Virtue: Patience

     You would think that patience is not a virtue in this instant gratification culture of ours when everything can be granted instantly, and no one has to wait. It is normal not to wait and have everything you wait for here and now. I am no exception to this folly: there are days I ask God to give me a wife here and now, but He doesn't. A lady would come into my life, and I pray she's the one He's chosen, but like David's brothers when God chose someone after His heart, He refused them. This left me with heartache, but I am learning patience; for I believe God has the best for those who wait on Him. What I didn't realize until now, about all the waiting, is that there are benefits to patience.

    I will relate a personal experience that can show you what I mean. A proverb comes to mind about my experience that says: "Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who is quick-tempered displays folly." (Proverbs 14:29). Recently, I had been promoted to a shift manager at my work, and I had never been tested as a leader before. One day, I was at the cash register when a Mexican man came in wanting to order a pizza, so I tried to communicate with him, while placing his order, by asking him what he wanted. He only wanted a medium pizza with part of a deal we have, but he had to order two items to get the deal. He thought that it was two pizza toppings, and not a separate item like pizza or breadsticks. With my schizophrenia, I had a hard time giving clear communication, so we were misunderstanding each other. I was getting frustrated, but I stopped and took a deep breath and told myself to have patience. Everything cleared up, and the man was satisfied with his order: I displayed slow to anger to help the man like Jesus would have done. I hope, O reader, that this personal experience would show you the benefits of patience.

    A lot of bible people had patience. Abraham was a son of one hundred years and Sarah was a daughter of ninety years when they had Isaac. Joseph's dreams started at seventeen, but didn't happen until he was thirty. Joseph had to prepare with what God had in mind for him while as a slave and in prison before being second-in-command to Pharoah. David was anointed King of Israel when he was a teenager, but he didn't perceive himself to be king until he was thirty and had a lot of trauma and preparation to be king with a heart like God's heart. After Moses fled from his great father, the Pharoah, to go to Midian, he was a shepherd for forty years before God called him from the burning bush to save the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Many people were called for God's purpose, but had to wait before their purpose was realized.

    Jesus was zealous for His Father's work at twelve years of age, but didn't start His earthly ministry until He was thirty in earth years, but He waited from the foundation of the world to be one with man--that's a long time. All the time Jesus was on earth, He was tempted at every turn yet without sin. His patience with the woman caught in adultery was astounding. The Pharisees caught her in the act, and brought her to Jesus with the immediate attempt to stone her, but He waited. Jesus went on the ground and wrote. When He stood up, He said: "he who is perfect throw the first stone.". Then, He patiently went back to the ground to write; all the Pharisees dropped their weapons and walked away leaving the woman and Jesus alone. Jesus told the woman in hopeful patience to go and sin no more. Jesus' patience saved a woman's life, and that's how God is: slow to wrath.

    Paul says in I Corinthians 13 that love is patience and kind, and Jesus showed that to everyone He came in contact with. I don't know about you personally, O reader, but His example of patience is something I desire to imitate--even if it is hard to do so with all the temptations in the world. I hope there is a good reward for waiting patiently on the LORD--come quickly LORD Jesus.

Virtue: Humility

     I want to go on before starting this subject about humility to show you, o reader, my intent for writing about virtues and vices. The purpose is for self-improvement: to war against our vices and strengthen our virtues. I know it's hard to do this, but all character creating takes patience and time as well as desire and effort. There is great reward in doing this, and it is something within your power to do. I want to work on myself personally, so I can be a virtuous man, and have the joy of a virtuous life that God offers man, but it takes hard work to strive for excellence. Now, I will start with humility.

    C.S. Lewis says it best when he said that humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. What he meant is that humility isn't about bringing your self-worth down but lifting other people's self-worth up. Paul said in Philippians that we should esteem others better than ourselves. In the same writing, Paul talked about Christ humbling Himself from being God to being a man: not just any man but a slave. We don't picture the all-powerful, majestic God being a slave, but that's what Jesus Christ did. The best example of this is the Passover ceremony: Christ got a towel and went on His knees to wash the apostle's feet. This is significant cause not even a slave did such a thing: the custom of the day was to provide water for guests to wash their own feet. Jesus did something not even a slave would do. That's humility. Notice that this Passover was the night before His crucifixion, and all Christ did was serve the apostles.

    It's true what Jesus said that those who are great need to serve; when He said this, He brought a child to them. Why? What lesson can we learn from a child in humility? The most innocent of children are humble: Children are curious and teachable and are willing to learn through examples of adults. Children are good imitators: Children idolize heroes like dad or mom or heroes they read about. Even Solomon said it best in Proverbs 17:6:"Children's children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children are their fathers." Children want to be like their heroes--just hope it's a good hero. That's why Christ came to show us the example to live by, and children can imitate it. But, it takes humility to see a hero beyond yourself: proud people only see themselves as heroes and no one else--it's sad but true.

