Part II: The patience to hear — When certainty arrives too quickly.

The practice of freedom: Learning to live the virtues Part II

There is a form of impatience that sounds remarkably like faith.
It is certain, forceful and ready with an answer.
It may say: “The Bible is clear.” Or: “The Church has always taught this.”
Both statements may be true. There is room in the Life in Christ for certainty.
Jesus Christ is Lord. Christ is risen. God is faithful. The Nicene Creed is true.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Humility does not require us to become uncertain about everything.
But certainty in Christ is not the same as certainty that my understanding of every passage must be complete.
The virtue of patience teaches us to distinguish between the two.

The photocopy problem.
Most of us have seen what happens when someone makes a photocopy of a photocopy.
The first copy is quite clear. The next loses a little detail.
After many copies, small marks grow darker, fine lines disappear, and something that was faint in the original may eventually dominate the whole picture.
Something similar can happen in the transmission of biblical interpretation.
A careful teaching is summarized in a sermon.
The sermon is shortened into a study note.
The note becomes a slogan.
The slogan is passed from teacher to student, parent to child, pastor to congregation.
Eventually, no one remembers where the interpretation came from.
It is simply introduced with: “The Bible says.”
But every Christian reads Scripture with the help of others.
We inherit translations, teachers, sermons, commentaries, confessions, hymns and assumptions.
Even the person who says, “I have no tradition; I follow the Bible alone,” has been taught what to notice and how to understand it.
That does not make the interpretation evil.
It simply means that all of us should be honest enough to say:
“This is how I understand the passage. Let us listen carefully and test it together.”
Patience leaves room for Scripture to correct not only the other person, but us.

Searching the Scriptures—and still missing Christ.
Jesus once said to people who knew the Scriptures exceedingly well:
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have Life.”
They possessed the true Scriptures. They studied them diligently. Jesus did not criticize them for taking Scripture seriously.
He said that the Scriptures testified about him.
The tragedy was that they searched the written words while refusing to come to the living Word.
It is possible to handle the words of God without allowing the Word to abide within us.
This warning was first spoken to people searching what Christians call the Old Testament.
But that does not place Christians beyond its reach.
Adding the New Testament to our Bible does not remove the human capacity to read sacred words while resisting the One Who speaks through them.
We may know the verses. We may understand the argument. We may defend the correct doctrine.
And yet the question remains: Are we coming to Christ for Life?

Hearing more than information
St Paul asks: “How will they believe in the One whom they have not heard?”
The wording is profound.
Through faithful apostolic proclamation, people do not merely receive information about an absent Christ.
Christ Himself addresses the hearer. That gives Church teaching a solemn character.
If Christ is speaking, the preacher’s voice is borrowed.
The teacher is not the owner of the Truth but His servant.
The more clearly Christ speaks, the less room there is for the teacher to use Scripture to display superiority, win a contest or corner another person into conceding.
The proper posture is not: “I understand the Book, and now you must submit to it.”
It is: “I too stand beneath this Word-(the incarnate Christ).
Let us listen for Him.”

Knowing about God and knowing God
There is an ancient temptation to confuse correct knowledge about God with communion with God.
Followers of Christ do not need to become historical Gnostics to develop a gnostic habit.
We can begin to imagine that possessing the correct explanation is itself the same as possessing Life.
But St James reminds us that even the demons believe that God is one—and shudder.
Accurate information is necessary, but it is not yet communion.
Jesus says: “This is eternal Life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent.”
To know God in Scripture is not merely to collect correct facts about Him.
But is to trust Him, love Him, obey Him, worship Him and participate in His Life.
St Paul does not merely want to know that Christ rose. He longs to know Christ, the power of his Resurrection and the communion of his sufferings.
True knowledge fo rthe faithful Church becomes participation!

