The Picture of the Ideal Christian
Life by J. R. Miller Most of us are bad-tempered
in various degrees. The dictionary has been well
near exhausted of adjectives in giving the different shades
of bad-temper. Aggressive, angry, bickering,
bitter, capricious, choleric, contentious, crotchety, despotic,
domineering, easily offended, gloomy, grumpy, hasty, huffy,
irritable, morose, obstinate, reproachful, peevish, sulky,
surly, vindictive—these are some of the qualifying words. We do
not like to believe that the case is quite so serious, that
many of us are unamiable in some offensive degree. It is easier
to confess our neighbours' faults and infirmities than our own. So, therefore, quietly taking
refuge for ourselves among the few good-tempered people, we
are willing to admit that a great many of the people we know have
at times rather ungentle tempers They are easily provoked. They
fly into a passion on very slight occasion. They are haughty, domineering,
peevish, fretful, or vindictive. What is even worse, most of them
appear to make no effort to grow out of their infirmities of disposition. The sour fruit does not come
to mellow ripeness in the passing years. The roughness is not polished
off the diamond to reveal its lustrous hidden beauty. The same
petulance, pride, vanity, selfishness, and other disagreeable qualities
are found in the life year after year. Where there is a struggle
to overcome one's faults and grow out of them, and where the
progress toward better and more beautiful spiritual character
is perceptible, though ever so slow, we should have sympathy. But when one appears unconscious
of one's blemishes, and manifests no desire to conquer one's faults,
there is little ground for encouragement, man-like it is to fall into sin,
fiend-like it is to dwell therein, saint-like it is for sin to grieve,
God-like it is for sin to leave. Bad temper is such a disfigurement
of character and, besides, works such harm to oneself and to one's
neighbors that no one should spare any pains or cost to have
it cured. The ideal Christian life is one
of unbroken kindliness. It is dominated by love. the
love whose portrait is drawn for us in the immortal thirteenth
chapter of 1 Corinthians. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not
boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is
not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. That is the picture of the ideal
Christian life. we have but to turn to the Gospel
pages to find the story of a life in which all this was realized.
Jesus never lost His temper. He lived among people who tried
Him at every point, some by their dullness, others by their bitter
enmity and persecution, but He never failed in sweetness of
disposition, in patience, in self-denying love. like the flowers
which give out their perfume only when crushed, like the odiferous
wood which bathes the axe which hues it with fragrance, the life
of Christ yielded only the tender, sweeter love, to the rough impact
of men's harshness and wrong. That is the pattern on which
we should strive to fashion our life and our character. Every
outbreak of violent temper, every shade of ugliness in disposition
mars the radiant loveliness of the picture we are seeking to
have fashioned in our souls. Bad-tempered people are continually
hurting others, oft-times their best and truest friends. Some
people are sulky, and one person's sulkiness casts a chilling shadow
over a whole household. Others are so sensitive, ever
watching for slights, and offended by the merest trifles, that even
their nearest friends have no freedom of fellowship with them.
Others are despotic, and will brook no kindly suggestion, nor
listen to any expression of opinion. Others are so quarrelsome, that
even the meekest and gentlest person cannot live peaceably
with them. It would be easy to extend this
portrayal of the evils of bad temper, but it will be more profitable
to inquire how a bad-tempered person may become good-tempered. There is no doubt that this happy
change is possible in any case. There is no temper so obturately
bad that it cannot be trained into sweetness. The grace of
God can take the most unlovely life and transform it into the
image of Christ.