Would You Like Flies with That?

One of my first horror movies was "The Fly" starring Vincent Price.  I watched at an overnight birthday party when I was 8 years old on late night television.  It was followed by the Mummy's Hand.  It scared the crap out of me.  I was sure that, if there was a God, he was about to bring it.  This may surprise you, but according to a Public Religion Research Institute opinion poll, 38 percent of Americans believe that God uses nature to bring divine judgment upon humankind. Well, this past week, I became a believer.  The church office and entry way was sated with large black biting flies. It was something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Just saying "fly invasion" straight out like that may sound funny, but it's no joke. These guys were hungry and relentless (and after the Dollar Tree spray they were still breakdancing at 100 mph) .  It was an outbreak, yes, a plague, of biblical proportion. And the ODOR like a circus.  Let's see, there was water to blood, then frogs, lice, and YES, FLIES.  I'm not as stubborn or hard hearted as Pharaoh.  

I was repentant and ready for God to move...yet complained that those flies and that foul odor needed to get out of the church. We are rather sure these guys were blow flies.  Infestations of these guys are more disagreeable than those of other flies, and are associated with a terrible odor in the house (of God) of a decaying animal. But, as one person encouraged,  "consider that if it were not for the flies, the odor would last much longer."  So these blow flies (and other types that dispose of decay, obviously can serve a very useful purpose).  Not sure how encouraging as Sunday morning worship was just around the corner.

Since the late 1970s, more than 20 serious pathogens have emerged, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as "Mad Cow Disease," and three years ago, the Nipah virus appeared in Malaysia. It seems to have jumped from pigs to people, killing both pigs and people. "Some years," say experts, "we barely dodge a global flu pandemic." Rather suddenly, times have changed. Even plagues have changed, but one thing remains constant: We fear contagion, whether terrorists steal it, grow it and then spread it, or it rises out of nature. Pestilence plagues us.

The ancient Hebrews knew all about pestilence and plague. Their very freedom in the wilderness was occasioned by a series of 10 plagues brought upon the Egyptians. Now that they were wandering and wondering in the wilderness, however, they found themselves afflicted with a plague of a different sort, one just as contagious as the Asian flu. There was a germ in the air, a fly in their system, an epidemic among them. 

Like all bad bugs, their disease was hard to see, yet its symptoms were discernible but not desirable; detectable, but not delectable.  The disease? The Israelites had come down with a bad case of complaining. And it was driving God and Moses nuts.  For good reason. At the core, complaining cuts to the heart of one's relationship with God, not to speak of others. God says that complaining "tests" him, and it questions whether God is faithful: "Is the LORD among us or not?" . It also shifts away responsibility from ourselves to others more convenient to blame, and  fails to recognize who our True Provider is.

Complaining (like I did)  is a plague that's more destructive to a church community than spreading a cough at communion. Complaints tear at the soul; they pick apart people; they peel apart communities.  Complain, complain, complain. The Israelites were whining, ungrateful, disappointed and thankless.  And what was their complaint? That God was never good enough. That God never did enough. The pillar of fire, the column of cloud, the defeat of the entire army of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the salvation of the people -- not enough, they complained.

 "Why did you lead us out here? We'll die out here! We're thirsty. It's dry. It's hot. My feet hurt. I need a bath. I've got a blister. My sandals are too tight. Egypt was better. Egypt had water. Egypt had beds. Egypt had security. Our children need water. Even our cows are thirsty. It's not like home!"  So here's Moses, whom God had called to transform a climate of complaint into a culture of change: an overqualified nanny running about with binky at-the-ready for whoever needs to be pacified next -- a truth about which he complained from time to time.

Where does the common complaint come from? Does it fester? Is it catching?  It's catching all right. And it comes from real or imagined wrongs, or simply faulty expectations, or lack of courage, or lack of faith, or the inability to persevere in the face of daunting circumstances. 

The common complainer says, "I don't like it," then offers no solution.

The common complainer says, "It's your fault. You fix it. You change. You do something. I'll just sit here."

The common complainer says, "If you don't do it my way, I'll go home." Or worse, "If you don't do it my way, I'll stay until everyone is infected and miserable."

Complaint is like poison in the belly of a bitter soul that hates to be alone. So it spreads, it infects, it converts, it multiples ... until the community is one bitter belly, full of illness and sour in heart, leaving God little wiggle room.

Their complaining led them to consider murdering Moses. Yikes! Murder is admittedly an unreasonable extreme at one end of the complaint spectrum, yet unreasonableness is often symptomatic of the contagious complaint disease.

What's the prognosis for an uncured complaint epidemic? 

The Colossian Cure: "Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive" (Colossians 3:13). In other words, as leadership gurus Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey,  put it: Turn the language of complaint into the language of commitment. We should agree not to complain about out brothers and sisters, leaders or God, but instead make commitments to them that express our love, forgiveness, understanding and empathy. So don't start the gossip mill. That spreads the complaint disease faster than a sneeze flies. 

Don't spread the disease by word of mouth.  Don't create a SuperPlague in the church, home or community. If it gets strong enough it could wipe out the whole shootin' match. 

Rather than complain, let's turn to the ChristCure, knowing that those in Christ live and forgive like Christ, heal and lift up like Christ, welcome and affirm like Christ, love and forbear like Christ, suffer and endure like Christ, do acts of kindness and mercy like Christ.

Christ is our immunization against soul contagion.

Against him there is no complaint.

     

And...this is a cool fly song. - Enjoy and have a great week!