The same danger faces us all
A Bible-centred Christian may know hundreds of verses and still be impatient, unforgiving or proud.
A sacramental Christian may understand Baptism, Eucharist and union with Christ and still approach the Chalice while refusing reconciliation with a neighbour.
We can know all about communion without living in communion!
We can quote the Church Fathers, Mothers and Great Saints without acquiring their humility!
We can defend the Holy Eucharist while failing to recognize Christ in the hungry person standing before us.
We can say, “The Church teaches,” in exactly the same dismissive tone with which another person says, “The Bible says.”
The problem is not Holy Scripture. The problem is not Holy doctrine. The problem is not the Church’s Holy Tradition.
The problem arises when we use that which is holy to place ourselves above another person rather than allowing those to bring all of us beneath Christ.
Knowledge can puff up. Love builds up. The answer is not less knowledge, but knowledge purified by love. The answer is more communion!

Why patient reading matters
Patient reading does not mean that truth is endlessly uncertain.
It means that Truth is precious enough to deserve our full attention.
Patience is willing to ask: Have I read the whole passage?
What comes before and after it?
How does it fit within the whole of Scripture?
How did the earliest Christians understand it?
How has it been prayed in the Church?
Am I allowing the difficult verses to question my system?
What might I be afraid of losing if my interpretation needs correction?
And, perhaps most searchingly: Is this reading making me more like Christ?
These questions require effort.

We naturally prefer quick answers.
A familiar slogan saves us from having to remain with a difficult passage.
It protects us from uncertainty and allows us to move swiftly toward a conclusion.
But spiritual maturity often requires us to remain for a while with what we do not yet understand.
Patience does not abandon conviction.
It allows conviction to be tested, deepened and purified.

Longsuffering with one another
The older word longsuffering gives patience flesh. It means remaining loving when understanding comes slowly.
We may explain something carefully and still not be understood. Someone may repeat an argument we have heard many times.
Another person may appear unable—or perhaps not yet ready—to consider what seems obvious to us.
Longsuffering does not require us to pretend that every interpretation is equally faithful.
Nor does love require us to call error truth.
But the person before us is not an argument to be defeated.
He or she is someone for whom Christ died.
Therefore, Christian proclamation cannot be separated from the manner of Christ.
Jesus sometimes speaks with great severity. He warns, confronts and calls people to repentance.
Yet he does not need to win.
He bears the cost of the Truth He speaks.
He weeps over Jerusalem.
He looks upon the rich young man with love and permits him to walk away.
He does not force communion, because forced communion would no longer be communion.
God draws; He does not drag.

A small practice of patience
The next time a biblical passage seems perfectly clear, we might pause before using it to correct someone else.
Read what comes before and after. Notice which words seem to carry the argument.
Ask how the passage reveals Christ.
Consider how the Church has historically received it.
Then ask what the passage requires of us before deciding what it requires of someone else!
Sometimes our first understanding will prove correct. Sometimes it will be enlarged.
Sometimes a familiar interpretation will begin to look like a photocopy that has grown darker in one place while losing important details elsewhere.
Truth has nothing to fear from patient attention.
And neither does Christ.

Questions for reflection:

1. When have I confused confidence in Christ with confidence in my interpretation?
2. Do I acknowledge the teachers and traditions that have shaped the way I read Scripture?
3. Is there a difficult passage that I tend to explain away because it does not fit my present understanding?
4. Have I ever used “The Bible says” or “The Church teaches” to end a conversation rather than invite deeper listening?
5. Am I as patient with people as I expect them to be with me?
6. Is my knowledge of Christ becoming communion, obedience and love?
7. What might Christ be asking me to receive before I try to convince someone else?

A short prayer: Father of Light, You have spoken to us through Your Son and given the Holy Scriptures to make us wise for Salvation.
Deliver us from shallow certainty, but keep us steadfast in the Truth.
Give us patience to listen, humility to be corrected, and longsuffering toward those who do not yet see as we see.
Save us from using Your Word to place ourselves above another for that is not His Way
By Your Holy Spirit, lead us through the written word into communion with the living Word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
(C) Fr Ray Dobson 2026