    A Hero of humility is Esther: she stood out when Vashi's pride made her lose the queenship. Esther did not decorate herself with jewels and gold, but only asked what the eunuch suggested and that gave her favor. When she was told about the Jews being slaughtered by degree, she chose to fast for three days and risk her life to see the king. Even though she was hungry and scared to death, she made two banquets for the king and her foe--sacrificing herself to feed her enemy. That's humility. Eventually, when Haman's plot was revealed when Esther petitioned for the life of her people, her humility prevailed cause Haman and his sons were hanged: saving the Jews.

    Humility is a sacrifice: you have to shallow yourself and pride for the sake of others. Jesus said that whoever wants to be His disciple must deny himself. Moses did that all the time when the children of Israel tempted God ten times in the wilderness. God wanted justice, but Moses wanted mercy, so he pleaded for Israel. God, in His infinite mercy, often repented from His just wrath cause of Mose's humility. God, when Aaron and Miriam confronted Moses about his Ethiopian wife, God said that Moses was the meekest person on earth at the time. But, even Moses had his pride cause he wasn't able to go into the promised land cause he did not do what God said at Meribah. God told Moses to speak to the rock, but instead he used his staff to strike it in prideful anger instead of speaking humbly to the rock to give water. His mistake was for our learning.

    Humility is hard because it requires selflessness. Only with the Spirit of the humble Christ can God teach us to be humble as Christ is humble. God's Spirit works in us to write God's ways on our hearts and minds, and sometimes it requires lessons from experiences of others or self to really solidify this foundation. Christ is the vine, and we are the branches, and without God, we can do nothing. But, Being humble is doable with effort and love.

Vice: Pride

         I like to think that I am immune to this vice, and have the virtue of Christ, but that's not realistic nor accurate. We live in a world where satan, the source of pride, entices us humans with what John calls the pride of life. What is that exactly? What is so prideful about life? I thought life was good or if we choose: evil. Well, satan is an angel once at the throne of God with Christ and the other archangels praising the Father on His throne. Ezekiel described satan as an anointed cherub and was considered perfect when he was made and ordained as the morning star, but he had pride and trusted in his own beauty and intelligence and power. Because he was proud of himself, he thought he could rule better than God, so enticed a third of the angels to take the throne with a betrayal and a coup, but to no avail. There's a proverb that says: "Pride goes before a destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18). This is surely true for the enemy and any prideful person; for the enemy was exiled from God's throne to fall to the earth. That was how he could entice Eve in the garden.

         The serpent appealed to the woman's pride that she would be like God and not die when she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When this happened, our ancestors gave up dominion to the enemy to rule because of their pride. A whole lot of consequences happened to Adam and Eve including the sting of death. Many years later, Herod the tetrarch was so proud of himself for his speech, after killing the apostle James, that the people thought he was a god, but never gave glory to the true God so an angel struck him and he died and was eaten by worms. Goliath pride himself of his stature and his warrior skills until he was beheaded by a shepherd boy with a sling and a stone.

          There's all sorts of things to be prideful about. Naaman the Syrian was prideful of his rivers in Syria until he was convinced by a servant to go to the Jordan, as Elisha said, to be healed of his leprosy. Uzziel, the king, was proud of his office as king and thought he should be a priest, so he went into the temple with a censer for incense, but to his shame, he was rebuked by the rightful priests and became a leper till he died living the rest of his life in shame. Uzziel proved the proverb: "First comes pride than comes shame, but to the humble is wisdom." Nabal was prideful of his wealth that he scorned David's servants for the good deeds they did to protect Nabal's livestock--with no reward. If it wasn't for his wife, Abigail, Nabal and his men would have died by David's hand, but the understanding wife convinced David to not do it and blessed David and his men with food and wine for their labor. What happened to Nabal? He had a feast in his house and got drunk. When he learned the truth from his wife, his heart became a stone and God smote him. There's pride in one's race like the Egyptians that wouldn't eat with Joseph because he was a Hebrew, and that pride led many generations later to a Pharaoh with so much pride in his race that it took nine plagues and the death of the first born by God to let the children of Israel go.

