I recently received a letter from a man who wrote multiple pages of eloquent persuasion trying to convince me that we don’t choose our attitudes, and therefore we’re not responsible for them. He wanted to blame circumstances and other people and a host of secondary influences, all of which may play a part, but do not control us. We are the ones in control, and we do choose our attitudes.
At this point, you may be asking, “What exactly do you mean by attitude?” Let’s get a definition stated right now, because if we’re going to be talking about attitudes for ten chapters, we should all be on the same page.
Attitudes are patterns of thinking.
That’s the first thing. Attitudes are patterns of thinking. You develop a way of thinking about things—a way of approaching life. Every single person, including you, has patterns of thinking; a way that you think about life. It goes back to the time when you were very young.
Imagine for a moment that you and I are observing a toddler who is holding a large, red, rubber ball. Before we can ask any questions, the child speaks.
“What are you looking at? It’s my ball. It’s not your ball.” Wow, what an attitude!
Now that attitude may be influenced by his parents, or the fact that he needs a rest, or a cookie, or whatever, but still he is choosing.
We continue watching that two-year-old and his red ball as he tosses it up in the air and catches it. All of sudden, right in the middle of his nice playtime, he drops the ball, and everyone freezes to see what will happen next. Will he be upset about the fact that he dropped the ball? Will he get angry because he liked it a lot better in his hands than on the ground? We hold our breath and wait to see what attitude he will choose. Over the next few years, he will “drop many balls,” and each time he will choose his attitude. Over time, his whole view of life will be shaped by a pattern of thinking—the attitude—he establishes. He has many attitudes to choose from.
1. He could choose to say: “Dumb ball! Who made this cheap, lousy, dime-store ball anyway? It’s so slippery!”
2. He could choose to say: “Where’s my parents? I can’t believe they’re not here when I dropped this ball! What kind of parents are they? If they really loved me, they would be here to help me pick up this ball!ng d;
3. He could choose to say: “I’m such a loser. I always drop balls. I’ve played with other kids. They don’t drop balls all the time. I’m the only one who drops balls! What’s wrong with me? I’m such a loser!”
4. Or he could choose to say: “It’s my fault. I dropped the ball. People drop balls all the time. I’m going to have a positive attitude. I’m going to pick it up and I’m going to go on. Maybe I can grow through this somehow, and stop dropping balls as often as I do now.”
These little speeches sound familiar, don’t they? But rather than from the mouths of toddlers, too often they come from our mouths, and betray a negative pattern of thinking—an attitude. In fact, they may reflect the way you think most of the time, because we all drop balls, don’t we? The key to happiness is in the attitude we choose when we do “drop a ball.” Attitudes are patterns of thinking. But here’s the second part of the definition:
Attitudes are patterns of thinking formed over a long period of time.
Our attitudes are patterns of thinking—get this now—formed over a long period of time. Trace the career of the children of Israel, and you will know they didn’t suddenly become complainers in Numbers 11. Go back to the days when they were making bricks in Egypt. They were constantly whining and sniveling about everything. You say, “Well, their lives were hard.” Yes, their lives were hard, but some of them chose complaining and resentment toward God, and others in the exact same circumstances chose thankfulness instead. My point is this: Attitudes are patterns of thinking formed over a long period of time. Wrong attitudes are hard to change because they are habitual, harmful ways of thinking about life and circumstances.
Patterns of thinking are so deeply ingrained in our hearts that we hardly even notice them. We get so used to reacting a certain way that our choices become automatic, and in time we cease to see them as actual choices. We feel like we are trapped, but we are not. Tragically, the consequences are also automatic, and that is the cycle that we are trying to break in this book.
CHOOSING YOUR ATTITUDES
It won’t be automatic or overnight, but if you stick with it and remain sensitive to what God is teaching you, lasting joy and true “Promised Land living” are not as far away as you might think. Did you know that the whole generation died just a few miles from the land flowing with milk and honey? Do you know why they died without stepping into the Promised Land? They died because they grumbled against God and rejected the call to enter the land. (See Numbers 14:1–4, 22–35, especially verse 29.)
They were so close to the joy of Promised Land living. Like them, you and I are much closer than we think to dramatic, joy-producing life change. Like them, you can make a choice to reject complaining and to trust God. Like them, the barrier is your patterns of thinking— and those patterns can change. Yes, they can!
And you can take the first step when you are willing to say, “I choose my attitudes.” You can’t change an attitude until you admit you chose it. But if you are willing to say, “I choose my attitude,” then a different choice becomes your option. By admitting you made the choice, you put yourself in a position to make a different choice next time.
Perhaps you’re not quite there yet. You want to read more before you accept responsibility for your attitudes. If that is your case, I encourage you to say this by faith: “I choose my attitudes. Lord, show me this is true.” Pray that out loud. It’s a prayer I’m confident God will answer, because He wants you out of the wilderness even more than you do.ants to give you the fullness of Promised Land living, and He will as you allow Him to change your negative attitudes.
