Whining And Dining

By John Stallings



……And the Lord spake unto Moses saying, I have heard the murmurings of the Children of Israel…Exodus 16:11-12

Do all things without complaining & disputing…Phil.2:14


Welcome to the fine art of whining.

Most of us, no matter what profession we’re in, constantly get our fill of whining. Pastors, teachers, restaurant owners, sales people, politicians, parents, you name it, all get more than their share of whining. At Malls, restaurants, book stores church and almost anywhere else you go, one of the hallmarks of the experience will be children whining and fussing. Its part of the package and we’ve pretty much learned to accept it.

Yesterday, Juda and I flew home from Philadelphia where we attended the wedding of our eldest grandson which was absolutely stunning. It was a joyous occasion and I might add the experience of a lifetime. As we boarded the plane in Philly, the lady in front of us was already in a fight with her baby son. Since she looked at us and smiled I smiled back and quipped; “I guess we’ll learn junior’s name by the time we get to Orlando.” She clearly didn’t get it and kept smiling. My statement was prophetic. She screamed that baby’s name about six-hundred times in the next two hours. I have a special move that would stop behavior like that in a New York minute but I didn’t dare tell the lady about it.

Pastors aren’t exempt from whiners but the one thing they can’t say is, “don’t come whining to me.” I have seen nice church folk sit down to a free meal & complain because the forks were placed on the wrong side of the plates.

People in most walks of life get thick-skinned and learn to ignore the carping and develop the philosophy, “The dogs keep barking but the caravan moves on.”

Most people think happiness is related to money or a relationship. Some think happiness is some sort of “physical shape” or a vacation destination. They truly believe they at all times are one shopping trip from happiness. What is it for you that you think will make you happy? If it’s money, what does that figure look like to you? Is it 10, 15, 50, 100,000 dollars in the bank? Is it when you can pay off all your bills or buy all the clothes, cars or houses you want?

Will it really make you stop grumbling & complaining & make you more delightful & content so that you no longer argue & dispute with others?

QUESTION—WHAT EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCE CAN CHANGE YOUR INTERNAL STATE?

Maybe you’ll blow these questions off & answer smugly, “Brother, I’m happy because I have Jesus.” O.K. Fine, after all I was just throwing some questions out there anyway. And here’s why;

81% of us want more than we earn.
94% of us know we’re too materialistic, yet…
89% of us expect to “have it all.”

Per capita we are the richest country in history yet we are also the most depressed people in the history of the world. We are also the most bored & discontent. We have the highest suicide rate, murder rate & committed insane in institutions than any nation. There are almost 100 nations in this world where the average person spends less on themselves per year than we spend on our garbage bags. We have over twice as many Malls as we do high schools. 75% of the people in Malls right now have no real idea why they are there & went for “retail therapy” trying to purchase happiness. That “buzz” will only last 15-20 minutes & then buyer’s remorse sets in.

The average American has over 8 thousand dollars worth of credit card debt. The average American will spend more on themselves for watches & jewelry & clothes than they will spend on education for themselves & their children. Over the last 20 years the number of items in supermarkets has grown by 200%. We work more than any other nation so we can buy more things but we have less time to enjoy the things we worked so hard to get. We are lucky if we get 2 weeks of paid vacation per year, while most Europeans take 1-3 months off for vacation.

The average American parent spends 6 hours of the week shopping & 40 minutes playing with their kids. Our suicide & divorce rate tripled from 1970-1999. Our nation comprises only 4.6% of the world’s population yet we use 40% of the world’s resources. American’s are born consumers & probably the greatest consumption is sex. America spends 32 billion dollars a year on pornography which is more than baseball, basketball & football combined.

Americans are 10 times more depressed & 40 times more violent than we were in the 1950s. We have bought the great lie that possessions & affluence means happiness & freedom. Our consumerism has given rise to horribly unhappy lives & we’ve become slaves to our possessions. In simple terms, we think the more stuff we have the happier we’ll be, & it hasn’t happened.

