The Fury and the Joy

“We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

I was reminded this week that languages evolve. A fellow believer embarrassed himself online with a rant that included a line to the effect that a Jew is a person from the tribe of Judah. To be fair, I hear this all the time. He just picked up a talking point from somebody and ran with it. But it’s not so, and it hasn’t been so for at least a couple of millennia. If you doubt that, compare the first four words of Acts 22:3 with Philippians 3:5.

Six centuries before Christ, “Jew” meant Judean. By the first century, it had evolved into an informal synonym for “Israelite” applicable regardless of one’s tribe. Words are like ships: put them out in the ocean and the barnacles will accumulate.

Meanings That Evolve

Hey, it would be nice if effective communication could be reduced to something as predictable and reproducible as mathematics (Jew + Jew = 4?), but we have to work with what is, not with what we would like. The meanings of words change over time, not least because few speakers are equally precise in the way we use them.

This is not going to be a screed about Jews. They are just one of numerous examples of terms once coined with a precise meaning that was later qualified, modified or broadened by the passage of time and/or sloppy usage. It’s why dictionaries get updated, much to the frustration of the pedants among us. It’s why the Levites (or students of the law) in Nehemiah had to paraphrase a 1,000-year-old Hebrew text for their fellow Hebrews. It’s why regular retranslation of all ancient documents, including and especially the holy scriptures, is a necessary exercise. Even when words in an original language have a fixed meaning because the language is effectively “dead”, the receptor languages are always changing. Every generation has to deal with this reality, and will have to deal with it until the Lord comes again.

Persisting Furiously

A second little reality check, this one for myself: some retranslations are better than others.

I was looking at the English word “patience” this morning, which all but four of our most popular modern Bibles use to translate the Greek makrothymia, a compound word that comes from pairing the Greek equivalent of “long” with a word that means “indignation” or “wrath”. Literally, it meant to persist furiously; in practice, to put up with something you really didn’t like for an extended period. It’s about exercising self-control under pressure. I suspect that’s what the writers of the New Testament intended to convey when they used it: “Don’t quit even if it kills you. Grit your teeth and hang in there no matter what.”

As an English equivalent for makrothymia, I feel like “patience” may be just a little weak. At very least, the dictionary definitions of “patient” import an extra adjectival or adverbial component the Greek word doesn’t.

Adverbial Patience

The Cambridge Dictionary defines patience as “to wait or suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed”. Oxford Learner’s reads “accept annoying behaviour or difficulties without becoming angry”. At Merriam-Webster, it’s “enduring pains or trials calmly or without complaint”. Dictionary.com says, “bearing provocation [etc.] with fortitude and calm”. In English, a patient person is not just pushing forward into the eye of the hurricane, he’s doing it after the manner of a Greek Stoic, without letting anyone see him sweat. The intensity and determination of the original Greek word becomes in English something approaching deceptive passivity. It’s more about the appearance than the action.

That’s not a bad thing necessarily, but it is a bit different. Both are about persisting, but the English translations emphasize how we feel or present publicly while persisting. For this reason, slightly antiquated terms like “endurance” or even “longsuffering” may more accurately reflect an NT writer’s intended meaning when he used makrothymia. They remind us that refusing to quit sometimes involves serious pain. Persistence in the faith is no walk in the park.

How to Persist

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting the New Testament writers intended their readers to be ferociously miserable while waiting for deliverance, but they could not get godly perseverance out of makrothymia; the word was insufficiently nuanced. So they supplied qualifiers and contrasts to tell us how to persist in the most godly way.

For example, Paul prays for the Colossians that the Lord might strengthen them “for all endurance [hypomonē, meaning consistency] and patience [makrothymia]”, then adds “with joy”. In Hebrews 12, the writer contrasts patience with sluggishness, emphasizing the quality of alertness. Those extra little modifiers, not to mention the frequency with which the apostles remind their readers to be joyful in trials, make the intrinsically grim determination of makrothymia … less grim. Perhaps this is also why the NT writers so frequently associate patience with hope.

So then, Christian perseverance has added qualities that Job’s endurance, to cite a prime OT example, most definitely did not. Job was longsuffering, but you wouldn’t exactly call him patient in the English sense, let alone joyful.

It’s minor, but it interested me that these nuances of meaning are not always there to be teased out of the original Greek word. They have to be supplied.

Words That Modify Other Words

I point this out partly as an exercise in understanding the differences between languages and the conundrums faced by translators, but also as a reminder to myself that a cheerful or calm attitude, while most desirable, diminishes in value to the extent that we lose sight of the need for intensity of persistence in our faith and willingness to take the battle to the enemy.

To put it another way, dogged perseverance for Christ bereft of godly joy and peace may be inferior to the English Bible’s concept of patience, and it may result in a lesser reward in eternity. So be it. At least, like the son who initially declined to go into the field but thought better of it later, grim determination that keeps going forward is at very least partial obedience. The Christian faith does not need more Puddleglums, but we will make do if we must. On the other hand, reasonableness and calm that don’t foster Christian perseverance are a spiritual nullity. These qualities have minimal value in a state of passivity or inactivity. Even wicked people can be reasonable and calm. Adverbs and adjectives don’t add much value to communication unless we already have action words for them to modify.

Evangelical churches have no shortage of reasonable, calm, pleasant and, yes, even exuberant people. In some cases, this may have less to do with godly character developed through years of persistence in the faith, and more to do with the fact that our suffering meter is currently set at “1” or “2”. Godly perseverance does not develop in a vacuum. Anyone can be amiable about a conflict in which he or she has yet to seriously engage. It’s when the blood and sweat start to fly that you see who is really enduring and who was just having a good day.

We need both the fury and the joy in persisting. At the end of the day, a man who quits graciously is still quitting and a cheerful loser still loses.