When Dislike and Complaining Are Good Things

This past Sunday, the parish priest in his homily expounded upon the Gospel reading of the day, which was based on the passage in Luke 10:38-42.  The priest, Fr. Larry Donohoo, brought out a couple of profound points about this passage that most have never considered, and there is a certain amount of liberation in hearing these insights.  I wanted to do my own lesson on this today based on the information I gleaned from Fr. Larry's homily this past Sunday, and it will hopefully give some perspective to others as well.

Let us first look at the Gospel passage itself.  In it, Jesus is invited to the house of his friends, Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus (the same Lazarus Jesus would raise from the dead).  At this visit, apparently Jesus was invited by his hosts to share dinner with them, and while Martha is rushing about getting everything ready, her sister decides to "sit at the feet" of Jesus and sort of drink in His wisdom.  Martha, like any hardworking woman who is trying to prepare a nice dinner, is by this point getting exasperated and she then lets her feelings be known by complaining to Jesus about Mary's apparent laziness and asking Him if He even cares (a little rude for a host to ask a guest, in my observation) that this is going on.  Jesus, in effect, tells Martha to sort of "chill out," and that there is something greater going on here than merely a dinner or Mary shirking her responsibilities to help her sister - as verse 42 of the passage records, He essentially says "You are worried and upset about all these minor details, but your sister is seeing the bigger picture here - you should maybe stop, take a breath, and maybe soak up a little of this great wisdom yourself."  That is not exactly what the text says, but it is the message Jesus is getting across.  Martha's problem, in this case, was fussing over the minor details while missing the bigger picture, which is one application we get from the passage.  It also communicates that Martha was not exactly happy with her sister either, and although we cannot concretely draw a conclusion, perhaps some sibling rivalry and other things were involved, which now leads to what the core dimension I am taking from this entails.

If you will note the passage, although Jesus tells Martha to essentially "chill out," He is not condemning her for complaining.  He also doesn't focus on the aggravation that was between the sisters either - we read nothing of that in the passage either.  However, what we do get from the passage in retrospect is this - there is a sense of familiarity to us about the situation, as many of us have been there at some point.  As a matter of fact, if we read this passage within the overarching context of all Scripture, it makes a couple of enlightening insights to us that Fr. Larry pointed out in his homily and that I intend to expand on shortly.  But, the big takeaway from all this is simply that it is not wrong to be human, and to have human feelings about things.  It means that God is big enough to handle our limitations because he created us.  And, on occasion, he can even use those limitations for his ultimate purpose.  We can now expand on this at this point.

Fr. Larry made two important points about this passage that many of us who have read it over and over throughout the years often miss, and let's take a look at them:

1.  You can dislike someone and still love them - you don't have to like everyone to demonstrate Christian charity.

2.  It is also OK to complain to God about what is bugging you - our prayers don't have to be flowery, poetic, and nice all the time - the prayer of the heart can at times express frustration and even anger, and God is big enough to take it.

Growing up as I did in a fairly traditional Holiness/Pentecostal environment and later converting to the Catholic Church, I too have displayed a flawed sense of what it means to relate to people and to God.  We at times are almost altruistic in the way we deal with others if we are Christians, as we feel an obligation to "be sweet" to everyone and "play nice" even when it drives us out of our minds to do so.  Likewise, in our prayers as well often we think that we always have to sound "religious" in our prayers and that we should emulate some sort of saintly piety, even when we feel otherwise.  When we do that however, we are not being honest with God, and that can create bigger problems.  As Fr. Larry pointed out in his homily, many of the Psalms themselves, as well as even the prayers of some in Scripture, were of a complaining nature - the people praying them were limited human beings with a finite human nature, and often were far from perfect.  And, to be honest, they were not expected to be.  Our dislikes of certain individuals therefore and the frustration we need to vent are also intimately connected, which now leads to some individual insights on both issues.

Let's take the fact that not everyone is likeable, and realistically we should not be expected to like every human being in the world.  To be honest, some people are just, well, a pain you-know-where, and to be honest you want to fish-slap them when you even look at some of these people.  That is natural, and perfectly understandable, because we all have been there if we're honest with ourselves.  It is a universal fact that you are not going to like everyone you encounter, and likewise not everyone is going to like you either - just being you at times will rub people the wrong way, even if you don't intend it to be so.  It is not even that you are necessarily doing anything wrong, but someone just decides you are a person they dislike, and you will be viewed that way by them regardless of how nice you try to be or how friendly you are with them.  And, there are people like that who do that to you as well - you don't know why you cannot stand them, but you just cannot.  In a situation like that however, you ask yourself this question - if that person was to be in a situation where they were in immediate danger, would you try to help them?  If you could honestly answer "yes" to that, then you are actually better off than you thought, because what that means is that as much as you cannot stand them or even intensely dislike that person, you still value them as a human being, and would not deny charity to them if they were in that situation.  Respecting dignity of personhood and valuing any human life transcends a dislike of a person's individual quirks, and if you can see that, you then would actually love that person while not liking them.  Let's now take it to a more personal level.