THE TRUTH ABOUT COMPLAINING
OK, back to the specific attitude of complaining. Here is one basic truth about complaining we cannot ignore:
Complaining is a sin.
Yes, it is. Complaining is a sin. The word sin literally means “missing the mark”; “failing in regard to God’s holy standard and just demands.” So equating complaining with sin puts complaints in a dangerous category.
Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute; complaining’s not a sin. I mean, it may not be a great thing, but a sin? I mean, stealing and lying and blasphemy—sure (because they’re obvious sins), but complaining? I mean . . . who am I hurting? Who am I really hurting when I complain?”
Well, first of all, you’re hurting yourself! When you complain, you are choosing a response that does you harm rather than good. Our complaints may lead to anger, bitterness, and even depression. God loves you. He doesn’t want you hurting yourself. What hurts you, hurts Him; so complaining hurts you both.
Beyond this, when you complain, you’re not just hurting yourself but God indirectly. God is directly affected when He hears our complaining and our wrong attitudes, because complaining questions God’s sovereignty! To complain is to say in effect; “God, You blew it! You had a chance to meet my expectations, but You couldn’t handle it! Nice try, God, close—but not close enough.” So complaining definitely injures you and the Lord.
In addition to that, we hurt the people around us. We affect others with our “stinking thinking.” Nobody likes a negatron, or a lifetime member in the cold-water brigade, do they? If your friends and family hear you complaining all the time, you are bringing them down.
“But they do the same thing,” you say. OK, then, y’all are bringing each other down. My point is only that complaining hurts far more than just you. It hurts God and those who hear it, and that’s not right. So, no doubt about it, complaining is a sin.
DEFINING COMPLAINING
Before we go any further, let’s get on the table a clear definition of this sin, so we will know when we are damaging ourselves and others and our relationship with God. Here’s a key definition:
Complaining is expressing dissatisfaction with a circumstance that is not wrong and about which I’m doing nothing to correct.
First of all, complaining is about things that are not wrong. If the thing is wrong, and you express dissatisfaction, it’s not complaining. It’s not a sin to picket an abortion clinic. That’s not complaining. It’s not a sin to say to my spouse, “We need to spend more time with the children.” That’s not complaining. Complaining is grumbling about things that aren’t wrong. You’re dissatisfied with the meal served on a trip and ask the flight attendant to rewarm the food, or later write customer service suggesting they change caterers or offer different options. That’s not complaining; that’s expressing a legitimate grievance.
Second, complaining involves things that I’m doing nothing to correct. I’m choosing to whine about it, but I’m not doing anything to correct the situation. That’s complaining. It is complaining to whine about abortion, but never pray or picket or vote or give donations or write leaders. Just do nothing but mumble a lot under your breath, and there it is—you’re complaining. It is complaining to talk about your husband’s lack of time with the children. It’s not complaining when you talk with your husband and together try to reach onstructive solution. It is complaining when you tell a fellow passenger, “This food stinks.” It’s not complaining when you tell the flight attendant you dislike the beef and politely request a different entrée.
According to our definition, complaining involves circumstances. Please note that complaining doesn’t involve people. Criticism involves people; complaining involves circumstances. We’re going to talk about criticism in chapter 5. Complaining is about circumstances, specific situations that we dislike because of how they affect someone or something we value.
Finally, complaining involves expressing dissatisfaction. This gets a little tricky. Some people pride themselves on verbal control. “I never complain,” they say. Well, hang on for a minute. Those of us who are extroverts and often find ourselves saying things that we regret would plead with those of you who are introverts to recognize that you’re not simply living in victory because you have a piece of duct tape over your mouth. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). So complaining is not just the outbursts of frustration, but it’s also those things that we think. That’s complaining, too. To express dissatisfaction in any way—not just verbally but even in your thoughts—with a circumstance that is not wrong and about which I am doing nothing to correct . . . that’s complaining. In the short term, it separates us from God; in the long term, it becomes a lifestyle, and we spend our lifetime in the wilderness.
HOW COMMON IS THIS PROBLEM ?
“Is there a lot of complaining going on?” you may ask. “Are people really complainers?” That’s easy to answer; just open the newspaper to the letters to the editor and read complaint after complaint. Or hang around the water cooler at work to hear employees gripe about the boss’s latest “bad decision.” And then there’s the Internet. The number of web sites dedicated to complaining is amazing.
One Internet site is called Iventing.com. “Welcome to Iventing.com, the free place on the Internet to get it off your chest and complain. Go on. It’s good for you. Do you want to vent right now? Go right ahead! Look at what others are venting about. Write it all down. Give us your name.”
