Complaint ... from the best seller to be please feel free to edit/suggest

Complaint


It was a father/son moment. My third son Jonathan and I were having a pizza lunch together at one of the large, not to be named, pizza shops. The bad news was the pizza. The good news was the pizza and the price.

I had picked Jonathan up from school and we went to enjoy pizza and the normal parental prying session. Why do parents have to get so personal! Anyway, we ordered our pizza, waited as patiently as possible for a lively junior higher and a busy pastor. (Neither one of us waits well) We kept looking toward the kitchen door with anticipation.

The pizza finally arrived, saying a very few brief words of thanks, I suspended my prying and we dug in. If anticipation is half of the enjoyment … we were missing half the fun. The pizza was cold with barely a brushing of tomato sauce and just a little bit too tough for my 50 year old teeth.

Being in an assertive mood, I called the waiter over and pointed out the injustice of having trusted such a fine institution to receive a quality product and received instead that which was so far below reasonable expectations. The waiter was all apologies and quickly returned to the kitchen. Ten minutes later we received our pizza, hot and steaming, with too MUCH sauce. Topping it all off, the waiter said, the manager says the pizza is free today. It was a very cool deal that my son was able to see me at my courageous best. I stood up for my rights and that poor waiter never had a chance. My son was seriously impressed about the free pizza we enjoyed.

Not long after we were in a restaurant with the family. It hadn’t been 5 minutes after receiving our meals that Jonathan, following my stalwart example saying, this spaghetti is terrible, tell the waitress we want free spaghetti. He had learned his lesson well … the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

We live in a complaining society. We deserve a break today. We deserve to be treated well. If we are inconvenienced, ignored, or even if fate deals us a bad hand someone needs to hear about it. When life shakes you up, the “path of least resistance” response is complaint. If we take an objective step back and consider the value of complaint, there is little benefit.

Henri Nouwen, in The Return of the Prodigal Son, has an insightful perspective on the nature of complaint:

One thing I am sure. Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive. Whenever I express my complaints in the hope of evoking pity and receiving the satisfaction I so much desire, the result is always the opposite of what I tried to get. A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection.

I may still send my cold pizza back, but the salient point is that, complaint is not a response of faith and maturity. Complaint is wishful petulant thinking … wishing in a self focused way that I would never have to face the pain, trials, and loss of living in a world where pain, disease, ignorance, and sin are a reality. Chapter Four will focus on the faith decision to “live your faith”, as an alternative to complaint, escape, blame etc. but for now … the focus is upon complaint as a negative response to the crises of life.