            Those are just a few examples of pride, and the consequence is evident. Pride can also make you not teachable like King Saul against the Amalekites. Saul heard the instructions by God through Samuel but because Saul thought he knew better than God because of pride in his ways, He didn't do what God said to do. God said to do an herem to everything in the city of the Amalekites because of God's promise to Moses that he would have war with Amalek from generation to generation because of what they did to Israel in the wilderness by attacking the weak and the infirmed. Saul killed the Amalekites, but spared Agag the king and the spoils for offerings to God, but this was not what God wanted. God wanted to do right for Israel, but Saul didn't do it. Because of Saul's pride and stubbornness, he lost the throne of Israel as king, and many generations later, an Agagite name Haman tried to get revenge against the Jews through the King of Persia. If it wasn't for Esther and Mordecai, the Jews would have been massacred. God saved the Jews through humble Esther, but it wouldn't have ever been needed if King Saul wasn't so prideful and just obeyed God.

                Jesus said that whoever humbles himself shall be exalted, and whoever prides himself or exalts himself shall be abased. That's what happened to King Saul and so many others. If we are not careful, O reader, we could be abased because of our pride--me included. I pray we learn these lessons about this vice, and make war against it to not do it again. On my next blog, I hope to talk about the virtue of humility.

Capable of Vice and Virtue

         I want to start a series of blogs about human vices and virtues that can be applied to yours and mine's life. We like to think that we are good people by birth, or evil people by birth. Modern man believes themselves to be good and progressing toward a better person with hard work and struggles while Christians believe in the original sin coined by Augustine in the 3rd century A.D. Original sin talks about Adam and Eve taking and eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil making death inherently inevitable for man. Any person through this philosophy will claim that man is inherently evil. The bible says through Paul in Romans about Jacob and Esau that "before they did any good or evil", so when you are born, you inherited a clean slate: Clean from the good and evil deeds and words of yourselves and parents. A child doesn't know good or evil from birth, it is taught by example and teachers with words and deeds. Just because a newborn is new in ignorance, doesn't mean he or she is not capable of good or evil-- We are all able to do or say good or evil: that's the power of freewill.

         This capability can be dangerous and a lot of people don't want to be responsible for their actions. Yes, there are consequences for vices like the lack of happiness of a greedy man or woman whose sole purpose is the love of money. Or, the poverty of a person who is able to work but doesn't because they feel entitled to riches without diligent hard work, so they chose laziness or theft to satisfy their tastes. Or, the consequence of a prideful spirit of independence believing one's self to be better than their neighbor because of pride of self when achieving something. There is nothing wrong with achieving something, but to make yourself pridefully better than someone else doesn't make you a better person. We all are capable of these vices, including myself, and that should frighten us to the core. I love Benjamin Franklin's saying that says: "Make war with your vices." The problem today is that we believe we don't have any vices because we have inherited perfection: it's an illusion and a lie.

        History tells us that man or woman is capable of the most destructive evils and the greatest triumph of good. Spain's Ferdinand and Isabelle in 1492 justified their evil acts against the Jews with the Spanish Inquisition using a proverb from the scriptures to justify the popes decision. Spainard's used torture chambers with machines to pull arms and legs from a Jew's body to murder them with torment. If modern America believed deceitfully that we are not capable of such evil, look at abortion. The same tactic used against the Jews are being used on unborn babies. We are able to stop this abomination, so please end the abomination and make a choice to never repeat the past.

        Goodness can happen as well by our good choices. David and his men were afraid because of death threats from Saul, and a messenger said that Keilah was being attacked by the Philistines. David inquired of God twice, and obeyed to go to Keilah to save that city from Israel's enemies. David chose to do good despite the evil against him and God rewarded him with a kingship and dynasty that lasts for all time. In American history, George Washington, After General Gate's victory at Saratoga in 1777, was pushed by Congress as well as general Conway and Gates to be dethroned from his office of generalship. It all started with a letter from Conway to Gates that was leaked to Washington that attacked his character. Washington ignored the attack and chose self-control and not to little himself to the level of those who ambitiously desired his station with jealousy. Washington knew he was capable of such pettiness because of man's human nature. He chose self-control and dignity. With that virtue came confidence of the people and that confidence made him the first president of the United States of America.

       Jesus knew human nature and knew He become a man with such nature--even though he's the Son of God. He was all points tempted as we are yet without sin. Jesus saw a woman caught in adultery and she was accused by the Pharisees, He went on His humble knees to write on the ground. I believe He did this to remind Himself of the evil he could do in this temptation, so He needed a remainder of the commandments. He said: "Whoever is perfect, let him cast the first stone." The Pharisees were convinced of their conscience seeing what Jesus wrote, and walked away. When Jesus and the women were alone, Jesus said with love and grace: "Go and sin no more." I don't know about you, O reader, but I want to follow Jesus, my example, knowing my capabilities of vices and virtues. I hope in future blogs, I will discuss specific vices and virtues, so please continue to read, my friends.