians explains what Ecclesiastes 7:8 means in saying that "patience is better than pride." From a biblical perspective, pride and patience are opposite things that often operate on a single spectrum. This does not mean that if we are impatient, we are full of pride – it is possible to be quite humble in some areas and still have a problem being patient. What we need to grasp is that in a given circumstance, the more we can practice humility, the closer we will move to the patience end of the pridepatience spectrum.
This understanding has a tremendously important practical application which we can put into action. When we are feeling impatient with someone, instead of thinking about patience as an abstract goal we can focus on the more concrete qualities that the Bible links with patience, such as compassion, gentleness, and especially humility. This strategy can help control our feelings of impatience in a very real way.
After all, when we remind ourselves that we are not the center of the universe, what does it matter that someone is late to meet with us? If we think about what it means to be compassionate, we can better empathize with the overwhelmed driver in front of us who is holding up the traffic, and so on. If we focus on the other qualities on Paul's list – and again, especially on humility – we don't even have to think about patience directly in order to better apply it.
And this principle does not apply only to patience with people. It also applies equally to being patient with events. When we become impatient because events are not working out as we expected or hoped, we are really
following an inner assumption that we know what is best in our lives. But when our plans – whether for a single event or our whole lives – don't work out and things don't go as we intended, humility can often help us to see things in a larger perspective. Humility helps us remember that if we are walking with God, then he is ultimately in charge and will guide the circumstances not as we would always choose, but as he sees best. Humility in such situations reminds us that we do not have total understanding of our own lives and how limited we are in wise planning compared to God.
If we ever doubt this, all we have to do is watch a game of chess played out by grand chess masters. Even if we understand the basics of the game or can perhaps play it quite well, the moves of the masters often seem mystifying until they result in the intended outcome. Humility reminds us how much greater the mind of God is than that of any human chess master, and it reminds us that we can and should let God make the plays in our lives without stressing and becoming impatient about them, just as we should learn to be patient with the weaknesses and provocations of others.
In fact, both of these types of patience are specifically mentioned in the passage in Ecclesiastes 7:8-10 from which we took the quotation that begins this chapter:
Verse 8: "The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride." This is the underlying principle that we find in both the Old and New Testaments.
Verse 9: "Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools." This is clearly the application of the principle in terms of patience with individuals.
Verse 10: "Do not say, 'Why were the old days better than these?' For it is not wise to ask such questions." The context of the passage (see also vss. 13-14) shows that this verse is referring to the application of patience with events. So, whether it is patience with people or patience with events, ultimately patience is most often found in the opposite of pride – in an attitude of humility. The practical application of this fact is that focusing on humility when we do feel impatient can truly help us to develop in this area.
Perhaps we may not always improve as quickly as we would desire – but that is part of growing in patience.
Now that we have looked at what patience is and how it interacts with the vital Christian qualities of faith, hope, and love – and have seen how we can develop more patience through humility – we can turn in the second half of this book to biblical examples of patience in action.
PART TWO: CASE STUDIES IN PATIENCE