Can you believe that? Here’s another site called The Complaint Station: “The king of complaints. Over five million served. We hold the record for the most complaints on any one site and are the pioneers of open complaining.” To which I must respond, “Get a life!” But they’re not finished: “The purpose of The Complaint Station is to provide you with a central location to file your complaints or research previous complaints. You can complain about issues related to . . . [blah, blah, blah].” How sick is that? Now this next site must have been the first of its kind on the Internet; it has the best name: Complain.org.
Complain about anything. The whole world is here to listen. Complain about your neighbor. Complain about the airlines. Complain about trains. Complain about noise. Complain about your mother- in-law. Complain about high prices. About getting ripped off. About potholes. About the police. Complain about welfare. Complain about work. Complain about your boss. Complain to us or even about us. We’ll listen and tell everyone. No exceptions!
As I was reading all this to find out how common the problem of complaining is, I began thinking that these people need some serious, long-term counseling. But then I thought, “Well, surely the body of Christ is ahead in this problem.” And then I found a Web site that offers an opportunity to “complain about anything here. Everyone needs to vent sometimes.
This site offers Christians a whole section where they can pick things to complain about. Multiple-choice complaining has arrived! I can just hear people reading this list and thinking, “I wasn’t even mad about that, but now that I see it—man, that is kind of lame!” The site lists categories like: Complain that Bible college is expensive; complain about people who cuss; complain about my brother who is a pig; complain about your youth pastor . . .”
Is that twisted or what? Tragically, it’s things like this that display the spiritual poverty in the church today. As a pastor, I constantly hear people complaining that the joy and peace of the Christian life is somehow eluding them. They feel frustrated that many of the good things Jesus offers are only concepts to them and not personal realities. When I press them for specifics, they report that their lives have, in fact, become like a wilderness! Well, yeeaaahhh!! Exactly! Just like a wilderness. Are we making the connection? Those who choose complaining as their lifestyle will spend their lifetimes in the wilderness. Complaining is sin that makes life like living in a wilderness.
GOD IS LISTENING
Think of it: God heard every word of every complaint of the children of Israel. Notice the text again: “Now the people became like those who complain...and...the Lord heard it” (11:1). The Lord heard it; He was there. The people ignored the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, right there all the time. Those should have been awesome and humbling evidences of God’s nearness. Instead, the people took God for granted. This wasn’t the first time they had complained. Look at the complaints recorded in Exodus alone:
“Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” (14:12)
So the people grumbled at Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” (15:24)
The sons of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (16:3)
But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against Moses and said, “Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” (17:3)
Over and over we read it: “And the people complained.” And, “Why can’t we have more of this . . . and when are we going to get some of that?” And, “Why don’t You see that we need . . . ?” And, “Why didn’t You let us...?” The chorus of complaints rose constantly: “Can’t we know . . . ?” And, “This isn’t right!” And, “You should have . . . ” So the complaint chorus continued, and worst of all, the clamor created a continuous ringing in the very ears of their Creator. God heard their complaints, and He hears our complaining.
THE WORST KIND OF COMPLAINING
Now, this is an important point. Yes, God hears our complaining about the weather and the traffic and the taxes and the social decline and our age and whatever else we complain about. God hears all that. But there is one particular kind of complaining that grates most of all on the ears of God. Look at Numbers 11 again; see if you can pick out the worst kind of complaining from verse 1. “Now the people became like those who complai
n of adversity in the hearing of the Lord.”
That’s the worst kind of complaining there is. Complaining about adversity. “Why do I have to go through that? Why must I endure all this hassle id to themife goes so smoothly for them? I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired; when will all this end? Why can’t my life be more like Bill Jones or whatever?”
It’s “My trial. . . . My hardship. . . . My lot in life. . . . My misfortune. ” All this nauseating noise rises to the very ears of God until He replies, “Could you get away from Me with that chronic complaining?”
The writer of Hebrews has warned us, “Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. . . . For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines” (12:5–6). God has entrusted to every person a measure of adversity. You have a measure of adversity, and so do I. Just the right amount to accomplish the eternal purposes of God in our lives. Your measure of adversity is like no one else’s. This is a place in life about which you could say, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”
For some people, the adversity is a health situation. And for others, it’s a struggling career and continuous job changes. And for others, a family tragedy happened years ago, and now they have to shoulder an incredible weight of responsibility that seems grossly unfair and unbearable. Some made a very poor decision early in life and their marriage fell apart, and now they struggle with blended families and the consequences of those choices. Whatever that measure of adversity is,it’s your “cross” to carry.
I hurt for friends who want desperately to be parents, yet God has not allowed them, up to this point, to have children. Some long to be married, yet God has not provided the right mate. I could go on and on with examples. But hear this: Every one of us has a measure of adversity, and God Himself is the one who measured it out. And for that reason, every person has something in his or her life that God doesn’t want to hear complaints about.
Lord, Change My Attitude: Before It's Too Late Page 3