7 Complaint
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G. K. CHESTERTON6
I’m about to hurt your feelings. If right now you’re complaining about something, you’re not complaining because you have a
lack of resources problem,
location problem,
situation problem,
people problem,
suffering problem,
fairness problem,
physical health problem,
church problem,
marriage problem,
employment problem,
parent problem,
life-difficulty problem,
neighbor problem, or
fallen-world problem.
Sure, you may be dealing with difficulty in one or more of these areas, but they are not the cause of your grumbling. Your tendency to complain is rooted at a deeper level. Here’s the bottom line: we complain not because we have a stuff-of-life problem but because we have an awe problem. Our problem is not just what we are dealing with but, more foundationally, how our view of God shapes how we see and deal with it. We tend to think of complaining as a little thing, but maybe it’s bigger than we realize. Let me use a well-known biblical story to illustrate.
River of Complaint
Read the account that follows carefully:
Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrifying wilderness that you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as the LORD our God commanded us. And we came to Kadesh-barnea. And I said to you, “You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the LORD our God is giving us. See, the LORD your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” Then all of you came near me and said, “Let us send men before us, that they may explore the land for us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities into which we shall come.” The thing seemed good to me, and I took twelve men from you, one man from each tribe. And they turned and went up into the hill country, and came to the Valley of Eshcol and spied it out. And they took in their hands some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us, and brought us word again and said, “It is a good land that the LORD our God is giving us.”
Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. And you murmured in your tents and said, “Because the LORD hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, ‘The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven. And besides, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.’” Then I said to you, “Do not be in dread or afraid of them. The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.” Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the LORD your God, who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go.
And the LORD heard your words and was angered, and he swore, “Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh. He shall see it, and to him and to his children I will give the land on which he has trodden, because he has wholly followed the LORD!” (Deut. 1:19–36)
So that you fully understand this story and the significance of Israel’s complaint, I need to set the scene for you. The people of Israel were the chosen children of the Most High God, the Creator of the universe, the sovereign planner of all things, the One who had redeemed them from Egypt and had sustained them in the wilderness. He had placed his covenant love on them and had promised not only that they would be his people but that he would provide for them a land. As the Lord Almighty and in defense of his people, he would defeat all the nations that stood in the way of Israel taking possession of what was theirs by the will of God.
Now the only thing that separated Israel from actually possessing what God had promised was the Jordan River. That river should have been the doorway to their victory; instead, its banks became the scene of their complaint.
They had sent spies into the land to check it out and collect some of the rich produce that grew there, but they collected something else—a whole lot of fear. They came back reporting that the people who lived in the land were not only taller than the Israelites but also lived in great, fortified cities. At this point, with hearts melting with fear, the people of Israel refused to leave their tents and take what God had given them. Instead they sat in their tents complaining against the Lord: “Because the LORD hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us” (Deut. 1:27). This statement exposes the problem. Israel didn’t have just a big-people problem. They didn’t have just a fortified-cities problem. They didn’t have just a “we’re tired after trekking through the wilderness and don’t want to have to fight for the land God promised” problem. No, at the bottom of their grumbling was an awe problem.
Of course, what they were facing was bigger than their natural ability. Of course, they would have to be willing to fight battles. Of course, the possession of the land would be difficult. Life in this fallen world is hard. God does orchestrate difficulties in my life that I would never have chosen to face. But the words of Israel demonstrate that their complaint was not just about their circumstances but about God. If praise is celebrating God’s awesome glory, then complaint is antipraise. Not only does complaint fail to recognize his grandeur, it questions his power and character. If you believe that God is the Creator and controller of all that is, then it is impossible to complain about your circumstances without complaining about God. Complaint is awelessness verbalized.
Awelessness that leads me to question God’s power and character will cause me to take my life into my own hands, and because I have taken my life into my own hands, I will rebel against what God calls me to do. This is what took place on the banks of the Jordan River. Far from simple grumbling about difficult circumstances, Israel’s complaint was deeply theological and morally rebellious. You simply cannot understand this story and walk away thinking that, for the believer, complaining is a little thing. This passage clearly shows that God does not view it as a little thing at all. He was swift in his critique and judgment. Because Israel questioned the Lord, they would not see the land of promise. How tragic! Let’s further unpack the awe problem in this narrative.
Five Questions That Steal or Seal Your Hope
It is quite clear that your view of God will inescapably shape your perspective on your circumstances. In this way your theology is like a lens through which you examine life. This means you never come at your circumstances from some happy place of neutrality. You and I are always evaluating our situation from the vantage point of vertical awe or awelessness. In some way, we, like the children of Israel, are always asking and answering five deeply theological questions, and the way that we answer them will push us toward hope or panic.
