Thomas Halik, the Czech writer, would suggest that an atheist is someone who cannot be patient enough with God. There is a lot of truth in that. Patience with God is perhaps our greatest faith struggle. God, it would seem, is never in a hurry and because of that we live with an impatience that can test the strongest faith and the stoutest heart.
Life, as we can all attest to, is not without its bitter frustrations and crushing heartaches. We all live with a lot of pain and unresolved tensions…In this life, there’s no such a thing as a clear cut, pure joy; rather everything comes with shadow. We do in fact live inside a certain valley of tears.
When Jesus was dying on the cross, some onlookers were taunting him with the words: If you are the Son of God, let him rescue you! In essence: God is real and your message is true, prove it right now! And God let Jesus die! The same held true for Jesus himself in the face of the death of Lazarus. In essence, he was being challenged: If you possess God’s power in this world and you love this man, why don’t you save him from dying? Jesus let Lazarus die! And the first community of disciples, immediately after the Ascension, painfully struggled with the same question: Jesus is God and he loves us – so why does he let us die?
And so we live with a lot of expressed and unexpressed impatience with God. Atheists, it would seem, at a certain point just give up on playing the game and, in essence, say the words: I’ve seen enough; I’ve waited enough; and it’s not enough! I will no longer wait for God! But if atheism is just another way of saying I will no longer wait for God then the opposite is also true: Faith is just another way of saying: I will wait for God. If atheism is impatience, faith is patience.
Why the need for such great patience? Does God want to test us? Does God want to see if we indeed have a faith that is worthy of a great reward? No. God has no need to play such a game, and neither do we. It’s not that God wants to test our patience. The need for patience arises out of the rhythms innate within life itself and within love itself. They need to unfold, as do flowers and pregnancies, according to their own innate rhythms and within their own good time. They cannot be rushed, no matter how great our impatience or how great our discomfort.[Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Patience with God” July 2012]
