Archive for the ‘shame’ Tag
Matthew 1:2 Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers.
Finally brothers! Until now this family, chosen to be a great nation, barely survived with one child of promise per generation. The world must wait until Abraham’s great-grandchildren before the redemptive family tree grows more than one branch. I know that feeling well—-waiting. When God’s promises to redeem my situation seem long overdue, I begin to doubt God’s love. Why is he taking so long to respond? Doesn’t he care? For instance, why is God taking so long to fix my depression?
Peter throws out an intriguing idea, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you.” God is not distracted, uncaring, or negligent about my needs. It is not we who are waiting for God to act, but God who is waiting for us to be ready, who watches our progress with sympathy, not disappointment. His patience is not a bridled impatience, but genuine good will. He knows it takes time. He is okay with it taking time. In fact he plans for it to take time. He is patient. In my urgency to reach the resolution, I want to hurry the process, but God’s focus is on the journey, his grace is at work in the process itself. Too often I miss his grace for today in my anxiety for the bigger deliverance that is farther down the road. My impatience is really towards myself rather than God. I blame myself for not growing faster, for bungling his stream-lined plans for me. But should we suppose that if Abram had had greater faith and faithfulness, he would have had a dozen sons at 39 instead of one at 99? Why have I always thought that God was in a rush?
I think I have long been under the impression that God’s attributes are somehow in competition with each other. In this instance, his righteousness is at odds with his sympathy. He wants to hurry me into holiness, but he is being “patient” with me, which basically means he is holding himself back from chiding or nagging or otherwise showing his frustration at my slow growth. He is impatient, but hiding it. I guess that is how I have always pictured his so-called patience, and why I am so prone to agree with “God’s” condemnation of me. I need a new God, a good God, a God who is truly patient, not just pretending to be patient.
The law is good, as Paul says, and it has several beneficial uses. One use is to teach us what God is like, and provide insight on how we might be like him. Of course, all of Scripture (not just the commands) is designed to help us in this way whether history, teaching, prophecy, or the like. For those who want to be intimate with God and be shaped into his beautiful likeness, it doesn’t really matter whether a biblical teaching is grammatically in the command form. The only question is whether it will help me grow personally and relationally.
The word “should” has close links with law, and it carries several connotations. First, it suggests an evaluative role. It is telling us what would be a good or better course of action. This may have no moral connotations, such as: “You should try Ben and Jerry’s New York Fudge Chunk.” Second, and closely connected to the first, is an implication of pressure to act in a certain way. We could place it on a continuum to demonstrate this: Can—–Should—-Must. Again, this need not be concerned with morality: “You must try this app!” The third connotation of should, like the word law, is one of potential personal judgment. Even if this regards simply a choice of wrenches, the
person who fails to do what he should is faulted. Something is wrong with him. He is defective or weak or stupid or belligerant. Finally, because it is poised to judge, should appeals to a particular motivation. It is not a positive motivation (as the first two connotations might be); it does not attract by the beauty or benefit or health of the choice. It rather motivates by the fear and shame of being bad, unacceptable, dis-graced.
I do not want to live my life being motivated by fear and shame. I want to be motivated by God’s love for me and my echo of love for him and others, in other words, grace. Sometimes the should of law is necessary to shape external behavior to curb the harm a person may do to herself or others, but as long as the individual is acting from fear or shame, it is only her behavior which is affected. Her heart is not growing in grace. It may even be shrinking. I think the primary judgment role of law and should is to help us recognize our real inadequacies and faults, not in order to shape our behavior but to awaken us to the gospel. Some folks think grace has no power to motivate, but I have found it incredibly powerful… that must wait for another post.
Given a couple of negative responses to my recent posts, I apparently need to explain what I mean by grace. I think there are some common interpretations of grace that can really take us down the wrong path. One of the most common misunderstandings of grace is to equate it with freedom of action while equating law with restriction of action. freedom and restriction of action are about method and context, while grace and law are about motivation and direction. Grace does not play the high notes or the low notes on this freedom/restriction continuum, but plays the whole keyboard. That is to say, it confines or releases as directed by love.
EVERY NOTE IS A GRACE NOTE
Law motivates by fear, shame, and guilt. These are very legitimate motivations, because they point out how screwed up we really are, but if we try to remedy our fear and guilt by making better choices, we are doomed by our imperfections. The fear and shame are not intended to drive us to work harder at being good, but to awaken us to our need of the grace of God (forgiveness, love, acceptance, strength, hope, blessing, in short, the gospel).