We’re driven to buy things to make us happy & are so in debt we live in fear of losing things we don’t even own. We can’t rest & enjoy the fruit of our labors because we don’t own the fruit. We can hardly walk through the mall without being stopped by an “opinion pollster” acting as our friend when all he/she wants us to do is tell them how to better sell things to us. I stopped co-operating with them years ago. Buying is bred into us from the first moment we were able to formulate thoughts using everything from cartoons to the backs of cereal boxes.

Discontentment with the way things are is hammered into us & our children. Materialism & thirst for things has led our children to never be happy with what they have. Instead of using our hands on the backsides of unruly kids like our parents did, we too often leave them undisciplined & just work harder to buy them more things.

Discontent has bred impatience which is another mark of our times, along with long lines, rude people, high prices, traffic jams, terrible drivers & crying babies. Road rage & abused & killed babies are byproducts of this kind of impatience. Then some people have a “mid-life crisis.”

What's that all about? A mid-life crisis happens when folk realize there is less life ahead than behind & they haven’t gotten all the “stuff” they’d dreamed of. Spurred by this, many of them then have “one last flaring up before fading out.” Many little red sports cars, & or, face & body work is then sold to them.

PEOPLE BRING THIS CONSUMERISM INTO THE CHURCH.

They want shorter, funnier sermons. They want less theology & they want catchy music. They want more convenient service times. They want to hear less about sin & more teaching on love. Do you get the point?

What we seem to have forgotten is that God doesn’t exist for us, we exist for Him. The church doesn’t exist for us; we exist to be the church. The pastor doesn’t exist to be our fishing buddy. I know it hurts to hear it but the world doesn’t revolve around us. What is needed in the church is for us to be turned away from being consumers to being true worshippers of the living God.


There’s one thing I’ve learned that I can share with you. The more I whine the more negative and miserable I become. Whining and complaining will sooner or later cast you in a sea of negativity that will rob you of energy, enthusiasm, and life itself. It’s just a small step from whining to cynicism. I once heard a definition of a cynic. “A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; they are prematurely disappointed in the future.” But really, that attitude isn’t too Christian is it?

When I get all whiny, I start to talk about how hopeless everything is and how useless it is to try. However, I always pull myself out of it for the one simple fact; I know that’s not who I am and that’s not where I want to be. I know that if I stay there with the moaning and the groaning, I’m going to hurt myself and everyone around me. Once you’re “ in the soup” of complaining negativity, it doesn’t really matter if you got there by whining about small, imaginary things or real issues, you’re still “In the soup” and are going to be cooked.

WHINING IS CONTAGIOUS

Ask Moses and Aaron. As you know the Israelites got out into the desert and went negative. They had faced down Pharaoh and escaped the Egyptian Armored Divisions. They had walked a super hi-way through the Red sea. Their enemies were in the land God had promised them and they were digging wells for them and building homes and roads for them. But what do they do? They start getting negative and asking, “Are we lost?” They don’t give Moses a plaque with the names of the twelve tribes on it. They don’t offer him a decorative quilt. They don’t even say thank you. They don’t have a thanksgiving service. They say, “The deserts too hot.” “How much further is it?” “I’m hungry”, and so on.

Isn’t it interesting that God hears their complaints. You might think that our great God would turn a deaf ear to their grumblings and whining. You might think that God would be so big that He’d say, “Well, they’re only human, what else is to be expected of them.” But no, God hears it and takes it serious. There are two sides to that. One is the side that God is attentive to his children and hears each cry. The other side, which isn’t such good news, is that God heard these bitter cries and took them serious; as a matter of fact he seems to take it personally.

Then God starts to give them Manna twice a day. I don’t know what manna is but I like to think of it as cinnamon-buns served with boiling hot coffee. But what do they do? Do they praise God from whom all blessings flow? No, they whine. They’re eating, they’re full, they’re feasting on the riches of Gods grace, but they’re whining and dining at the same time.

