Patience

 

Seated Male Figure with Folded Hands, drawing, Edouard Vuillard (MET, 1995.270)

 

 Patience in its most complete sense is the hardest virtue. It is the hardest to learn. Godly patience is, I think, something that very few ever learn well.

There are a related series of concepts in Judeo-Christian religion that today for most people sound positively medieval. These concepts manifest in many forms: the denial of the flesh, circumcision both literal and spiritual, the chastisement of the flesh. Opposition to the desires of the moment in the name of a higher good. These concepts are set against the whole zeitgeist of our civilization currently, which is that the satisfaction of desire is the goal of life.

That is a very convenient ideology for a corporate consumer civilization to have. It is the mainstream ideology of today.

The fact that the biblical concept of self-denial or desire-denial is expressed in many different concrete forms can tend to hide, for superficial readers of the Bible, that all these different practical examples relate to basically the same thing. That same thing is loyalty to and love of G-d even against your own desire. Whether you are taking a knife to the foreskin, refusing to do something you want to do because it is against the Commandments, or as some Catholics do (and I have done in the past,) literally beating your back with a whip, it is all connected to the same thing.

There is nothing in the Bible against a good meal, or sex with your WIFE, or other forms of enjoyment within proper bounds. The religion of the Tanakh is only an ascetic religion within certain limited contexts. The core concept is that you oppose your own desires when they come in conflict with your more important commitment, obligations to and loyalty to Almighty G-d. That is what is being talked about here. I will deny my own will and desires in the interest of furthering what is right, and what is obedient to the G-d I love.

To give a practical example: you sit down to a really lovely and tasty meal. That's great, enjoy it! You eat until you practically pop and become obese. That is not as good, because it is not good for you. It is putting food in a place in your life where it should not be. A lovely glass of wine, sure (though I have not drank alcohol in probably a year or more.) Drinking until you are drunk, that is not good for you and not good for others because it reduces your self-control. However, as much as following the Law is beneficial to yourself and others, the more important matter at hand is not that obeying the Law is good for everyone. It is that G-d commands it; your loyalty to and love of G-d is what is at stake here.

It is not for nothing that the 23rd Psalm, the Psalm that has been perhaps the most significant Psalm in my life, states:  

"Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."

The rod and staff are used to discipline and direct sheep. Now people being sheep has a negative connotation nowadays, but nothing of the sort was meant at the time. It is not the common vulgar man who is comforted by the Lord's direction and discipline. In Jewish parlance it is the mensch, the "real human being." The godly human being. The man who loves G-d more than he loves his own will and desire.

All this is connected to another idea in the Bible which tends to be underemphasized or not spoken of at all in modern churches. That idea is idolatry. Huge amounts of the Torah consist of passages dealing with idolatry, which must not be construed as only bowing down before idols of stone and wood. Following your own desire in contradiction to G-d's will is inherently idolatrous: you are placing something else in the primary position in your life rather than the One that belongs there.

Now many of us, and I myself, have practiced self-denial because we want to. I used to have a pretty toxic relationship with food, in some ways still do, but I feel good measuring out a smaller portion size. This is a form of self-denial I willingly engage in at least sometimes. Probably any sincere believer has at times wished to enact penance on his or herself in recognition of their sins. Many forms of self-denial that were initially difficult become joyful with practice.

This is very important, but it is also in a sense circumcision of the flesh with training wheels. The very hard form is patience. Putting up with something you do not at all want and may in fact hate because it is the most righteous thing. The most obedient to G-d. I am not good at patience.

Now, in a sense obedience to G-d is super simple: obey the Commandments, obey the laws expressed in the Torah. That is all G-d truly demands of us. If He had demanded more, He would have said so. HOWEVER, I generally know when a course of action is not what G-d would prefer. And when I want to do what G-d does not prefer, that is where patience comes in. That means I suck it up and do the better thing even if it feels unpleasant. See, modern people are governed by how something feels. I remember a quote from one of the Star Trek movies or TV series where Spock tells Kirk:

"Do what feels right."

NO. Do not do what feels right, or you will be entrapped forever in your own desire.

Do what IS right, even if it does not feel very good.

Patience is in some ways the masters course in godly obedience, and I feel that for me it is the first day of class. "Here is the patience of the saints." Endure what you do not like and what you do not want if it is what G-d wants or what must be.