I belong to a trade forum for General Motors automotive technicians where we discuss problems with vehicles, problems with the tools we must use, dealership life, and even general topics.
A few years back they added a feature where one could react to posts with a simple thumbs up, a trophy, a laughing face, a sad face, or a confused face. Each of these are saved in a score, so the more your posts are reacted to, the faster the number under your name goes up. The highest reactions go to those who announce they quit. Next highest goes to the people who complain about General Motors, the dealership, or the labor time guide. The more you complain, the faster your score goes up. Meanwhile, positive posts get very little feedback. The reward system conditions the participants to complain.
The conditioning to complain isn’t just limited to online interactions. Among coworkers we grouse about the weather, the difficulty of the project, the equipment, the perceived lack of caring, the boss’s days off, the owner’s new personal car, our wages, etc. Few people care about the positive stories, but they sure get engaged when there is something to complain about. We are conditioned to complain because that is rewarded.
Among friends we complain about taxes, the weather, the car, the house, the climate control, the church, the pastor, the mission project, our job, our spouse, our parents, our children… Often, we get so caught up in the negative that we don’t even see the positive. It’s snowing again. Did you thank God that He cleans our black hearts and makes them as white as that winter wonder land? Or did you complain about some aspect of the fluffy white, like shoveling it, the dangerous drive, or the power getting knocked out? In another instance you find a flat tire when you get out to the car in the morning. Did you thank God that the car started? Did you even thank Him for the 30 minutes it took to change it and how late it made you to work (but unbeknown to you, spared you from a life altering collision)? Or were these just irritations that elicited unkind complaints?
Complaining is as old as the sinful human condition, but nowhere is it more evident than in Exodus through Deuteronomy. There were complaints before Exodus 14:10, but by this point Israel had witnessed God bringing them out of the land of Egypt by a mighty hand. However, they were conditioned to complain, and as soon as they saw the army of Egypt on their rear, and the Red Sea at their front, the complaining began. Here God once again proved His marvelous intervention and deliverance, preventing the Egyptians from attacking while He opened the Red Sea, and led them across. Once across, He allowed the Egyptians to advance and once the whole of the army was in the sea, He closed the waters over them. Such a miraculous intervention should have been enough to cause the people to trust God implicitly through all the trials to come. However, they were conditioned to complain.
Complaining is bad enough, but we don’t stop there. It isn’t enough just to speak the words of discontent, but that discontent leads to action. Small discontent led to murmuring about bitter water, lack of food, lack of water, and the list goes on, each complaint becoming more strident until open rebellion developed in the camp. Demands were issued for flesh food. Moses’ brother and sister tried to usurp the authority God gave him. It was in this state that Israel came to the border of Canaan, and God gave them a test to see whether they were ready to possess the land.
“Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel, of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them” (Numbers 13:2).
Twelve men were sent, men who had seen the miraculous intervention of God, men who had witnessed the 10 plagues in Egypt, men who had walked on dry land between walls of water in the Red Sea, and then witnessed the sea swallow the army of Egypt, men who had seen water come from a rock, and heard God speak from a mountain. They had every evidence that God could do even greater things than this. Yet, by their association, 10 of them were conditioned to complain. As they saw the land, they didn’t see the opportunity for God to demonstrate His might, but rather they compared their own frailty to the might of the locals. By their conditioning to look only at the negatives, they missed the opportunity to see the positives. They brought back their complaints and reported them as if God were not powerful enough to topple the cities of mere humans and fell giants with a word.
Two men were not conditioned to complain. We know little of their past for Caleb is not mentioned before this episode, while Joshua was a military commander in their first battle and assistant to Moses. Their actions tell a very different story from their ten compatriots. When the other men express their doubts and complain about the task at hand, scripture says, “And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it’” (Numbers 13:30). At this point those conditioned to complain resorted to old habits:
“The land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eateth up (devours) the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” (Numbers 13:32,33).
From this report, the people, conditioned to complain, raised their voice and wept, then resorted to what they had trained themselves to do, and began complaining, only they had at this point advanced beyond the general griping of their early experience into hardened rebellion. It wasn’t enough to simply bellyache about misfortune, but to actively do something about it, like appoint a captain and return to Egypt (Numbers 14:4). The faithful two made one last attempt to stop the rebellion, saying,
“The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us; their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not” (Numbers 14:7-9).
“But all the congregation bade stone them with stones” (Numbers 14:10).
What faith to be able to speak boldly and positively in the face of a congregation when all about them was complaining and rebellion. How easy it is to go along with the crowd, to accept the influence of our compatriots who are complaining, to voice our complaints ourselves, rather than trusting God.
