I never fully understood my dad’s line, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Oh, I knew he meant that only when we mention a problem can we get it fixed. Later, I learned a deeper meaning. A few years before returning to Temecula, I bought a decent wheel barrow (in the pic above) from Home Depot and used it well. And roughly at times. After much abuse, it began "complaining." With no load, it squeaked. With a heavy load it veered to the side. And every day the tire lost air.
So I followed Dad’s advice and greased and balanced that squeaky barrow and inflated the tire. But that barrow kept complaining, and so it eventually got no grease. No air. No tightening of nuts and bolts. It continued to whine and complain. I took it apart, put the wood in the green waste container and the metal in recycling, and took a trip to Home Depot for a new one, and added to Dad’s line, “But if you squeak too much you get replaced.” And I couldn’t avoid thinking of spiritual formation.
I struggle with the command, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault” (Philippians 2:14-15). Everything is pretty exhaustive. And I do want to be a blameless and pure child of God. What hinders that goal? Complaining. Whining. Add your own synonyms.
I speak and hear too much complaining from fellow followers. About politics. About churches. About Facebook blocking them. About rude drivers. You might hear it too.
I do want to be a child of God who represents his character. Complaining kills that. Why? It's linked to arguing, to putting people on different sides, often without listening to them. We don't like what they do, so we complain. We complain because we'd like to make them seem less than ourselves. We complain because it provides reasons for ourselves to not do better. We take an almost masochistic joy in focusing on the dark dimensions of life.
We then craft not only a negative view of life, but an insipid, weak view of God. Can God help us overcome the worst aspects of life, or is he too powerless? Either we trust God or we get discouraged by the frequency of our complaints.
Obviously, not complaining doesn't mean we ignore problems or evil or sin. God tells us to test everything, to hold on to the good and avoid the evil (1 Thessalonians 5:21). We remain aware, and take the appropriate action. But we act for change instead of squeak. We change what we ca and leave the rest to Him.
Kick Starting the Application
Spend some time evaluating your level of complaining. Do you see it as a problem? Does it help you focus more on God or the difficulties? Do you see God complaining, or acting to work through problems? Would it help you to ask someone close to let you know when you complain?