I am going to talk about my experience with this, as it may help someone else.  As many who know my story have heard, my parents divorced when I was quite young, and for the majority of my childhood I was raised by my divorced mother.  Although my parents are my parents, they were not pleasant people - my father tends to be manipulative and controlling, and even is slightly racist, while my mother is a person who doesn't really care about anyone but herself and does everything she can to make herself as obnoxious and unpleasant to people as she can.  God knows why they are like this, but I have a personal confession to make about them - I dislike both my parents as individuals because neither of them were exactly supportive of me as a kid and to this day I don't feel really all that comfortable being around either one of them.  But, do I love them?  Of course - they are my parents after all, and they are also fellow human beings created in God's image, and in that regard they also share genetic and biological roots with me.  While it can be hoped that they will one day straighten themselves out, at this point both are in their 70's and the likelihood of that happening is negligible at best.   And, that is how I deal with my own struggles in this area.  I also have some very disagreeable in-laws as well that have caused some problems over the years, and the same thing applies to them as well - I cannot stand them personally, but if they were in a bad way I would offer a hand to them.  The crux of Christian charity is rising above the personal feelings without denying them and doing the right thing, even when it involves a person who you cannot stand.  We often hear the phrase that "Jesus loved everybody, and so should we," and indeed that is true - but, Jesus was also fully human as well as being fully God, and there were some people even He could not stand.  Do you think He really liked the Pharisees and scribes who were constantly bugging Him like bothersome gnats?  When you read in Scripture about those accounts, He was not overly thrilled about them honestly, as they disgusted Him with their behaviour, but that didn't mean He didn't love them and indeed, a couple of them (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea) actually become His disciples later, while another, a guy named Saul, undergoes a dramatic conversion in the Book of Acts and becomes St. Paul, the great Apostle of the the early Church.  Love entails honesty as well as charity, and we have to get the stones as Christians to love people honestly and not just merely "put on the happy face" because of a misconception of the common excuse "that's what Jesus would do."  In other words, Jesus disliked some too, and it is something we inevitably will do ourselves, so let us at least do so with honesty and in time who knows what witness that will be?   A harsh word in honesty will often go further than a dishonest smiley-faced front. 

Nadia Bolz-Webber, the eccentric and somewhat theologically liberal Lutheran pastor who has generated a lot of her own controversy over the years, also has said some things on this subject I personally agree with, although she did so in a somewhat unorthodox and volatile way.  In particular, she did a sermon once called (and forgive me, but I am quoting her title - disclaimer alert!) "God Forgives Assholes."  The gist of that message was simply this - we can forgive but that doesn't mean we have to be the person's best friend.  Dislike can entail forgiveness in other words, and disliking someone is not the sin - it is what we do because of the dislike which determines a lot.  Bolz-Weber herself for instance is someone I actually dislike - her theology is off, she's outlandish in her presentation, and she can come across abrasive and nasty.  Yet, I also have enough Christian charity to acknowledge where she is right (even with strong language in this case) and see a kernel of truth.  Also, Bolz-Webber is not a person I dislike so much I couldn't talk to her - it would be good to maybe sit and have a conversation with her sometime over coffee and a scone and it is possible to even be friendly with those one disagrees with, which is a whole other issue I want to now move to. 

The whole like/dislike thing also has another dimension to it as well - there are some people we may be 100% in agreement with as far as politics, theology, worldview, etc., are concerned, but for some reason we may not be able to stand to be around them.  On the other hand, there are people who may be polar opposites of the spectrum from us, yet for some reason they can become some of our dearest friends.  Especially among those of us who are more conservative theologically and socially (as I am), this has generated a lot of debate and controversy over the years, and I am going to cite a couple of historic examples.  I have gained a lot in recent years from reading the works of Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), and his seminal text The Twilight of Civilization (1939) is one of the most profound things I have read (in the future, I have a few insights I want to share from it too here).  He is fairly orthodox as a Catholic scholar, and much of his material has great relevance for our time.  But, when talking with fellow conservatives and traditionalists, an issue regarding Maritain comes up - one of his best friends was Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), who was a cultural Marxist and also exerted a lot of influence over many people - Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and others - who have been responsible for the detriment in our society in recent decades.  Does Maritain's friendship with Alinsky nullify the relevance of his works for orthodox Catholic writers?   I would say personally for me it wouldn't.  While his friendship is not one of the best highlights of his legacy, Maritain was still a great philosopher and he wrote many good works that a Catholic in good faith can glean wisdom from.  Likewise, there is the great Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), who has two very good (and solidly orthodox) texts I use frequently entitled Catholicism (1938) and The Splendor of the Church (1956), which was quite insightful in my understanding of the Creeds.  However, de Lubac also had a controversial association with another Jesuit cleric by the name of Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a quasi-heretical theologian who unfortunately pushed transhumanism, modernism, and theistic evolution onto Catholic thought, and has done some serious damage.  By all indications, I don't note any Teilhardism in de Lubac's writings that I have read, but they were noted as being good friends regardless.  So, does that mean that I cannot use de Lubac's works for insights?  Not at all - as a matter of fact, the rule of thumb I have with anything is that where it is consistent with historic faith, it is to be preserved, while anything in opposition to historic faith is to be chucked out.  Other controversial friendships over the years have included famed Southern Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor's association with mystic and questionable theologian Thomas Merton, and also Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar's friendship with Protestant theologian Karl Barth.  Even in the political spectrum too, many unlikely allies can be found on occasion - two of note are the openly gay Milo Yiannapolis and transgender Blaire White, who surprisingly are also aligned with the conservative political position on many things.  Yet, on the other end of that argument, I often see some of the nastiest people who otherwise share my views on many things too, but I cannot stand to be around them - one that comes to mind here is evangelist Jimmy Swaggart.  I could also add others from "televangelist land" to that list, such as Pat Robertson or John Hagee, not to mention a number of what we call "rad-Trad" Catholics who are openly anti-semitic and uncharitable despite their being orthodox and correct in many other areas.  The complexities of human relationships make the subject of like/dislike somewhat more complicated that surface impressions - it is highly possible to like those who have radically different worldviews as friends while disliking others who may share your convictions but may be total jackasses as human beings.  But, while it is natural and not wrong to like or dislike different individuals, it is imperative that we love them as fellow human beings regardless who they are as individuals, and an extreme situation such as a natural disaster or an accident on the highway will determine that quickly. 