THE FACE OF THE LAW
Here is where confusion and misgivings easily catch us. We know that fear and shame are powerful motivators, they have profoundly molded our behavior and the behavior of others towards us. If you remove law, what will keep me in check? We think fear and guilt make us good, when they really only change our actions, not our hearts. Still, if this motivation is removed, what will inspire us to go in the right direction. If there is therefore now no condemnation, won’t I just act like a spoiled brat, won’t others “take advantage” of grace? No. It is impossible to “take advantage” of grace. If you try, if you decide to fulfill every “forbidden pleasure,” it will leave you more empty, lost, broken, and even farther from the blessings of grace–not because grace resists you, for it always has open arms, but because you resist grace, which is the way of true peace, fulfillment, joy, love. The only way to take advantage, full advantage, of God’s grace is to throw yourself whole-heartedly into his embrace.
Let me quote a reply I gave a questioning friend: In my mind “doing as I please” is a serious misunderstanding of grace, and is profoundly different from doing what my soul needs. The differentiation in my mind is not that the first matches my desires and feelings and the second matches my duty, but that the first matches superficial desires and feelings often at odds with my deeper feelings (e.g. choosing sex as a replacement for love), while the second is discovering my true feelings and true needs and seeking to meet those. At this point in my understanding of God’s grace, I believe that my soul’s truest needs are never in conflict with God’s will, and if they appear to be, I misunderstand one or the other.
SAFE HANDS
The strange path to freedom.
I have many coping mechanisms to protect me from the prickly world, a combination of defenses unique to myself. I was a compliant child, a trait sometimes mistakenly referred to as “good” or “obedient,” so I responded to my insecurites by trying to make the grade (measured by my approval ratings). This was my basis for self-worth: scoring a 10 on my performance. When I was judged as inadequate, my deeply ingrained, almost instinctive reaction was to rachet up the effort. I proved my value as a person by doing more, better, faster, by never repeating failures or mistakes, by meeting or exceeding every expectation that appeared worthy.
CHASING SUCCESS
Perhaps the hardest coping mechanisms to overcome are those which are inescapably tied to the necessities of living. Every addiction has its unique power of control. Bulimics, unlike alcoholics, literally cannot live without the substance to which they are addicted, and that significantly complicates their deliverance. In the same way, I cannot live without doing. I cannot abandon all tasks in order to break free from my addiction to effort–I am forced to keep succeeding at a job, at finances, at relationships, and all the other tasks essential to life. They say success breeds success, but in my case, success breeds bondage (and unfortunately so does failure).
For me, at a subconscious level, every task accomplished inevitably feeds my sense of worth and every task unfinished feeds my shame. I don’t knowingly tell myself, “See what I have done. I am a good person after all.” The telltale sign of this malady may only be a sense of satisfaction, which is natural enough, but the reason for my satisfaction is largely a sense of worth based on my work.
In short: I have an addiction to effort as a means to gain worth, I cannot live without doing, but each time I do something and feel better as a person, I subconsciously strengthen my addiction.
Let me give an example. I have said something that has hurt my colleague Mike. I am afraid of what he now thinks of me, especially because his evaluation of me feeds my doubts of my own worth. Since love is the best motivation, I tell myself to reach out to him in love and concern for his well-being. These are my conscious thoughts, but underneath, my very value as a person depends on his renewed approval of me. My fear escalates as I ask for a minute of his time. Why fear? Because my worth is at stake. If he is reconciled by my apology, my fear turns to pleasure. “See,” I tell myself, “love works!” when in fact I have just succeeded in strengthening a false basis for my worth as a person–I am worthy because of what I do, in this case reconciliation.
The motivation for what I do is the key. I can act out of a place of grace or a place of should and shame, though that makes it sound dichotomous when really my motives are always mixed to some degree. If I complete a chore more out of fear than of grace, I strengthen my doubt in God’s love. If I act more from grace, I strengthen my faith in God’s love. But if I am pressured by ‘should,’ how can I respond out of grace? For me at least, operating out of a sense of should is really responding from a doubt of God’s acceptance, from a sense that his love depends on my behavior, from a fear of being unworthy. I find that if I do not first challenge the should, face it down, call out its lies of conditional love, then I feed my doubt and insecurity with each task I complete. I feel better, but am worse for it.
