One of the drawbacks to being a brass eagle is that you overhear an awful lot of conversations you’d rather not hear. Mark you, there’s nothing much that surprises me after 200 years or so in my profession.
The last time I was surprised was years ago when I overheard two bishops discussing sin. To my amazement, they decided gluttony was their favorite. In truth, I shouldn’t have been surprised because they were both men of very considerable girth.
Now I come to think of it, sin is a very ticklish business. As the rector is fond of saying, “Sins are committed by other people. We just have little weaknesses.”
The problem, I think, is that most of us don’t recognize the most serious sins we habitually commit—often on a daily basis. For instance, we rightly feel guilty when we are nasty to other people—meter maids, colleagues at work, spouses. But, then, rudeness is not generally one of our besetting sins.
It’s hard to recognize besetting sins because they often seem so trivial, or they affect only one’s self and nobody else. The besetting sin of the children of Israel in the Wilderness, for example, is one that we still find difficult to recognize today. Even so, it was a sin so serious that God banned the entire generation that committed it from entering the Promised Land. It might surprise you to learn that King James Bible calls the sin “murmuring.” Today it would be better translated as “grumbling.” It is a sin so common most people don’t think of it as a sin at all. And those who do recognize it as a sin consider it a truly minor one. After all, everybody, without exception, has had something to grumble about.
We grumble about weather, politicians, bosses, colleagues, friends, kids, and spouses. We grumble about church—the length of sermons and the choice of hymns. We complain about the food we eat and the folks who serve it. We grumble about our cars, the price of gasoline, and the cost of repairs. In short, there’s not much we don’t grumble about. Even the rector, who, in the main, is a cheerful sort of chap, has been known to grumble about bishops, synods, and Church conventions.
The trouble with grumbling, however, is not simply that it makes you dissatisfied or that it spreads general dissatisfaction. That is serious enough. But a disturbing aspect of grumbling is that is it is passive.
Grumblers aren’t much inclined to take action to set things right. They seem to expect that sort of thing to happen of its own accord. It’s always somebody else’s fault or somebody else’s job.
Above all, God condemns grumbling because folks who feel dissatisfied with their lot in life tend to blame God for it, and this, in turn, encourages them to turn their backs on him. That’s what the children of Israel did, and the price they paid was 40 years of wandering in the Wilderness. Grumbling doesn’t come cheap! Pip! Pip!
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