Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

November 25, 2007

A Complaint-Free World

James 3:1-10

There is a human tendency when we are around people who use certain words and expressions we pick up what they say and begin to use some of the same words and expressions they use. Now most commonly, we think about this with children because certainly they would never say something we don’t want to hear that they learned at home so we always assume that they have gone to school and heard somebody else’s children use words that they shouldn’t use, but they have picked them up. Our minds and our mouths are one unit. They are like magnets; they pick up words and phrases and sometimes at the most inopportune moments these words or phrases slip out and we realize now that we are using them.

It’s not just for children. A lot of times, adults do the same thing. I dated a girl in college that her expression for being excited, frustrated or whatever it was in the moment was, “Help me, Rhonda,” taken from the old Beach Boys’ song. I met some of her friends, and lo and behold, they would be talking and one of them would say, “Help me, Rhonda.” They would just all say it. I don’t know which one started it but they had all gotten it.

A man who I know who was widowed and has remarried his second wife used the expression, “Fantastic,” with this kind of strange accent. He had only been married a very short time when I noticed that anytime he thought something was good he was saying, “Fantastic.” They were like a pair, both of them saying it all the time. We pick up from other people words, expressions or things that are said. Once they are in there, once they are a part of our vocabulary and our lives and the things we express, they are exceptionally hard to root out. You find yourself saying certain things like some of those great Southern idioms such as, “I’m fixin’ to go shopping.” If you say that outside of the South, people will look at you like you are an absolute idiot. They think, “What are you fixin’? I don’t understand that.”

If you try to stop saying things like that so that you won’t sound so Southern or so much like whatever, you realize just how difficult it is once you have picked up a word or expression that other people around you use. If you have ever tried to stop using a particular expression or a particular word, it is hard.

In the third chapter of James, James is writing to the early church and he alludes to the general principle. He says how difficult it is, how incredibly difficult it is to control what we say. He uses the word tongue. How difficult it is to control the tongue. He uses that word when he is describing this impossible task. He says it’s impossible. I think he is slightly exaggerating. There are places where the Bible uses exaggeration to make a point. Jesus says, “How do you with a log in your eye take a speck out of someone else’s eye.” I don’t think Jesus literally meant somebody is going to have a log in their eye but he exaggerated to make a point. I think that is what James is doing here, not impossible but very difficult. It is very difficult sometimes to stop saying things that we have been saying.

Another point he makes about the tongue is that it is exceptionally influential in our lives. He uses the illustration of a bridle. It’s like the bridle on a horse. You direct a horse the way you want it to go with a bridle. The tongue seems to direct our lives.

He uses another illustration. He says it is like a rudder. You have a big ship and a sail and this tiny little rudder determines where the ship is going to go. Or it is even like a little spark. Particularly in our day with all the wild fires, it seems like every week there is another wild fire in the news, and just a tiny spark someplace starts this huge fire.

Then also, and this is the one that I find most personally perplexing, the words we use, and particularly the ones that just slip out on occasion, reflect our hearts. They are often a window into who we are and what is really going on inside. James talks about that we bless God, and then we turn around and curse someone who is created in the image of God. We would all want to use the blessing of God to be seen that we are like this, but then when the curse comes out, it is a window. It reveals what’s going on inside. Words are real. We teach our children, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me,” and I think we tell them that because we are so aware of just how strong, how powerful, how painful sometimes words can be. They are very real. They have power.

There is a pastor in Kansas City named Will Bowen, and he noticed this pattern of how we use words without thinking, how sometimes we can’t stop what we are saying and how negative it can be, except instead of trying to stop people from using certain words, like four-letter words or whatever, he realized how powerful complaints have become in his own life and how prone he was to complaining, not a particular word but just a pattern, a gripe if you will. He decided that he was going to try to stop complaining and he needed a help in this so he got a purple wristband. He put the wristband on one side, and every time he complained, he would switch it and put it on the other wrist. Because he discovered that it takes 21 days of doing something new to make it a habit, his goal was to go 21 days without complaining, 21 days with the wristband on the same wrist.

It was very interesting. He got up to preach to the congregation about it and he said, “My goal is that Kansas City is going to be free from complaining, and after the year that the Royals have had, that is going to be very difficult to do.” He said the congregation was stone silent and he realized what he had done and he had to take it off and put it over on the other wrist.