The problem now becomes, there’s only so much you can do with manna.

• Fried manna
• Boiled manna
• Baked manna
• Manna fritters
• Manna and banana
• Manna scampi
• Manna etouffe’

Then the Israelites starting wanting meat to eat; they whined so much that God finally said; O.K you want meat to eat? I’ll give you meat until it comes out your noses. Really! You can look it up. God puts them on the Adkins diet, all meat.

Do you want me to tell you what this looks like to me? It looks like God has His limits. He has a place He comes to where He says, “Get a grip & put your problems into perspective.”

IF SOMETHING IS BOTHERING YOU SO BAD YOU’VE STARTED GOING ON AND ON ABOUT IT, ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS.

• Ask yourself if the thing you’re bothered about really matters. If it really matters, you need to do something about it. If it doesn’t, let it go. Before you dump it on a friend, a co-worker or anyone else, ask yourself what’s really bothering you. What is it you’re really unhappy about? More often than not our whines are symptoms of what’s going on inside of us and sometimes it hard to face up to what it really is. Are you talking to the right person? If not, it’s triangulating or gossiping and that’s going to hurt everybody involved. There’s no use whining to someone who can’t do anything about it but get negative with you.

• Realize the effect that your complaint will have on the person you share it with. It takes 10 positive remarks to balance out a single negative one. Is your complaint going to be worth the damage it might do?

• Consider ways you may have contributed to the problem and ways you might help solve it. Consider also that others may have a completely different way of looking at the problem and don’t be offended if they don’t see it your way.

• Finally, be sure you express your problem if you do give voice to it, within a context of mutual respect and concern. Seek to find solutions not punish. Seek solutions that will build toward better relationships later on not leave people frustrated and discouraged. Unity is still the Christians goal and severed relationships are serious in Gods eyes.

• Don’t let a minor complaint become a major division.


EVERY BATTLE ISN’T ARMAGEDDON.

In closing, if you are someone who needs a prayer partner to help you pray something through, that’s not whining.

If you are passionate about some issue, and need to vent, that’s not whining.

If someone has hurt your feelings and you want to talk, talk to them, that’s not whining.

Life is too precious to fritter away on negativity. Our missions are too important to be sacrificed to the nibbling of minnows. We all need positive people to help keep us from becoming negative. We should do that for one another, don’t you think? God is patient with us and we should be patient with one another.

May we never get so thick skinned that we fail to relate to others who may have a burr under their saddle. May we put things into perspective and keep the carping down to a minimum. We have so much more to be grateful for that we do to complain about.

Paul speaks to the complainers in the Philippians 2 & tells them to;

Work out your salvation (not work for our salvation) in fear & trembling. Vr.12

In other words we’re to work out our salvation with fear & trembling without complaining & disputing. The word complaining in the Greek is gongusmos which means guttural grumbling sound when you are disgruntled & frustrated. It’s like someone talking about someone behind your back & under their breath so you can’t quiet hear it. It’s the same kind of grumbling we read about in 1 Corinthians 10:10 that Paul used to describe the Israelites who grumbled & were “destroyed by the destroyer.” 14,700 grumblers were destroyed & not allowed to enter the promise land because Korah & his company murmured against Moses & Aaron & ultimately against God.

God is a loving father who gives us many good things & too often we start to worship these things instead of Him. That’s why we get miserable because when the excitement of these things wears off we want a better one, a bigger one & a faster one. Our goal is to be true worshippers of God. When we worship Him instead of the things He gives us our lives become a wellspring of true joy that ends in happiness instead of disillusion & death.

MAY GOD GIVE US A GRATEFUL SPIRIT SO THAT WE MIGHT SHARE WITH THE WORLD OUR REASON FOR HOPE, OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST.


Blessings,


John