The second point that Fr. Larry brought up in this whole discussion is the idea of complaining.  When it comes to prayer, many of us have a preconceived notion of what constitutes an authentic prayer, and we think that if we stray from those conventions somehow we dishonor God.  However, in looking at both the accounts in Scripture as well as just practical everyday life, we as human beings are not always holy and sanctimonious, and we deprive ourselves of many things when we try to put up fronts and avoid honesty about ourselves.  God wants us to be open with him, and to be honest we have nothing to lose with doing so because he already knows us better than we do ourselves.  What that means then is that we go to him with our needs, and we do so as honestly and openly as possible, and sometimes that may not be pretty!  Over the years, I have had more shouting matches and fights with God than many will ever know, and I have cussed him out on occasion, given him ultimatums, and threw some nasty tantrums at him - I wouldn't dare divulge that to everyone in detail obviously, and let me just say that if someone were ever to hear one of those moments, I would probably have my own Christianity questioned.   Thankfully, God doesn't see it that way, and often things are not as they appear - often, the most intense, seemingly hostile fits we throw in our prayers at times are the very things that remind us of how much we do rely on God, and the fact we would not be even talking to him at all if we didn't believe in him.  Faith is a mysterious thing that can take a lot of manifestations, and that may even be anger and frustration at times - remember, for instance, the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32:22-32?  Jacob said he wasn't going to let go of the mysterious stranger (seen by the Church as an early typology of Jesus) until he was blessed, and he walked with a limp after that "prayer meeting!"  Also, just like with our spouses and other loved ones, conflict happens, and the arguments at some point are inevitable as you are not always going to agree on everything with even the person you love the most - why should God be any different in that regard?  Difference is though, usually God ends up being right anyway, and just like that spat with our spouse that happens, once everyone cools down apologies happen and life goes on - I have had to apologize to God a lot on occasion, and thankfully he is always forgiving of me, perhaps more than I am of myself.  So, the next time you don't feel the "joy, joy, joy down in your heart" when you pray and you instead feel like giving God a tongue-lashing, it doesn't mean you are any less spiritual or reverent toward God - you still love him, he still loves you, and perhaps he allows you to vent in order for you to ultimately feel better.  Or, in the case of Job when Job was complaining, God gently will remind us once we cool down that perhaps we didn't see the full picture, and that maybe we acted out of haste before we thought things out - I do that, you do that, and practically every human being alive has done it if we are all honest with ourselves.  So, yes, you can complain as a form of prayer too, and there would be something seriously wrong with you honestly if you didn't at least once in your lifetime.  Your love for God, just like your love for your spouse, should go deeper than any emotional outburst, and at the end of the day you know the love is there despite how ticked off you might get.  And, without sounding silly and somewhat formulaic, I will nonetheless say that God is also a big boy, and he can take it - he transcends us on so many levels anyway, and he sees past the frustration we may feel and will deal often with the root issue that the frustration stems from in the first place.

I am hoping that this series of rambling observations will be encouraging for you, as I know that some reading this may have struggled in these areas.  It's OK, in other words, and perhaps this is the very bit of wisdom you need at this moment, or perhaps you have a past situation that now in retrospect you can see you were probably better off than you thought you were at the time - no, God is not going to deep-fry you in the grease pit of hell just for getting a little emotional or not being able to stand to be around someone else.  Those feelings are completely normal, and as long as you have the wisdom to know the difference for instance between dislike and hate, you will be fine.  Thanks again for allowing me to share, and will see you soon.