Sometimes the culture of complaint is deeply engrained into what we do. He said that it took an average of four to eight months for the average person to go 21 days—I am going to switch this back, by the way. I was just quoting him—21 days without moving that bracelet. We think a lot about changing the world and making a difference, all the organizations that have mottos about making a difference, and we think we are lulled into believing that you have to be someone like Warren Buffet and donate a few billion dollars to something to really make a difference. But what if Christians didn’t complain? What if Christians had a complaint-free zone around church, home, or work space? What would it be like if our gift to the world was to create a space where that didn’t take place? So I have taken the challenge.

I thought about this and a purple wristband? I’m not really a purple wristband kind of guy and I thought is my problem the fact that it is a gimmick or is my problem the fact that I really don’t want to have to be accountable and I don’t want to have to wear this thing for four to eight months with everybody saying, “I see you’ve still got your wristband. I see it’s on a different wrist.” I realized it would be very easy to say, “That’s a gimmick and we are not a gimmick church. I’m not a gimmick guy.” But the real problem was not wanting to be accountable. So I have taken the complaint-free challenge.

We passed out these purple wristbands on Thanksgiving Day and I was surprised how many people took them, but it has been very interesting. I have had a number of conversations and e-mail conversations already with people debating what is a complaint. Is it a complaint if….

We have some of these wristbands here today if you would like to take the challenge. My reaction to this is like the Supreme Court Justice when talking about pornography said, “Well, I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” I may not be able to define complaint adequately for everybody here this morning, but I know it when I hear it. If you don’t like the word complaint, think of it as a gripe. Do you know a gripe when you hear a gripe? I do. A gripe-free world. I would say that there ought to be more to it than that. Simply as a Christian, being part of a complaint-free world, to me, is only half the picture. Jesus tells the parable about how the evil spirit is cast out and goes out and brings back seven friends to inhabit a person because there is emptiness there. Somehow when there is emptiness, we have to fill it up with good, not simply take out what might be negative or bad or evil, but to bring back what is good.

So on this Thanksgiving weekend, I thought, “What would it be like if we thanked more?” What would it be like that if instead of thinking about complaints, we were thinking about the things that we could be thankful for if we replaced complaints with thanking other people for certain things.

We have a tradition in our church where we close with a blessing, the same blessing every Sunday that I am here. One of the pieces of the blessing says, “May your lips speak God’s word.” That’s not a throw-away line. That’s a real prayer. May my lips, may your lips, today, tomorrow, through the rest of the week, may somehow God use my lips, your lips, our lips to speak the word of God. What more likely would be the word of God, a blessing, a thanksgiving, a complaint, or a criticism? If somebody is listening for the word of God in their lives and something we might say might be the way that God speaks to them, would it more likely be through a complaint or a criticism or through a blessing or a thanksgiving?

So on this Thanksgiving, I am taking the complaint-free challenge but I am trying to go a step further and say I want to be a person who blesses. I want to be a person who gives thanks. James says, “Can both of these come out of the same mouth?” Well, unfortunately, I have proven that over and over again, but my goal is to not be that kind of person.

It is very interesting that as a Christian and a pastor, I find that Christians often worry about worry. “Well, I’m a Christian and I sure do worry a lot. I’m a Christian and I must not have very much faith because I find myself always worrying. I worry about this and I worry about that.” But I don’t know that I have ever heard anybody say, “I’m a Christian and I’m worried about complaining. I’m a Christian and I’m worried about the things that come out of my mouth being a negative witness or being, in some way, a detriment to the work of the kingdom of God on earth. I’m a Christian and I think I should really think about the things that I’m saying.”

Here’s the challenge. Get a purple bracelet and try to go 21 days to make a new habit of not being a person of complaint, but to go a step further, and in those moments where you find yourself biting the side of your mouth, your tongue, or whatever you do to stop from staying something so that you don’t have to move that bracelet, say something good. Instead bless somebody, thank somebody. In my life, do I have more things to complain about or more blessings to be thankful for? I asked myself that question, and I know the answer.

So on this Thanksgiving weekend, I have started the challenge and hold me accountable. I know you will. OK. There we go. So I am starting over at almost 12:00 on Sunday. It’s going to be there tomorrow.

Take the challenge yourself. Let us be people of thanksgiving. Let us be people of blessing. Let us do what we can to spread the word of good news about Jesus Christ in this world by complaining less and thanking more.

Copyright 2007. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved.

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