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Forbearance

Eric Wright

Janice lost the chance to get a great job when her husband Marv failed to mail the application she had laboriously prepared. When Marv discovered the letter under a pile of second class mail on his desk, the deadline was past. He was devastated by his carelessness. He tried to apologize, but it was too late. Janice was furious. When Janice accused Marv of not wanting her to get a job outside the home, Marv felt defensive. He responded by calling her a “picky pefectionist”. Their marriage deteriorated.

As a Christian, what ought her response to have been? One can certainly understand Janice’s keen disappointment. Should she have forgiven Marv? No, forgiveness is needed only when sin is involved. What she needed to do was exercise forbearance. Marv did not sin; he made a careless mistake. (Of course, if he made a habit of being careless, we might classify it as a sin.) Relational friction is the inevitable result when we fail to allow leeway for human frailty.

The call is clear

The call to forbearance is clear: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2); “Bear with each another” (Colossians 3:13). Humility, gentleness and patience enable us to love people with their human imperfections without getting angry and annoyed. Humility is based on a vision of how far short we fall from God’s standards. Gentleness leads us to treat others with a measure of the thoughtfulness God lavishes on us. Patience develops as we celebrate God’s longsuffering and recognize how we we strain others’ patience. Matthew Heny comments that, “We have all of us something which needs to be borne with, and this is a good reason why we should bear with others in what is disagreeable to us.”

Judgmentalism

If we fail to develop this kind of self-knowledge we may become as critical as Virginia. Virginia thinks pointing out a problem is solving it. She feels she is doing some great thing for God by spotting a need. She doesn’t understand that meeting one need is more important than spotting 50. Virginia belongs to the professional critics’ union, composed of those adept at finding problems in any proposal and flaws in any person – but blind to their own foibles.

Diversity

Forbearance not only rescues us from being judgemental; it also prepares us to handle human diversity. Often the antagonism that springs up in churches can be traced to a failure to bear with differences of opinion. One wants more choruses, while another complains about the lack of the grand old hymns. One faction urges quiet in the sanctuary; while the other promotes fellowship through friendly conversation. Many want to put a budget surplus into a GIC, while others agitate for sending the balance to missionaries. The issues may be important or trivial, but in most cases what is called for is the ability to bear with those who differ.

Imaginary grievances

Relational friction may also be rooted in imaginary grievances. Too often we attribute motives to others based on why we imagine they are acting in a certain way. Instead of confronting the person we imagine has treated us shabbily or refusing to have anything to do with that person, we need to “cast down imaginations”. After all, only God knows everything.

A certain woman developed a growing animosity towards a former close friend. lmagined slights poisoned the relationship. One of the few things that brought sunshine into her drab life was a “secret pal” who remembered her birthdays and anniversaries and in other thoughtful ways cheered her up. Finally, her estranged friend died. In spite of her bitterness, the woman thought that ordinary decency required her to make a neighbourly call on the grieving husband. She offered to help him straighten up the house. While tidying up, she found a letter addressed to her. Opening it, she discovered – to her shock – that the “secret pal” who had brought such encouragement into her gloomy life was none other than the target of her animosity! Thoughts of the years of maligning and misjudging this former friend filled her with grief.

Forbearance rescues us from unnecessary grief.

Eric Wright is a Baptist pastor. This article is reprinted with permission, from the April 13, 1999 issue of ChristianWeek.

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Last modified May 12, 2000.

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