Back to Mike. If he is unwelcoming, I become defensive–I try to “explain” more clearly, I express my hurt at his response, I point out his matching faults. Unlike my successful attempt, my failure to win him over suddenly reveals my real motivation. It was not love, but insecurity. Insecurity will always be present, but if it predominates as my motivation, it will harm me and my relationships. It may feel better to both of us if it “works,” but it is a sugar high that eventually leads to diabetes. I am most aware of my insecurities when my coping mechanism fails, when my “right” actions for self-redemption flounder. If at first I don’t go to Mike, but sit with my insecurity long enough to find saving grace, to believe my worth has no basis in what I do, then I can go to Mike in a way that leads to wholeness for us both.
In certain situations, this time of processing is effective, but often, the longer I delay acting, the more anxious I become. I am constantly being pressured by a “should,” and this crowds out the emotional space I need to find grace. In the past I often had to go ahead and complete the task (and so remove the pressure), and then try to deal with the shame-based motivation. My grasp of grace was not firm enough to escape self-condemnation if I failed to act, but at least being aware of my true motivations was a fundamental step to addressing them.
To be continued…
This was my written prayer over not missing, but just delaying my morning visit with God. Welcome to a world where grace is in short supply. (Notice the date, this was well before I awakened to full grace.)
07/07/97
Lord, forgive me for failing to spend time with you this morning. I was caught up once again in doing other things, working on the day’s tasks instead of spending time with you. Lord my heart is so prone to wander and so quick to forget and turn aside. Oh, God make me sensitive to hear your voice. To crush the voice of my flesh crying out so loudly all day and all night. Let me learn to die to that voice. To live only to you. To take my pleasure only in giving you pleasure. To cast out all darkness, however pretty, from my heart like it is the entrance of Satan into my heart, for it is. Who can tell where the end of evil is once it enters the heart–for even after repentance and forgiveness it continues its evil work in me and in others, sending out wave after wave of evil from that one initial act. What fools we are to think we can measure our own sins. If we added all the evil up which comes from one sin alone, we would find it the mother of countless and terrible demons roaming the earth to devour all good.
We confess a sin quickly, spoken and forgotten. We said an unkind word to a brother. Out of discouragement from that word, he fails to be grateful to his wife’s special meal. She responds by withdrawing into silence and her daughter feels rejected. Because she is in her mood, she forgets to make lunch for her son. At the first growth of sin it has multiplied into two lives. The daughter goes to school, and her attitude affects 5 girls. The son doesn’t have a lunch, and gets angry as a result, and because of a quarrel, loses a friend who turns against Christianity as a result. All through his life he affects hundreds of people with his hatred of Christianity. That sin we confessed and forget that night grows into a terrible monster. Evil, like energy, never dies, but rather grows and breeds.
When I was struggling with a deep sense of inadequacy and shame as a pastor in Arlington, a friend recommended a counseling couple. As I sat with them in their living room, they explained that my poor self-worth came from believing lies, especially lies about God. That may have been true, but it only made my sense of humiliation worse. Not only did I feel shame, but I was wrong for feeling shame. It is hard to hear, “You are deceived,” and feel positive about yourself, and “The God you worship is a false god,” is not particularly comforting either.
If this couple had identified with and shown empathy for my struggles, it would have made a huge difference. They could have said, “We have all been tricked into believing lies foisted on us by family, church, and culture. We are the victims of these deceptions.” This may have really been their thought, but I could not get past the shame of living a lie. When I asked Kimberly, “Doesn’t my anger or sadness or fear point to something that should not be in my heart, some skewed perspective for which I am guilty?” the question itself seems to invite a shaming answer.
“Well, did you know these beliefs were false?” she asked. “Did you deliberately avoid the truth? When you were at last shown the way did you run from it?”
“No,” I said, “I set my feet to it, not perfectly, but as best I could in spite of the fear and pain.”
“Yes, something is in your heart that should not be there, just like Somali pirates should not be on oil tankers, but you are no more guilty of it than the ship’s captain. You did not create this darkness, but are rather victimized by it. Don’t shame yourself for these lies which deceived you, but have compassion on yourself for the harm you still suffer because of them.”
Such soothing words of grace! If I keep shaming myself for my struggles, it will push me away from God’s grace. I’m afraid that if I openly admit what a mess I am, God will agree and put me on the bench till I get my act together. Instead he embraces me and says, “I’ve been waiting for you to discover your wounds and show them to me so that I can begin to heal them.”
