May 19, 2006
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Reflections on the Sin of Whining
Reasons for whining (brainstorming here, folks) - don't know or understand God's character, unbelief, self pity, weakness, selfishness, lack of discipline, unable to wait, general spirit of dissatisfaction, I want my will more than I want God's, God is not on the throne in my heart, misplaced priorities, stubbornness, narrowmindedness, need to be in control, unwillingness to change, unwillingness to examine myself, unwilling to accept discipline, don't see myself correctly, don't see others correctly, don't see God correctly, see myself as the center of the universe, see myself as master and not servant, wanting praise and recognition and not getting it, I don't get my own way, I didn't get what I wanted the way I wanted it, think this is beyond my ability, it looks impossible - any others?
Ecclesiastes 3:4 "...a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance..."
First, some of the pilgrim's thoughts on whining. Whining is his devil, something that he is always fighting to overcome, and it was he who coined the term the "sin of whining." He said that it is when you sit and torture yourself. You know that you are not happy, but you don't want to make the effort to change anything. You don't want to take action to become happy, because you have essentially already given up, and whining is an admission of the fact. If you are genuinely doing legitimate mourning over a sorrowful event, then it is all right to give yourself a rest. But don't stay there, because that is stagnation and the death of creativity. Rest gives one energy to create, but whining gives us no energy and produces nothing. He considers using a tough situation as a springboard to creativity as one of the highest virtues.
OK, now you get to listen to some of my ramblings based on the pilgrim's ramblings. There are times of legitimate mourning, when we feel genuine sadness over an injury or the loss of something precious. But when the mourning continues well beyond what is reasonable then there is the possibility that it has become whining. A whiner has accepted defeat and surrendered to it.
Mourning heals with time and rest, and the mourner may be left all the stronger by the process. Whining does not heal. It only festers and paralyzes, and poisons all those around it. Mourning is the natural result of an injury or a loss, but whining is an attitude, the result of our response to the injury or loss. We have a choice in our response. We can respond negatively, take no action, sit and stagnate. If we do this we are useless to God, ourselves and others, and enter a sort of dead state. Not only are we useless to others, we infect them with our discouraging negativity and drag them down as well. Discourage... Now there is another interesting point. We rob others of the courage to dare to take action or to rejoice in the life that God has given them. We can choose to respond positively, take action to be happy and live. We can continue to move and create, as God intended for us to do. We can choose to get our eyes off of ourselves and on to God and others, and infect them with encouragement, which would be to give others the courage to become all that God intended them to be. God created us to glorify Him through the creative gifts that He has given us. If we choose to sit and whine and accomplish nothing, are we not guilty of refusing to fulfill the purpose for which we were created? That is truly a great sin! Right you are, pilgrim!
Rambling continued...
So what should we do when life serves us up a big helping of caca boudin? (check this out on a translation site, French to Englisch) Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
Recently I have been reading "Deep River" by Shusaku Endo (for whom the pilgrim is named, by the way), a Japanese Christian writer, and in the story there is a character Otsu, who has been done a very bad deal which causes him to become a priest. Otsu reflects on the fact that although he had thrown God away by allowing himself to be seduced by a woman, God had used the sin to bring Otsu even closer to Himself. The woman played with Otsu and then tossed him aside, but it convinced Otsu that Jesus also knew what it meant to be abandoned, and that even though Otsu had sinned, he gained a deep conviction that Jesus and His love would never abandon him. Knowing that he would never be abandoned by Christ, Otsu chose to use the hurt that he had suffered as a springboard to increase his devotion to God, and expressed amazement at the way God acted as a magician to turn things around.
There is some mumbo-jumbo in the book about evil in good and good in evil that is an idea that is confusing at best, and could be a liscense to sin. I am not saying it is all right to go out and sin because God can make use of it anyway. I am saying that God is powerful enough to make the effect of our salvation retroactive. The sin was not right, it was damning. But God is powerful enough to use even our sins and other caca that happens to work out for our good. All things work together for good means all things. I'll bet that Satan was giggling in total glee when Judas betrayed Christ. I'll wager that Satan thought that he had won as the Roman soldiers hammered Jesus to the cross. But God turned what happened totally around and worked all of the events together to accomplish His eternal purposes and our salvation through Christ's death on the cross.
When caca happens, we can choose to focus on ourselves or on God. Sometimes he us using it to get our attention, and we can choose to criticize or to praise Him. He calls us to stop whining in our circumstances and rejoice in Him. He calls us to discover His holy, loving character; His responsible and caring provision; His power and control of all things. God calls us to discover Him, but at the same time, God is not about Himself, which totally amazes me. Where does all of His love, attention and energy go? Totally to us, even to the point of His own death! If God is not about Himself, then why should I think that I have the right to enjoy the luxury of being about myself?
Why is it that when we pray for patience, we get irritations? Or why do we get caca when we need strength and perseverance? Just as irritations gives us patience, trials can give us strength. Suppose you get a box of caca, but God promises there are diamonds mixed in? Are we willing to trust God when he says that the diamonds are there, and are we willing to ask him for spectacles that will help us to see things His way and find the diamonds? Are we willing to let God burn the caca in us away so that only the diamonds are left? We can also use the caca as fertilizer to grow lovely flowers. Perhaps we should also ask ourselves whether the caca is a trial or whether it is just something that we are producing ourselves. Sitting and whining is nothing more than the production of further caca, which leaves a stench in the nose of everyone. Or, maybe we need some caca once in awhile to get us moving. If we are always totally satisfied, then we are content to just stay where we are with no pain and no gain. God loves us too much to leave us as we are.
Further topic for future rambling: The Israelites murmuring in the wilderness as they were sitting in Shittim. (Numbers 25) Hey, they really were! Check it out for yourself.
Whining allows me to be a victim and prevents me from self examination or improvement, because my problem is always somebody else's fault and never mine. This puts me in a favorable and comfortable position of not having to take any action to change my situation, and frees me to continue to cause my own problems.
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