Squeak

I really wanted to go to this particular conference this week - a new topic with a free book. But, I had scheduled a repairman to come to the house at that time, so I couldn't go. Whine. Just as I'm considering the hassle of rescheduling the repairman, the washer goes out, and it must be repaired as soon as possible, so I book another repairman to come at the same time as the first, since I'd be homebound anyway. Smart, but now I really can't go to the conference. Whine. Then, the first repairman calls and says that he must reschedule, so I could have scheduled the other repairman for another time and still have gone to the conference, but no - I outsmarted myself. Whine. Then the second repairman calls and says he must reschedule for later in the day. Great! Now I can go to the conference. As it turns out, the conference was really not all that beneficial after all. Whine.

I whine at times. You whine at times. Sometimes I whine because you whine. But whining is the behavior. What is the real activity of whining?

At the simplest level, whining is the noise we make when we don't get what we want, and so we squeak like a toy squeezed too hard. I want A, instead reality serves me B, squeak. But this is not compelling enough to explain whining. A lot of things don't go my way, and I don't always squeak about those.

Dig a little deeper and we see that whining betrays those moments when we don't get what we think we deserve. I want a latte, but I deserve good service when I order one, but then the barista is careless with my order. Squeak. Again, this explanation is true enough, but too shallow.

Burrowing one more layer down, whining is the cry of a self-described king not being treated as royalty. More than just want or deserve, my kingdom is the realm of what I control. I fancy my realm to be rather large and significant, and it includes many residents who must bear evidence of my control. One exposure of my faux royalty, and squeak.

Yet I find all three explanations still inadequate, because they are all focused on self. At its heart, whining is God-oriented. Whining is a protest that God is doing it wrong. Whining says all the wrong things about Him ... to Him:

1) "Your provision for me is inadequate. You gave me less than You should have. I can't possibly do as You please with this little provision."

2) "I don't believe this will serve a better purpose. I can handle a few inconveniences, but only when the reasons are small enough for me to understand so that I can clearly see the better purpose. You have not shown me the better purpose in ways I can understand or am willing to accept, and therefore Your actions are objectionable."

3) "My purposes exceed Yours. You may well have Your purposes, and I may well even accept that as an intellectual concept. But whatever Your purposes may be, mine are more important to me. So take back Your purposes and succumb to mine."

4) "This can't possibly be to adjust my attitude. You can't be doing this because I need some change in my thoughts, feelings, attitudes, actions, or priorities. There's no way you're that much of a loving parent that You would use discomfort or inconvenience to mold me into a more Christlike person. Therefore, give in to my demands."

The core of whining is profoundly theological. Our view of God and of how involved He is in our lives directly registers on the whinometer. The less I see His hand, the more a peg red on the scale.

Some adopt a "no whining" policy. Although the rest of us really appreciate that, this is just a less annoying form of bad theology in practice. The biblical antidote for whining is not zipping one's lip, but contentment. Contentment is accepting the unassailable, persistent goodness of God's head-to-toe involvement in my broken and sometimes uncomfortable life. I can be content because I never slip from His perfect and beneficent care, not even a little.