A good grumble?

Grumbling gets strong critique in the pages of Scripture. As the people of God make their way through the wilderness to the Promised Land, grumbling is the failing into which they most regularly fall.

Chapters 11-14 of Numbers charts the terrible progress of the people’s moaning and wailing as it builds toward a disastrous climax. In Chapter 11 the people complain about hardships in general (Num. 11:1) before making dietary concerns the specific focus for their complaint (Num. 11:4-6). In the next chapter Miriam and Aaron grumble about being overlooked as leaders, declaring it profoundly unfair that Moses gets such special treatment (Num. 12:1-2). Finally in Chapter 14, after the report of the ‘spies’, ‘all the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron’ (Num. 14:2), wishing they had died in Egypt or in the wilderness, rather than continue in what they are persuaded is an entirely hopeless redemption plan.

This is grumbling of the highest order. And it is, in God’s eyes, a capital offence. Having ‘heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites’ the Lord declares to them: ‘not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home … your bodies will fall in this wilderness’ (Num. 14:27-32).

The NT letters give grumbling equally short shrift. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling, says Peter (1 Peter 4:9). Paul’s instruction is even more far-reaching: ‘Do everything without grumbling or arguing’ (Phil. 2:14, my emphasis).

Yet that’s not all that can be said here. There are many places in the Bible where what looks suspiciously like grumbling gets treated more sympathetically. Think of the psalms:

‘Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?’ (Ps. 43:2). Or how about this for a list of complaints: ‘you have rejected us’; ‘you made us retreat’; ‘you gave us up’; ‘you sold your people for a pittance’; ‘you have made us a reproach’; and what’s more, ‘all this came upon us though we had not forgotten you.’ So ‘Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself!’ (Ps. 44).

Sounds an awful lot like grumbling and complaining to me.

Or what about Job? Doesn’t he grumble? Isn’t there chapter after chapter given over to his complaints? Yet, when all is said and done, God commends him because he has ‘spoken the truth’ (Job 42:8).

Or how about the Hellenistic Jews in Acts 6 who ‘complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food (Acts 6:1). That’s certainly a complaint – and seems awfully close to a grumble.

Godly complaint or ungodly grumble

All of which raises an important question – where, exactly, does godly complaint give way to ungodly grumble? What sense can we make of the difference? Here are three observations.

First, godly complaining generally happens in the context of faith.

When the psalmist complains, it is because he is wrestling to understand. His complaints are spoken to God because he seeks to understand God. Given what he knows of God, he speaks out his questions because he is trying to grasp events that don’t make sense to him. Given what God has promised, given the character of God, he struggles to understand how these things are happening. His complaints arise from a heart of faith in much the same way as Job’s do.

The complaints in Numbers 14 move in a very different direction. They speak from a spirit that denies God’s word and doubts His goodness. They take the people toward rebellion because instead of wrestling with God’s promises, they simply set them aside.

Second, godly complaining will often have the interests of others in mind.

A concern for justice, and particularly a concern for the needy and oppressed, will often be a feature of godly concerns and godly complaints. That’s the case in Acts 6. When our complaints focus purely on our own desires, we are in much more dangerous territory.

And finally, godly complaints will tend to draw us toward relationship rather than away from it.

In a marriage there is a kind of grumbling that only serves to create distance in the relationship. It attacks the other and justifies self. It has lost focus on God and seeks to serve my kingdom rather than His. But there is another kind of marital complaining that pursues the absent spouse or seeks to reclaim the inattentive spouse and does so because of a genuine desire to regain, restore (or even create for the very first time) the kind of intimacy and devotion that God desires.

It’s a fine line between godly complaining and ungodly moaning. And we need to listen carefully – both to others and to our own hearts – before we are ready to see which is which.