There's a Complaint for That

"Do all things without grumbling or disputing, so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world." - Philippians 2:14-15

I gotta tell you, this verse is a bit rich coming from me. Yes, I blog today as a shining example of what not to do in the area of complaining. I have days when I am aware of what comes out of my mouth and I manage to stop talking before complaints erupt, but I have a lot more days when the grumbling pours out. Not my best quality, I'm afraid.

Yesterday, Chad and I worked the polls for a city election. Now, I'm sure everyone in the US has heard from an early age the rather unfortunate adage, "If you don't vote, then you have no right to complain." And the reason I'm sure everyone has heard it is that I heard it over and over again from voters yesterday. I even read it in a news article this morning. Sigh...

Ah, the old days of voting.

I'm going to take an unpopular stance here and suggest that if preserving your right to complain is your motivation for voting, you probably should stay home. Honestly, we'd all be happier if more people gave up their right to complain (including me, remember?). And then there's that minor detail that we have no "right" to complain to begin with-- it's not in the Constitution, and as you already read, it's certainly not God-given. Now, if your reason for voting is that you want to use the rights that you have and add your voice to the decision-making process, and then if your elected officials don't deliver on what they said when they were looking for your vote and you want to call them on it, by all means, go ahead. But please, please don't approach the ballot box (bit of a quaint word, that, isn't it?) bent on seeing to it that you preserve your right to complain until the next election comes round. That's hardly productive.

Unfortunately, I fear that this is an area in which many Christians are as bad offenders as anyone else. It's so easy, and in our culture, it's the path of least resistance, to start grumbling when things aren't 100% perfect (which, by the way, is all the time). But I'm sure there's a better way. I'm sure we I can try harder to restrain the complaining. And I'm sure that complaining could be replaced by encouragement.

What do you do to avoid too much complaining?