Is Your Patience Authentic or Cosmetic?

Ask most people to identify an obvious weakness in their character and the one cited most frequently is a lack patience.

Anger, irritability, being snappish, over-reactive, belligerent and bellicose are not examples of losing patience but choosing anger.

Just remember, it's always better to be patient than to become a patient.

If we lose our patience and get into a fight, we can lose a lot more than our patience.

There are other times we hide our impatience by disguising it. One example of disguised patience is seen in the Old Testament story of Joseph.

Had you been an outsider to Jacob’s family, you might have thought that the brothers were patient with Joseph when he bragged how all of them would one day bow down to him.

As Joseph announced his one-day rise to prominence—and did so with adolescent airs that hardly invited rejoicing—the brothers said little to him. Beyond a brief hint of protest, they seemed to exhibit remarkable restraint.

Cosmetic Patience

Appearances can be deceiving, physically (which is why we use cosmetics) and behaviorally.

As the story unfolds, we come to see these brothers in a very different light.

Instead of patience prevailing in their hearts, a more sinister reality was actually on the scene.

The brothers were just biding their time, waiting with calculated coolness their opportunity for revenge.

Then came that day when Joseph, on a mission from his father, was sent to the far country. Even from a long way off the brothers could tell from that contemptible swagger that it was Joseph—child of favor, young man of destiny!

Violently (and certainly not religiously) they soon laid their hands on him, ripping away that brightly colored coat that announced his favorite-son status.

Then, with vehement forcefulness, they threw dear brother into the pit!

Oh, my! With a shriek and a thud, the deed was done!

Then, peering into that pit with fists-on-hips satisfaction, the brothers shared, with vertically nodding heads, a smirk of congratulations for such a well-executed plot.

So much, then, for his destiny!

A little later, it is true, they did retrieve Joseph from the pit. But not because of mercy; they did it because of money!

Scheming to make a few bucks off baby brother, they soon sold Joseph to Midianite slave traders who marched him off into bondage.

See with your imagination the brothers standing there in happy unison—minus one!

Waving bye-bye to the dreamer, it is mock sorrow that replaces pretended grief.

The biting of the upper lip and the drying of the eye is only a joke at this point, as their shrewd scheming is finally unmasked to reveal sheer envy.

Another counterfeit of patience can be seen in those people who seem to be calm all the time, people who take everything in stride and allow nothing to bother them.

What may appear to be a virtue is really nothing more than a reduced capacity for life. The true reason nothing bothers these people is because there is nothing they particularly want. Hence, they sleepwalk through life, waiting for the grave to confirm what others have long known—they are dead!

The mere fact that someone’s emotions don’t roller-coaster, or that their reactions are always even keeled, isn’t a valid proof of patience. Because while people with thick skin and hard hearts may appear patient, what actually accounts for their lack of impulsive or compulsive reacting is insensitivity—a decided detachment from life itself.

What some people call patience is only a shutdown of emotions. They'll roll their eyes, bite their tongue, and walk away muttering. Errr!

And though you can't hear a word they say, translation is easy.

While restraint can be a component of patience, in some cases the restraint is enacted because of fear—the one irritating is simply too big, too strong!

Calculating that has nothing to do with patience.

In some cases, restraint is in evidence due to withdrawal. Enough already! They don't want anything more to do with this person!

So they check out, walk away, disengaging their emotions as they increase their distance.

Henry David Thoreau surfaced another counterfeit to patience when he said, “Most men live out their lives in quiet desperation.” By resigning themselves to their supposed fate, and then reducing their expectations of what life has to offer, they do little more than exist.

Authentic Patience

Patience, however, isn’t a mild form of despair or a strategy to promote or defend self. Authentic patience has a “know-so” hope in it that the God of many promises and unrivaled power is going to come through!

Abraham Kuyper said, “Patience does not sparkle in the sunlight of the day. It glows in the darkness with an inner light. It glows in the night of suffering—of physical suffering, but especially of spiritual suffering, when the soul wrestles in deepest distress.”

Patience refuses all the escape routes self proposes with a resolute determination from God to please God.

As you consider all these counterfeits to patience, how would you answer the question: Is your patience authentic, or cosmetic?