From time to time, all of us have legitimate complaints. Most of the time when you are complaining about something or someone, you are upset. With emotions running high, your temptation will be to tell everybody in your orbit about your issue because it feels right, justified, and even therapeutic. Your friends may encourage you to complain and offer to help publicize your grievance.
From a biblical perspective, it is better to take the complaint to the person with whom you have the conflict. In the workplace, there are company policies and guidelines for filing a formal complaint or grievance. In schools, children are taught to take their concerns and issues with other students to the teacher and to restrain from taking matters into their own hands.
As adults, God encourages us to first take our concerns to our offender. Courage, humility and wisdom are required to face your offender privately, but it is God’s way of peacefully handling complaints. It contains the conflict, minimizes embarrassment and increases the likelihood of resolution and restoration. Speak to an offender with compassion and care, not in words meant to hurt or get even. Your words should be gracious, conciliatory, and aimed at a solution, not words in anger.
Tell the offender your goal is not to humiliate them or get revenge, but to resolve your differences, strengthen your relationship, and honor God. Instead of making an adversary who will oppose you, you will be inviting the person to join you in a mutually beneficial manner.
Finally, a point of caution, refuse to allow others to keep you stuck at a stage in your life that has passed and gone, and you have got to do the same. If you allow others to keep taking you down memory lane, you will eventually miss out on what God intended for you.
There is a story told about a hacker on a golf course who kept swinging at the ball and missing it. He repeatedly hit an ant hill. Finally, one ant took charge and said, follow me. Another ant yelled, but where are we going. He pointed to the ball sitting in front of them, and said there, if we don’t get on the ball, we are all going to die. The moral of this story is that you must avoid the obvious in life to survive. And Never Give Up! Never Give Up! Never Give Up!
By Chaplain Ghosten
chaplain@lhp.net