My pay cycle is two weeks, and I ended up with several vehicles that that required a lot more attention than I can collect for. At the end of two weeks (including working one Sunday) or 95 hours in the shop, I had flagged 44 hours. Two days I came home so discouraged because I knew how little time was flagged, and I had worked hard all day and added no time to the total. As I opened my mouth to whine and complain, the above story came to my mind. What bleaker picture could one have than to face a congregation of people in excess of 1 million souls, to attempt to encourage them to trust the God who’s visible presence is represented right in front of them by the pillar of cloud in the day and fire at night, and they instead pick up stones to execute you? Four men out of hundreds of thousands had not conditioned themselves to complain and one was only recently converted (Aaron). They were not given over to doubts. They trusted the God who had miraculously led to continue to lead them as He promised.
Praise God for Godly wives who speak encouragement to their discouraged husbands. “Have you praised God for these trials?” I wanted to snap at her, but the cell phones we have do great at muting outgoing when they have incoming, and she was on a roll, so she couldn’t hear when I tried to speak and just kept going. “Remember the story of the lady whose electricity was cut off, and how her friend told her to praise God, and the lady wanted to take the friend’s head off instead?” I remembered the story (share the link so others can hear it). “Remember how God worked it out that because her electricity was cut off, she didn’t go to jail? Have you praised God for this trial?”
So, I am at work the next day, working on one of those vehicles for free, and my socket falls off my extension, plinks through the components, and lands on the floor under the truck. I’m already struggling to praise God that I’m working for free, and now I must stop and go fetch that socket. The thought enters my mind, “Have you praised God in all situations?”
“Praising God for my socket falling on the floor?” How ridiculous is that? But I pause. “Lord, thank you that it didn’t get stuck in the vehicle.” It’s a simple thing to bend over and pick it up. I’m not so physically broken at this point that I can’t, so I pick it up, and go back to work. It falls off a few minutes later, rattles through the components, and lands on the floor. It’s a little easier this time to say, “Thank you, Lord, that it didn’t get stuck in the truck.” A few minutes later it falls off again, and I repeat the process.
“What are you going to do if it does get stuck in the truck? Are you still going to praise God?” I hesitated. “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). A moment later the ratchet slipped, and I heard the “plink” of the socket falling off, and then nothing. It was stuck in the car. “Father, thank you for the challenges that teach me to give you thanks in every situation. Please help me find this socket.” I grabbed my flashlight and began searching, finally spotting it on top of the power steering motor. “Thank you, Lord, for helping me find it.”
Paying Off Debts
We made a commitment to get out of debt. When we moved to Arkansas in November, we owed $66,000 and last year’s income was not much over half of that. The debt is a saddle that has kept us from going into any kind of full-time ministry, for the borrower truly is slave to the lender. My wife and I both long to do work that matters for eternity, yet we haven’t taken any opportunity because of the debt. The move to Arkansas was a miraculous set of circumstances, and in the process, God sent a buyer for our biggest financial drain, a rental house we owned in Tennessee that was taking about $200 a month out of our budget, and which we couldn’t afford to fix up to sell. Right off the top there went over $28,000 of the debt and plugged a big hole in the budget. That followed up with a great week in January where I was able to take care of $1400 in debt and save having to face the judge in court over a car that was repossessed in 2018. However, this brought me to the point where I realized we had to have a written budget if we were going to make this happen.
So, I sat down and wrote out the budget, wrote out the debts, and figured out what we needed to make it happen. From an unexpected source, more money came in to allow us to knock out $2200 in bad medical debts and saved another trip before the judge. My paycheck for the following pay period went into the budget with nothing left over, but with no gaps either. We were able to pay off another $30 to knock out our smallest debt. So, I then had the 44-hour pay period. I sat down with the budget and looked at how far we could make it stretch. It covered the bills and left $83 to feed the family of 5 (including 2 teens and 1 preteen) for two weeks, or we could leave the phone bill unpaid (and incur a $5.75 late fee) and have enough to feed our family. It wasn’t a choice either of us liked, and we both took it before the Lord in prayer.
About 10 in the morning, my boss texted me and said, “I forgot to tell [payroll] to put your training on your check. I’ll have her write you a check today for it.” I had four one-hour long classes, and three 20-minute classes I had turned in, so five hours. While that wasn’t enough to cover the phone bill, it at least would help fill in a few gaps in the food, and God has been supplying our need for fresh fruits and vegetables through the church food pantry where my wife and children volunteer every Tuesday, so I paused to thank Him for helping my boss remember. That afternoon, I got the direct deposit stub for the training deposit. I was expecting a little over $100. Instead it was something over $400. I knelt right there by my toolbox and thanked God for meeting our needs. When the shock subsided, I ran the math, and they made up the 16-hour difference between the 44-hours I flagged and the 60-hours I need to make the budget meet.
I don’t know what God would have done had I gone with my conditioning and kept on complaining. I suspect it would have been another long trip into the desert to try to learn that lesson again. I won’t promise that I won’t have to go learn some more, but this time, this time was simply amazing.
Russell Wickham seeks the Lord with all his heart (Jeremiah 29:12).