Emotions often reveal the unhealthiness of my heart. If I rebuke and punish myself for this junk, I become more lost in the mazes of my shame and more afraid of the truth. I’ve discovered that when I show myself compassion, like a child who is sick, the truth loses its monster mask and I am much more able to open my heart to it. The truth comes to me as a companion and help rather than a testy and impatient headmaster.
After dozens of conversations I started to understand that Kimberly believed feelings are neither good nor bad, they just are. “Excuse me, but haven’t you read in the Scriptures all the evil that comes from anger?” I respond.
“Well,” she says, “if God himself gets angry, it can’t be all bad.”
“Ah, yes, but everyone knows there is ‘righteous’ anger and ‘unrighteous’ anger. If you start feeling the bad kind, you are sinning, and must stop feeling that way. You can get angry for the wrong reasons or for the right reasons, and you should not get angry for the wrong reasons, so if you do, you have to repent.” She clearly did not believe the childhood morality I was taught.
“So,” she responded, “if emotions can be immoral, it means you choose them or refuse them. Is that how your emotions work? Because my feelings come without thinking, often without warning.”
“No,” I reply, “you can’t control your initial emotional reactions, but you can choose to hold onto them or to let them go.”
“And how do you let them go?”
“You tell yourself they are wrong and think of all the reasons why you shouldn’t feel that way, and you can talk yourself out of those feelings.”
“So, Jani, basically you should all over your feelings… you beat down your emotions with the law?”
Long pause as I think about this. I decided long ago that motivating myself with shame is a bad idea. Is that what I was doing? Wasn’t I just listening to my conscience, examining myself, and repenting? Should I not feel guilty for wrong feelings and stop myself from having them? I knew I didn’t have total control over my emotions, but I had enough control to force out the bad ones. I had done it many times.
“I guess I agree with you that my motivation should not be legalistic. So maybe I should work from the motivation of wanting good relationships, and everyone knows anger pushes people apart.”
She responded, “In my family, politeness was a much greater threat to true connection than anger. I have often seen anger bring people closer together because it forces honest communication and each person ends up telling the other person how they really feel. What do you think makes anger bad?”
“Well, you don’t like me getting angry at you!”
“It is not your anger that is a problem for me, but your blaming me.” Okay this REALLY does not make sense. If she was not to blame, why would I get angry? Getting angry over an innocent behavior is just wrong. How can you possibly separate anger from blame? If there is anger, someone is to blame! How could she say that all feelings are legitimate?
“So you think there is nothing wrong with being angry as hell at an innocent person?” I ask.
“Well, what do you mean by ‘wrong’?” she responds. “If you mean ‘are some emotions immoral,’ then I would say no. If you mean ‘are my emotions accurate or correct,’ I would say it depends on what you are measuring. Feelings are unreliable interpreters of someone else’s behavior (your rage does not prove that I’ve done something wrong). But feelings are great interpreters of your heart if you listen to them carefully. Emotions always tell you something about yourself rather than about the other person.”
Wow, that’s really a revelation to me. She is delinking my negative feelings from her culpability, a bond I thought inseparable. I could only imagine my anger being justified if she were truly at fault, but she is insisting that my feelings of anger are legitimate in themselves, even if she has done nothing wrong, nothing “deserving” of anger. They are legitimate for the very reason that they do not measure her misconduct… they simply alert me to what is going on in my heart, and do so quite accurately. If I merely shove my anger away or talk it down without considering what it is telling me, I can gain nothing from it.
After mulling this over for awhile I ask, “Okay, so maybe emotions are not evil in themselves and are just a gauge of my heart, but aren’t some of them a gauge of my bad heart? Doesn’t my anger or sadness or fear point to something that should not be in my heart, something for which I am guilty? And isn’t it possible to hold on to or nurse these negative feelings and so keep myself under their power? And doesn’t it matter how I express my feelings?” I was determined to prove my “negative” feelings were bad in some way!
I am in the D.C. metropolis right now (Arlington, actually) to get a passport and visa to India. As you may have read in an earlier post, India was my spiritual Titanic, and preparing to return there has opened up some very deep gashes that I have tried hard to ignore for the last decade. I was already scheduled for an appointment at the DC office a month ago because I thought my passport was over 15 years old. The morning I was to leave for Washington, I discovered a newer passport in my “legal id” folder and cancelled my appointment, only to realize some time later that my unmarried name was in my current passport and had to be updated.
