Chapter Fourteen: Impatience and Irritability
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Impatience and Irritability
A pastor friend of mine was visiting in the home of a couple who were founding members of his church, a couple who were greatly respected and loved and who had consistently invested their lives in other people. At the time of this particular visit, the husband had terminal cancer and did, in fact, die a few months later.
In the course of his visit, the pastor asked the couple, “How are you doing spiritually?” With tears in her eyes, the wife responded, “We’re doing well as far as the cancer is concerned. But what I can’t handle is our sin. After all these years, and especially in this situation, you would think we wouldn’t still hurt and wound each other, but we do. And this is what I can’t handle. I can handle the cancer, but I can’t handle my sinful flesh.”
This sad but true story illustrates a reality that is all too common about our “respectable” sins. We tend to exhibit many of these sins most freely in the context of our own families. As I have indicated in an earlier chapter, we can put on our “Christian face” outside the home, but with our families, our true character often comes out. This is especially true in the two areas of sin we will look at in this chapter: impatience and irritability.
These two traits are closely related. Furthermore, both words can be defined in slightly different ways depending on the context. So in this chapter, I am going to define impatience as a strong sense of annoyance at the (usually) unintentional faults and failures of others. This impatience is often expressed verbally in a way that tends to humiliate the person (or persons) who is the object of the impatience.
The key to understanding this type of impatience is that it is a response to the usually unintentional actions of others. Because of my hearing disability, I can often hear my wife speaking to me but can’t understand what she is saying. This is the type of situation that can easily create annoyance on her part when I ask her to repeat what she has said. So she has had to learn to be patient, as opposed to being impatient, with me in these instances. (In case you are wondering, I have tried a hearing aid, but it does not help my particular type of deafness.)
On my part, I like to live life with a time margin. I like to start early enough that I can get to church, or the airport, or wherever we might be going, in an unhurried fashion. My wife, on the other hand, has an incredible ability to be ready to go just in the nick of time. (How she times it this closely is a mystery to me.) So here I am ready to go but waiting on her. How will I handle this? Will I be impatient and say something such as, “Why are you always late?” or even say nothing but communicate my displeasure by my unspoken attitude of impatience? Or will I be patient with her, realizing that a harmonious relationship with her is more important than leaving the house at my prescribed time?
These real-life situations are only two examples of the frequent occasions where people living or working closely together have to continually guard against the temptation to become impatient. Because of our sinful flesh, we never “arrive” in the virtue of patience. All of us, including my wife and myself, are still in process.
Further, we should note that neither my hearing disability nor my wife’s close timing causes either of us to be impatient. They merely provide an opportunity for the flesh to assert itself. The actual cause of our impatience lies within our own hearts, in our own attitude of insisting that others around us conform to our expectations.
Can you identify recurring situations in your life that tempt you to become impatient? I hope you don’t think, Me? I don’t have a problem with impatience. You may not have a problem, but are you ever impatient? Let me suggest a few possibilities.
Parents can become impatient over the slow response to the training of children and teenagers. “How many times have I told you not to leave your shoes in the family room?” Or, “When are you going to learn to chew your food with your mouth closed?” These kinds of slow response to our training can often lead us to be impatient. Obviously the type of impatient expressions I’ve used as illustrations do not further our training efforts. They serve only to vent our impatience and humiliate the child. Family siblings are often impatient with one another, and it is a great challenge to parents to train their children, both by teaching and example, to be patient with others.
Though I have said we tend to exhibit impatience within our families, it is certainly not limited to that context. Some Christians are notorious for being impatient drivers. We can become impatient at the slowness of service in a store, at the bank, or in a restaurant. I have to guard against impatience at the post office when I only want to buy some stamps, but someone in line ahead of me has ten overseas packages to mail. You might want to ask your spouse, your teenagers, a friend who knows you well to help you identify areas of impatience in your life. Above all, we need to acknowledge and repent of our impatience as sin.
The apostle Paul, in several of his letters, exhorts us to be patient. In 1 Corinthians 13, the great “love” chapter, he leads off his description of love by saying, “Love is patient.” In Galatians 5:22-23, patience is one of the nine expressions of the fruit of the Spirit. In Ephesians 4:1-2, Paul urges us to live our lives with patience, and in Colossians 3:12, we are to put on patience. Clearly, with Paul (who, I remind us, was not expressing merely his own opinion but was writing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) the quality of patience is a virtue to be cultivated. And by reasonable inference we can say that impatience, the opposite of patience, is a sin to be put to death in our lives. Though it may be acceptable to us, it is not acceptable to God.
Now, I have said that impatience and irritability are closely related. While impatience is a strong sense of annoyance or exasperation, irritability, as I define it, describes the frequency of impatience, or the ease with which a person can become impatient over the slightest provocation. The person who easily and frequently becomes impatient is an irritable person. Most of us can become impatient at times, but the irritable person is impatient most of the time. The irritable person is one whom you feel you have to tiptoe or “walk on eggshells” around. This person is no fun to be with, but unfortunately family members or coworkers sometimes have no choice.
Are you upset with someone or some circumstance a lot of the time? If so, you may well be an irritable person. If you are frequently upset with another person (or persons), you may need to learn to overlook their unintentional actions. Proverbs 19:11, though addressing the topic of anger (our next chapter) says, “It is [one’s] glory to overlook an offense.” And Peter wrote, “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). We might say that if love covers a multitude of sins, how much more should it cover a multitude of acts that irritate us.
Now, suppose you are someone who is frequently the object of another person’s impatience. Suppose you are often berated, criticized, or chewed out. How should you respond? All too often a person of an equally strong temperament will respond in kind, thus starting a “war of words.”1 This approach is not only nonproductive, it is totally unbiblical.
Or you may be the type of person who doesn’t respond verbally at all but inwardly seethes and resents the person who has vented his or her impatience at you. This is also a sinful response on your part.
Biblically you have two options. You can follow the example of Jesus, who, “when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). Sometimes this may be your only biblical option.
The second option is to confront the person who is continually impatient toward you and point out to the person examples of his or her impatience. But this should be done only when you have resolved the issue in your own heart and can speak to the other person for his or her benefit, not just to make your own life more pleasant. If you have done this in a biblical manner and the person accepts what you say, you have likely enhanced your relationship with one another (see Matthew 18:15).
If the person is in denial about his or her impatience and becomes defensive or hostile when you point it out, then you should revert to the first option to follow the example of Jesus. To do this, however, requires a firm belief in the sovereignty of God in every situation of your life. God is likely using this person’s sinful actions to help you grow in the biblical virtues of patience and meekness (see the example of Moses in Numbers 12:1-3).
Now, let me remind you, as I do in almost all the chapters, that this is a book about our “respectable” sins, the sins we tolerate in our lives while we condemn the more flagrant sins of society around us. May we be as severe with ourselves over our own subtle sins as we are with the vile sins we condemn in others. May we not be like the self-righteous Pharisee in the temple who prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” but may we continually have the humble attitude of the tax collector who said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:11-13).