The Sin We Call Small
Day 6: How grumbling reveals the heart and how grace trains us into gratitude.
Big Theology, Personal Application
We don’t struggle with the abstract things said in the pulpit; we struggle with their application. So, for example, if I say, “Language is a gift from God that ought to reshape our humanity,” you might respond, “Well, that’s beautiful, Pastor Brito. I am going to quote you on that.” But if I say, “Quit grumbling like a spoiled child,” then you might say, “Well, that’s way too personal.”
Theology in big categories is necessary to inform our application, but we will end up in the self-help section of Barnes & Noble when we apply without first doing theology. When we apply poorly, we end up with all sorts of strange notions of life, thinking certain things are acceptable when the biblical reality says otherwise.
The wilderness provided Israel with many opportunities to test God’s application of his law. And inevitably, when God said he would do something out of the ordinary, the people responded:
“You grumbled in your tents and said, ‘The LORD hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky.’”
In that same passage in Deuteronomy, grumbling is dealt with harshly. It is viewed as distrust in Yahweh to the point where God disallows Israel to enter the land. So grumbling is not a little thing. Luke says it is out of the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks. The Bible dissects our problems with clarity when it comes to grumbling, but our functional response is to say, “My children, my car, my cat, my boss, the Democrats, my spouse, or whatever else made me angry.” However you parse that out, you still have to deal with grumbling in the Bible, which is unmistakably a condition of the heart.
The Wilderness of Complaint
Why do we complain? We often complain because we want a life without obstacles. We want self-parenting children, a marriage without work, our lattes without waiting. We want an obstacle-free life. But God works through obstacles to mature his people. In Exodus, God did not transport the Israelites across the Red Sea; he walked them through the miracle of divided waters and dead Egyptians.
Grumbling and complaining are also indications of our desire for a Bible-less life. When we complain, we express ourselves in a world devoid of authority. To grumble is to speak as if we lived in an evolutionary universe, to find life in creation instead of the Creator, to seek salvation in our outbursts instead of God’s Son.
You may think this exaggerates things. I wish it did so that I could grumble without consequences. But the Bible is a picky book. It digs into our favorite sins and, with the Apostle Paul, leaves no room for exceptions: do everything without grumbling or complaining.
Of course, the Psalmists share their frustrations with God, and people in the Bible express sorrow. But that is exactly what we often want: a justification for rashness and whininess. “Tell me the exceptions so I can justify my grumbling.” Yet Scripture does not give that pass. Biblical lament speaks to God; grumbling speaks against him.
Grace for Grumblers
I remember sitting in a counseling room with a distraught dad many years ago who was frustrated by his daughter’s sins. “But she complains about everything. She is never happy.” When he put those words together, he paused and made a passing statement: “I guess she is a lot like me.”
Grumbling about life communicates a worldview to your children, which they will likely imitate. You may think all hope is lost, that complaining has become routine. But that is why we need grace, not because we have not struggled with something for a long time, but because we have struggled with something like complaining up to a couple of minutes before reading this.
Grace comes to shower complaints with thanksgiving. That is what the Gospel does. Grace changes our tendency to blame everyone else for our woes and directs us to look into our own hearts for our sins. Grumbling rejects the ministry of Jesus because grumbling does not want the truth; it wants what it wants.
For some of us, grumbling has become a way of life. While your thanksgiving scale ranges from ten to fifteen pounds, your grumbling weight no longer shows because it has exceeded acceptable limits. How do we reverse that? We join the happy club of grumblers in need of Jesus. We rest in Jesus’ sovereignty as grateful saints instead of artful grumblers. And that is the beginning of a new orientation for many of us.
Lent with gratitude.
Notations
I finally completed Crime and Punishment. When I finished, I walked into the house and told my wife I needed a minute alone. The Epilogue carried a kind of hope that unsettled and stirred my soul at once.
That same evening, we attended an Inklings gathering with friends, and I had the chance to read aloud several portions from the closing chapter, where Raskolnikov walks toward the police station. It remains a profoundly moving tribute to Sonya’s innocence and to the almost angelic, even messianic, role she plays in his life.
Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov is repeatedly startled by his own instinct to justify himself, even while he senses the inevitability of justice. Dostoevsky forces the reader to watch a man arguing with reality itself. The most surprising element for me was how powerfully the law convicts a man at the sight of beauty, and how despair grows wherever there is no transcendent purpose to anchor human suffering.
Dostoevsky does not merely describe crime and punishment; he describes the human soul trying to live without resurrection — and discovering it cannot.