Where Does Complaining Rank on the Top Ten Sin List?

Lists and rankings are popular, aren’t they? One can find entire podcasts and even tv episodes devoted to counting down the top ten movies of the year, the top ten preseason football teams, the top ten contenders for the Best Picture Award, and more. We can take that approach to sins also – ranking some sins as very, very serious and some as barely worth blushing over. In the Thompson household of seven, I can think of a few household “sins” that will quickly get you in trouble with mom or dad:

1. Opening a soda or water bottle, drinking four grams of it, and then discarding it.
2. Jaggedly ripping the cereal bag inside the box so that it doesn’t pour properly and goes stale earlier.
3. Putting the ketchup or mustard in the refrigerator. (Or: spelling “ketchup” as ‘catsup,’ or some other pagan alternative.)
4. Not refilling the water tank on the Keurig.
5. Not replacing the toilet paper roll when it is used up. Or, worse, putting the toilet paper on backward! (This is serious.)

Those are a few minor annoyances in the Thompson home. They won’t get you into major trouble, but some things will, such as: getting home much later than curfew, sneaking out of the house without permission, or watching unapproved movies and shows. (I’ve got 13 Reasons Why it Would Be Safer for you to Drink Raw Sewage than to Watch This Show about Suicide!) These felonious household sins carry with them a greater punishment and greater stigma than the misdemeanors.

I have heard many Christians over the years say some variation of, “God sees all sins as the same.” This is true in one sense. As Paul says in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” This verse means that every sin – no matter how little or big – brings death and separates one from God and eternal life. In that sense, all sins are similar in that they all separate a person from God. However, that is NOT the entirety of biblical teaching on sin. It is quite clear in the Bible, that some sins are more egregious than others. Proverbs 6, for instance, lists seven sins that God hates in particular (pride being at the front of the list.) In the Old Testament, different penalties were applied to different sins – from restitution all the way up to death. Jesus, in Luke 12, mentions that some sins will be punished in judgment with many “blows” and some with few “blows.” He also taught, in Matthew 11, that Capernaum would be judged more severely than Sodom in the final judgment because of Capernaum’s lack of belief and refusal to repent and follow Him. So we can rightly say that all sin is serious, and yet some sins are more serious than others. Given that understanding, where would YOU rank complaining and grumbling on the sin list?

I’m going to throw myself under the bus here, but before I do – one word of defense, if it pleases the court. I am not a morning person and sometimes wake up with a case of the grumpies. So it was that I had to drive my wife Janet to work last week when I was still waking up. On the way in, we had to drop by one place to pick up a package and then go by the post office to buy stamps and mail something. She was carrying a box, and we went in to buy stamps. Once the stamps were bought, it turned out that we had to stamp a bunch of envelopes, and upon that discovery, I grumbled. I said, “Oh my gosh!” in a grumpy way. And that immediate, seemingly small complaint, really hurt my wife’s feelings. She felt as if I didn’t want to be with her, and my bad attitude SLIMED her. She was sad for a long time that day, feeling like the wind went out of her sails. Did she overreact?

No, she didn’t. We tend to underestimate how toxic and sinful grumbling and complaining are. They are factually one of the chief enemies of relationships. How serious are grumbling and complaining in the Bible? Two verses tell us:

1. James 5:9 “Brothers and sisters, do not complain about one another, so that you will not be judged. Look, the judge stands at the door!” (CSB).

2. 1 Corinthians 10:9 Let us not test Christ as some of them did and were destroyed by snakes. 10 And don’t grumble as some of them did and were killed by the destroyer. 11 These things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages have come. (CSB).

Did you catch that? Grumbling and complaining were so serious in the eyes of God that some of God’s people were literally destroyed because they complained! As Christians, we are NOT to complain about one another – it is simply not an allowable option. We are not to grumble. Sometimes we try to disguise our complaints, just like we try to disguise gossip, but they are what they are.

You might wonder how you will get things done if you can’t complain. How can you make important change happen if you can’t complain? Let me be clear – complaining is powerful. It is a weapon, and we know it gets things done. Complaining is a very powerful and potent worldly approach to getting your way. But Christians are not allowed to complain, so that is not our method of getting things accomplished, which reminds me of something Paul wrote: “For although we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh, since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds.” (2nd Corinthians 10:3, CSB.) In other words, Paul is telling us that, as Christians, we don’t get things done in worldly ways like complaining.

If there is a universal sin among Americans, it must be complaining. We all complain. But surely, on God’s list of worst sins, “complaining” isn’t a national championship contender, is it? As a sin, it can’t be in the top 20 list of sins, can it? You would think complaining should probably be ranked as a sin somewhere in the neighborhood of where Northwestern or Colorado State are ranked as football teams. Until recently, I’ve always assumed that God isn’t particularly bothered by my complaining, that grumbling just isn’t a very big deal. Well, I have been wrong. It turns out that complaining is a far bigger deal than most of us realize. Consider Numbers 11:

Now the people began complaining openly before the Lord about hardship. When the Lord heard, His anger burned, and fire from the Lord blazed among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp. Then the people cried out to Moses, and he prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down. 3 So that place was named Taberah, (PLACE OF BURNING) because the Lord’s fire had blazed among them. Numbers 11:1-2

The complaining of the children of Israel caused God to literally BLAZE with anger towards them. What a terrifying and sobering reality! How should we respond? Let’s go back to James 5:9, “Brothers and sisters, do not complain about one another, so that you will not be judged. Look, the judge stands at the door!” (CSB). Thinking about this verse in light of God’s blazing view of complaining really puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? James is telling us that we should be on our highest guard against complaining against each other, because the Judge, God Himself, is literally nearby and watching over us, and He does NOT like complaining. So, rather than treating complaining like a minor issue akin to breaking the speed limit by a few miles, we need to understand that it is really a major sin issue that must be avoided like the plague. Lord deliver us from complaining!