And it is important to say that you answer these questions in some way every day. Every day you and I theologize about our lives. In this way, our functional, street-level theology may fundamentally influence our daily living more than our formal theology. The unconscious theology that we embrace may differ significantly from the theology that we say we believe when we are making conscious theological commitments. The God in our formal outlines may be very different from the God we think about every day in those moments when we are unaware that we are thinking about him. You ask and answer these profoundly significant theological questions every day whether you are a pastor, a computer programmer, an office assistant, a student, or a plumber. And you do so in a state of either vertical awe or awe amnesia.
1. Is God good? Now you can rest assured that the goodness of God will confuse you. You see, what looks good from God’s perfect eternity-to-destiny perspective doesn’t always seem good to us at ground level. It is hard to accept that God knows better than we do. It is hard to admit that God can use difficulties for good in our lives. When it comes to what is good, it is very hard for us to stay on God’s agenda. And again the issue of awe lies at the heart of this. If I live at the center of my God-given capacity for awe—that is, if awe of self has replaced awe of God—then I will invariably conclude that God is not always good, and loads of complaints will follow.
If I am at the center, I will define good as what is comfortable, predictable, pleasurable, natural, and easy. The good life will be the easy life because awe of self will have replaced awe of God as the principal motivator of my life. So when difficulty comes my way, my default theological response will be to wonder why God is doing what he is doing and to question his goodness. In my early days of ministry, I was blown away by how many of the people whom I counseled were angry with God. I was amazed at how many people no longer assumed that God was good.
Now here’s what’s deadly about this. As I have mentioned earlier in this book and elsewhere, if you allow yourself to question God’s goodness, you will quit following his commands, and you will quit running to him for help because you will no longer rely on, follow, or seek the help of someone you no longer trust. But God is good. His goodness is the foundation stone of his awesome qualities. He never thinks, desires, says, or does what is evil. He is the definition of all that is good, right, and true. Everything he does is good in every way. His goodness is so bright and glorious it should leave us breathless, silent, and amazed. And if we are amazed at his goodness, we won’t panic in times of trouble, and we won’t refuse to do the hard things he calls us to do.
I wish I could say that I’ve never brought God into the court of my judgment or questioned his goodness, but I have. For three years I housed my aging father, whose sin had devastated our family. I hoped I would be an agent of his confession and repentance, but it never happened. One day he fell on the steps in my house, slipped into a coma, and died. In my view, there was nothing good about the whole story. Housing him seemed to have been a colossal waste. In a hospital elevator, all the pent-up anger came gushing out of me. I was glad that I was alone. The way I angrily questioned God’s goodness scared me. It was humbling that for even one moment I would allow myself to think that I knew better than God, that my “good” was better than the good he had willed for me. What about you? Does awe of God’s goodness interpret life for you? Or do the hardships of life cause you to question his goodness?
2. Will God do what he promised? Few questions in life are more important than this one. Since we are all small and weak, since we never really know what is going to happen next, and since God calls us to do difficult, sacrificial things, we need to know that his promises are reliable. Will he be with us always? Will he give us everything we need? Will he forgive us no matter what? Will his love last forever? Will he stay with the work of his grace until that work is done? Will he provide the guidance and protection that we need? Will he?
God’s promises are meant to move and motivate us. They are meant to instill hope. They are meant to give us courage. They are meant to defeat feelings of loneliness, inability, and fear. They are meant to give us peace when things around us are chaotic and confusing. God’s promises are meant to blow your mind and settle your heart. They are his gifts of grace to you. In your heart of hearts, you know you could never have earned the riches that he pours down on you. His promises are meant to leave you in awe of him and in wonder at the glory of his grace. His promises are designed to be the way that you interpret and make sense of your life.
I am amazed at the numbers of believers I meet who are in some state of spiritual paralysis because they no longer believe the promises of God. Because they don’t believe the promises of God, they don’t have much reason to continue doing the radical things that God calls every one of his children to do. When doubt replaces awe, you will soon give up on all the gospel disciplines of the Christian life. Your problem isn’t that life is hard. Your problem is that you’ve lost your awe of the God who made the promises that once motivated the way you dealt with life. Do you stand with hope and courage on the awesome promises of God? Or do you walk through the quicksand of questioning their reliability?
3. Is God in control? Here is a fundamentally important place for your awe to rest. In some ways, all the other questions rest on this one. It would make no good difference in life if God didn’t rule the places that resist his goodness. God’s promises are only as trustworthy as the extent of his control. He can only guarantee that he will do something in the places where he has absolute control. What good is his almighty power if he lacks the authority to exercise it? It is of no comfort to know that God is in control if he does not rule over the circumstances where his care is essential. Yes, all the comfort of God’s awesome qualities rests on his sovereign control over every situation, location, and person.
