No Whining Allowed

Lamentations 2:11 My eyes are worn out from weeping, everything in me is churning: I am empty of emotion because of the wounds of my people, because children and infants are fainting away in the streets of the city.

I don’t like whining. As a parent, I was adamant about not allowing my children to become whiners. They were free to express their negative feelings about something they felt to be unfair, but endless griping and grousing was unacceptable. It is especially difficult to be around an adult whiner.

We may find it difficult to genuinely grieve as adults because we don’t want to be whiners. We don’t want people to avoid us because we’re always talking negatively. We all know someone like that; no matter how much you try to encourage they refuse to be swayed and almost prefer their miserable whining over possible solutions. We certainly do not want to thought of in that manner. We don’t want to be thought of as big babies. So we put on a happy face and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, get a grip, buck up and do whatever it takes to avoid the label of “whiner.” This can be especially true in the workplace, where negative emotions are often deemed to be inappropriate. Yet we can carry this professional limitation home with us, or to church, or even to our communication with God.

The Bible describes instances of whining. In Numbers 11, for example, the people of Israel are unhappy with their life outside of Egypt, so they start whining, much to God’s displeasure (11:10).

Notice, though, that whining is not the same as grieving. Whining is petty complaining. It’s going on and on about something that really isn’t all that important in the big picture of life. Whining is not lamentation, which is deep grieving over acute devastation and suffering. What we read in Lamentations 2:11, for example, is not whining, but profound mourning: My eyes are worn out from weeping, everything in me is churning: I am empty of emotion because of the wounds of my people, because children and infants are fainting away in the streets of the city.

Scripture teaches us to avoid self-centered, trivial, petulant whining. But it also gives us ample permission to express our genuine grief with freedom. Indeed, as we read in Ecclesiastes 3:4, there is “a time for crying and a time for laughing, a time for mourning and a time for dancing.”