I Don't Mean To Complain, But...

Has this sentence ever led to anything but a complaint? "I don't mean to complain, but my air conditioner is broken." "I don't mean to complain, but you overcharged me." "I don't mean to complain, but you are a jerk."

This may be a little-known fact, but 83% of all uses of this phrase occur in a restaurant and 99.9% (give or take a tenth of a percent) are immediately followed by a bellyache, complaint, or a sorrow-filled request. See, those are what you call cold-hard facts. Statistics do not lie (even if the guy telling you the statistics is making them up). Allow me to illustrate.

So there I was last night, doing my thing, waiting on tables, when I got seated with my final table of the night, a couple celebrating their anniversary. These are usually some very simple tables. Who in his right mind would jeopardize the benefits of an anniversary evening by becoming whiny and uptight with their waiter? To me the dude who acts rudely in this situation is the doofus among the doofuses. As we all know from personal experience, unfortunately, we sons of Adam rarely do things that make sense, even to ultimately benefit ourselves.

Well, I talked for a minute with the couple and offered a drink. He ordered a drink that I had never heard of, which is becoming rare after four years taking odd drink orders. "No worries", I said, following up with a simple question of the ingredients in his desired concoction. His response? "You will have to look it up on the internet or something". Can you see why we are already becoming best friends?

As you may imagine, his drink was subpar according to his exacting standards. So was his wife's, which was apparently too sour (when two out of three words in a name are "Lemon" and "Drop", it would seem to be a compliment to call something sour). While there was plenty of complaints from our friend, there was nothing he would allow me to do to remedy his problems. This is what we like to call passive-aggressive behavior. Every problem has some sort of solution, we usually would just rather complain than seek a remedy, right?

Anyhow, let us jump ahead to the medium-well ribeyes that were extraordinarily tough. He saved our favorite line for this occasion. "I don't mean to complain, but we come here every month and these are the worst ribeyes we have ever had here." With this said, he chose to eat in protest rather than have the problem remedied(On a side-note, I have worked exactly 44 months at the Steak House all told, and this was the first I have seen of him). In the end, he simply wanted to complain rather than to seek a remedy. Sound familiar?

We are all under the same curse when it comes to useless complaining. Please do not tell me you are above all this. Speaking for myself, the amount of useless complaining I do around my apartment is enough to indict me on the charge of passive-aggressive maneuvering. I just did a load of dishes not a half-hour ago that I had stared at for days waiting for my roommates to accomplish. Why did I not simply ask one of them to take care of their dishes? I think the answer is that I would rather complain than seek for a solution. It just feels better to complain about others than to take responsibility on myself. I would rather complain than to seek remedies or solutions to these ridiculously simple matters. Are you the same way?

Maybe we will think the next time we say something silly like "I don't mean to complain, but...", however, the deeper issue will still be there. We are whiners as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. That is why the gospel of Jesus is so different. The Apostle Paul wrote (from prison!) "Do all things without grumbling or questioning". He said that would make followers of Jesus shine like lights in the world!

Can you imagine a whole people who lived life without complaining? That would change everything, right? More importantly, can you imagine your own life unclouded by useless whining? Well, you have a chance right now. Will you live in the light of the gospel this moment which gives you remedy or will you wallow in your passive-aggressive whining?

If you don't mean to complain, there is a remedy for that. Jesus can free us of even this. Even now.