While I was still trying to deal with the stormy emotions rising out of my impending trip to Calcutta, I banged up our car and was handed a warrant of arrest for hit-and-run. For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to settle my quaking mind and heart. It really was a huge hit to my sense of vulnerability to a completely unpredictable world.
I left at 6:10 a.m. this morning to come here to the District for my noon appointment at the passport agency. I’ve barely left enough time to get the passport, Indian visa, and plane ticket and complete the trip to Kolkata before my library work starts in late August. As I drove this morning I thought about my stupidity in not realizing I had to change my name on the passport. I was tempted to berate myself for waiting so long to take the necessary steps in preparing. I know it will be hard for my Indian brothers if I can’t go until the winter school break. I was stupid, I was late, it was my fault, others might suffer… it was a prime circumstance for shaming myself, something that would, in the past, have consumed my whole trip to D.C. That practice of self-shaming often made me more careful and conscientious in the future, but in the process damaged my soul, pushing me away from grace into legalism.
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But this time I discovered with some pleasure and relief that I was not castigating myself for my stupidity and lateness, I was purposely seeing myself with as much compassion as I would feel for another in that situation. Yes, I am more scatterbrained than most. I easily miss or forget or misconstrue some pretty obvious things that most others would probably notice. That is who I am. I take steps to compensate, but when I fail anyway, it is not from malice or negligence. Being “stupid” in that way is one of my weaknesses, and it is going to trip me up more often than it will most others. My friends will need to exercise more patience towards me in this regard as I must exercise more patience for them in other regards.
Allowing myself the human right to work through my high-decibel emotions over the criminal charge was an important healthy direction for me. In the past I would have denied my own needs in favor of others, told my emotions to shut up, and marched forward with grit and determination. In my experience, peace and good do not spring from such a mindset. I gave myself the time I needed to settle down before facing another emotionally charged task here in D.C. My coming late here was a very positive step in my learning to rest in God’s grace for my weaknesses. Instead of shame, it is a joy to see myself moving further into the ocean of grace, and I trust God to care for what outcomes may follow.
Our accident brought some of my handicaps into the spotlight. First of all, I am not a multitasker in any sense of the word. I do very well concentrating on one task, but if a second is added, one of them will get seriously neglected. Furthermore, I get trapped in the mazes of my own brain. If I am reflecting deeply (which is mostly the only kind I do), I better be engaged in a physical task that can be accomplished on auto-pilot. My problem is not drinking and driving, but thinking and driving. I’m being quite serious.
I can’t turn off my brain unless the activity I am involved in requires my complete mental attention (such as taking a test). I have often come close to stuttering to the roadside on empty because I can only force myself to think, “Stop for gas!” for about 30 seconds before I am off in some other world. On the way to the lake last week, my wife suddenly asked me if I had taken the right exit… I couldn’t remember.
I guess this has been a problem for some time, since Kimberly tells me that when we first met, I drove straight through a red light without realizing it… I don’t remember. The one area where it has come out most prominently in my driving is failing to notice things ahead that require me to slow down or stop. I do fairly well on my own, though it regularly calls for an uncomfortably quick stop, but when I get further engrossed by conversing with Kimberly, I am downright dangerous. Many times Kimberly has had to warn me of things up ahead which I am approaching too quickly.
The accident forced me to realize that it is not enough for me to try harder to concentrate on driving, but I really have to take a serious action step. I haven’t talked to Kimberly about it yet, but I think when we are driving in traffic together, she needs to be behind the wheel. I usually drive because she prefers not to. Also, as I told her on the way back from our accident, “I’m only 50, but I’m going to have to start driving like a geezer.”
A second serious handicap of mine is that I don’t notice the need for a change (in practical matters) unless I am forced to see it. I will be semi-conscious of a problem, but will keep performing the same old routines without ever consciously making a decision to do so. It niggles somewhere on the outskirts of my mind, and may take a very long time, sometimes too long, to burrow up to the level of conscious deliberation. I “should” have realized this driving issue as a real problem and looked for a solution long ago. We knew it was a problem, but it never occurred to me to make a significant change… I just kept trying to do better using the failing system.