But here’s the problem: at ground level, your world doesn’t look to be under careful and wise control. In fact, at times it seems totally out of control. This gets us right back to the same place we have been with each of these questions. Will you let your interpretation of circumstances tell you who God is, or will you allow God’s awesome revelation of himself to interpret your circumstances for you? You see, people who live in fear, who beat themselves up with way too many “what if” questions, or who have trouble turning off their minds when they go to bed don’t have a circumstances problem; they have an awe problem. You and I will only rest in situations over which we have no control if we are in awe of the One who controls them all for his glory and for our good.
People who have to be in control don’t first have a power problem; they have an awe problem, which produces power hunger. A lack of awe at the sovereignty of God causes them to try to establish personal peace and safety by means of personal control. What about you? Has your awe of God’s infinite sovereignty freed you from both fear and the need to be in control?
4. Does God have the needed power? How do you measure the power of God? How can poor, feeble minds grasp that which is without limit? Scripture tells us that God comes to us with the same power by which he raised Christ from the dead. Now that’s a definition of ultimate power! What in the universe would be more powerful than the ability to speak life into a dead body? What could be a better definition of almighty power than to be able to rise up and walk away from being dead? There is no place where human beings are more powerless than in death.
If you’ve experienced the death of a loved one, you know what it is like. I stood next to my mom’s bed after she had died and wished for one more conversation, wished I could hear her say “I love you” one more time, wished that she could squeeze my hand and say it would be okay. I wished with all that was in me for more, but she was gone, and I was powerless to do anything about it.
God’s power is so great that he rules life and death. Now here’s why this matters. You will only have peace in the face of your own weaknesses, failures, foibles, and inabilities when you are in awe of God’s awesome power. You will only rise up to do what you don’t have the natural ability to do when you know that God’s awesome power is with you. Awe of God’s power produces courage in the face of weakness. Awe of God’s power enables you to admit your limits and yet live with courage and hope. Timidity, fear, denial, hiding, excusing, and running away are not first weakness problems but awe problems. I step into what is bigger than me because I know the One who is with me is bigger than what I am facing. What about you? How much of what you do is done out of fear and not faith? How often are you paralyzed by your weakness? Does awe of God’s power cause you to live a forward-moving and courageous life?
5. Does God care about me? Perhaps this is the question we’re most conscious of. It’s the question that the bullied teenager asks. It’s the question asked by the wife who has watched her marriage go sour. It’s the question the exhausted parent asks at the end of a very hard day with children. It’s the question asked by the lonely single woman. The man who has just lost his job asks this question. It’s what’s asked by the person who with sadness has left the church that has lost its way. It’s what the person suffering the weaknesses of old age asks. It’s what the person asks who is struggling through a long illness. It’s what you wonder about as you watch the surrounding culture coarsen and worsen.
God’s care is foundational. It lets me know that all that he is, he is for me. His care means he will be good for me. His care means he will do what he promised for me. His care means he will exercise his control for me. His care means he will unleash his awesome power for me. Awe of his care allows me to embrace the hope found in all of his other qualities. The Bible never debates God’s care; it assumes and declares it. It confronts you with the lavish nature of his mercy, love, patience, forbearance, grace, tenderness, and faithfulness. He is the ultimate loving Father. He is the completely faithful Friend. He is the One who stays closer than a brother. He alone will never leave you, no matter what. He is the One who never sends you without going with you. He is your protector, guide, defender, teacher, Savior, and healer. He never mocks your weakness but gives you strength. He never uses your sin against you but affords you forgiveness. He never plays favorites, never wants to give up on you, never gets exhausted or wishes he could quit. He never plays with you. He is never disloyal. His care is so awesome and so complete that nothing in your life’s experience in any way compares. He cares!
What about you? Do you go through times of disappointment and complaining because you have allowed yourself to question his care? The size of your hope is directly related to the level of your awe of God’s care.
So every word spoken in complaint, every murmur of grumbling is deeply theological. Our problem is not that the “good life” has passed us by, that people have failed us, or that life has been hard. All these things have happened to us because we live in a broken world. And if our contentment rests on life being easy, comfortable, and pleasurable, we’ll have no contentment this side of eternity. We complain so much not because we have horizontal problems but because we have a vertical problem. Only when the awe of God rules your heart will you be able to have joy even when people disappoint you and life gets hard. Awe means your heart will be filled more with a sense of blessing than with a sense of want. You will be daily blown away by what you have been given rather than being constantly disturbed by what you think you need. Awe produces gratitude, gratitude instills joy, and the harvest of joy is contentment.
Tomorrow there is a good possibility that complaint will be on your lips, and when it is, cry out for your Savior’s help. He alone can open your eyes to his glory. His grace alone can satisfy your heart. And as you cry out, remember that he is so rich in grace that he will never turn a deaf ear to your cries.