Wednesday, January 7, 2026

When Is Patience Righteous?

The New Testament clearly teaches that God can be thoroughly patient with sinners (2 Peter 3:9), something necessitating that patience can be a genuine moral good on the Christian worldview.  Accordingly, Paul describes patience as a virtue more than once.  His statements in Colossians 3:12 and Galatians 5:22 (here, patience is in some translations called forbearance or long-suffering), the latter of which does list patience among the general fruits, the evidences or qualities, of the Spirit, are nevertheless not all there is in the Bible relevant to the ethics of patience.  Really, these moral teachings of Paul are extremely incomplete, hyperbolic, or vague at best, and can only be illuminated by other passages and not the other way around whatsoever.

Being patient with people does offer chances for them to forsake their error, yes, and thus allows people to resemble God in waiting for others to repent (again, 2 Peter 3:9); ultimately, it also just provides more opportunities for others to believe, ignore, or do the exact same problematic things or even that which is worse.  It is not as if egoistic people will by logical necessity not intentionally or passively use mercy and patience granted to them for their own advantage, however asinine their intentions.  No, patience does not inevitably have the pragmatic effect of inspiring other people to pursue righteousness, though pragmatism is not what morality is concerned with (it is what should be done regardless of the difficulty).  The real problems with the way some non-rationalist "Christians" treat patience is that their philosophy of this virtue is neither rational nor Biblical wholly separate from how it does not inherently have some incredible interpersonal impact on others.

Patience is not universally good on the Biblical worldview.  This is logically impossible.  In fact, neither is love, and this is quite analogous to what is logically entailed by the real Christian stance on patience.  Love of people, in the sense of genuine devotion to their wellbeing and full commitment to honoring their Biblical human rights (found in Mosaic Law) as bearers of Yahweh's image, is itself justice because it is owed to people, an obligatory thing (Romans 13:8-10).  Emotionalistic love, or love of sin, or even pity or concern for evildoers at the expense of justice (Deuteronomy 13:6-10), is not rational or righteous.  Just because love is a fruit of the Spirit and something commanded by God (Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 10:19) does not mean all love or all motivations for love are morally valid or permissible (and it does not mean hatred of people is contradictory to this or always evil [1]).

This is true of patience in the same way.  It is not righteous to by default indefinitely wait to kill someone who deserves to die (Exodus 21:12-17, for instance), even out of mercy.  To be "patient" with the person whose actions merit death is to delay justice, which is mandatory—among other passages, see Deuteronomy 16:20.  The Bible also does not prescribe patience in the sense of ideological tolerance, which would make it erroneous if it did [2].  Were this the case, it does not follow that anyone would react to patience in a positive manner so that they turn to the truth away from assumptions, contradictions, and sin, and anyone who believes otherwise is not only stupid, but he or she also sets themself up for grand but utterly gratuitous disappointment.

It is also likely to go unnoticed or unspoken by the masses that God says nothing in the revelation of the Torah, which contain his exhaustive laws about the moral obligations metaphysically tied to his nature, about it being sinful to be what some mean by "impatient" when painful or intrusive inconvenience arises.  Someone who exclaims in frustration at a sudden challenge, without disrespecting God or anyone else or believing anything irrational while thinking their circumstance justification, has certainly not automatically sinned by Biblical standards.  Actually, the Bible condemns those who would insist on the contrary (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32).  Patience for patience's sake is invalid as it is, and patience cannot be universally obligatory or even good in an optional way according to Christian philosophy in light of the aforementioned reasons.  Persevering in rationality or righteousness patiently is good because the thing to which it is aimed is true or good.  Patience for just any reason is nothing more than the meaningless preference of some people, but not others.


[1].  For some of what I have written on hatred, see here:

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