I’m not beating up on myself. I put “should” in quotation marks because I don’t really think it was negligence on my part; it is part of who I am. We all have handicaps, and we do well to recognize them. God not only gave us all strengths, but he deliberately created us with weaknesses as well. I think this was his way of making us interdependent, of tying us together in community. Our weaknesses are not “bad” things, they are just part of who we are and who we will always be. I may be able to improve or compensate for my weaknesses, but if I try to quash them or force them into conformity, I am being false to the way God created me. I have believed this very late in life and have suffered a great deal for not recognizing it earlier, but that must wait for another post. As L’Arche says, the world is not divided into those with handicaps and those without; we are all disabled and badly in need of the gifts of others.
It does not cost me much to report on my experiences and feelings after the fact. It is more difficult for me to share in the moment, to invite others into my journey when I am still in the quagmire. I am more vulnerable in such times, so I ask those who leave comments to this post to be especially gracious in what they say.
I have been in a great deal of turmoil the last few days over my expected visit to Calcutta. India was my emotional Waterloo, an inescapable, pervasive black hole. I’m pretty sure these current feelings stem from very deep, unresolved issues while I was a missionary that tapped into an ocean of inadequacy. I did not learn Bengali well… I was so ethnocentric, seeing their culture as inadequate… I failed to make any significant impact even though I nearly died trying… I was arrogant… I was stupid… I was closed to input…. “I’m a failure, a failure, a failure” was the heavy drumbeat that struck against my soul throughout each day.
I had no weapon with which to challenge these beliefs, no argument great enough to disprove my self-condemnation. I thought my self accusations were a mark of true and deep repentance. Here is an example from the journal I kept in India, castigating myself for sleeping till 5 a.m. instead of rising at 4 o’clock to pray:
Oh, Lord, break me. Break this wicked pride so steeped in deceit. Break the great evil of my indiscipline – great because it keeps me from knowing you and seeking you and loving you with my whole heart. Lord, how can you possibly use me in this city, or in the lowest ministry, if I am not wholly given over to the infilling, anointing and outpouring of your Spirit? Oh, Lord have mercy on this foolish and hopeless child of yours. I have no strength of my own, Lord. I know I am completely bankrupt. I know how many times over and over I have failed you in the same things. It is a wonder that you still love me Lord. What an amazing love is yours! How much you deserve a better child than I. Make me fit to bear your name in this world or take me out of it, Lord.
When I returned from Asia, I was so broken that my only hope of functioning was to push all thoughts of that time aside, not deal with them, ignore them as best I could. I quarantined that huge section of my heart because I was too soul sick to deal with it in any kind of healthy way. Of course those self-condemning thoughts did not simply disappear, but festered in the dark, chewing like termites on my spirit. The less aware I was of them, the more easily they could undermine my sense of worth.
And as I open that Pandora’s box again, I find my life energy draining away and a settled anguish taking it’s place. I feel I am picking up a burden too great to bear. I thought I was emotionally ready (barely) to visit Calcutta again. I wonder. Perhaps this is God’s divine timing to draw me into facing this great vortex of shame. I would ask for your prayers as I wade into the river Styx
Peter throws out an intriguing idea, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you.” God is not distracted, uncaring, or negligent about my needs. It is not we who are waiting for God to act, but God who is waiting for us to be ready, who watches our progress with sympathy, not disappointment. His patience is not a bridled impatience, but genuine good will. He knows it takes time. He is okay with it taking time. In fact he plans for it to take time. He is patient. In my urgency to reach the resolution, I want to hurry the process, but God’s focus is on the journey, his grace is at work in the process itself. Too often I miss his grace for today in my anxiety for the bigger deliverance that is farther down the road. My impatience is really towards myself rather than God. I blame myself for not growing faster, for bungling his stream-lined plans for me. But should we suppose that if Abram had had greater faith and faithfulness, he would have had a dozen sons at 39 instead of one at 99? Why have I always thought that God was in a rush?
I think I have long been under the impression that God’s attributes are somehow in competition with each other. In this instance, his righteousness is at odds with his sympathy. He wants to hurry me into holiness, but he is being “patient” with me, which basically means he is holding himself back from chiding or nagging or otherwise showing his frustration at my slow growth. He is impatient, but hiding it. I guess that is how I have always pictured his so-called patience, and why I am so prone to agree with “God’s” condemnation of me. I need a new God, a good God, a God who is truly patient, not just pretending to be patient.
Janathan Grace Reflections 