Sunday, September 7, 2025

Paul On Complaining

The likes of 1 Corinthians 10:10 and Philippians 2:14-15 might initially seem to condemn all complaining no matter what.  However, just as Paul makes what would otherwise be philosophically contradictory statements about other matters that are not really saying what many might think (for instance, see what Paul says about circumcision in 1 Corinthians 7 [1]), he does not actually talk or act as anyone would if they truly believed this.  The instances of complaining targeted in 1 Corinthians 10:10, moreover, have to do with Israel's history of sin and not anything God universally demands.  After all, complaining is not condemned by the Torah's laws that outline what is and is not sin even as they complain about sin to condemn it (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32).

In 1 Corinthians 10:10, Paul says to not be like the Israelites who complained and were killed by the destroying angel.  The complaining Paul references is the sort of stupid, egoistic grumblings of the Israelites such as that of Numbers 14, where they lamented how they were no longer under the Biblically unjust slavery of Egypt and would die in the wilderness (though there is no destroying angel in this account, their complaining is asinine).  Soon after, Numbers 16:41-50 describes how some Israelites object to God killing Korah as if a righteous person had died, the language of grumbling being used.  This kind of complaining is not the same as objecting to or protesting irrationality and evil, which could not itself be irrational or evil—it could not be anything but rational to oppose irrationality and righteous to protest immorality, that which should not be done.

It would truly be hypocrisy to complain about complaining, which morally objecting to complaining on a universal level would necessarily entail, even if it is not particularly forceful.  Paul would be contradicting himself and his allegedly correct philosophy on complaints just to hold to it or articulate it!  This is something almost no one who thinks that the Bible actually prohibits all complaining in any context would not even begin to recognize.  Anyway, this foundational flaw aside, the Old Testament does not see God punish people for complaining about things like the mere death of a family member or happenstance life circumstances of enormous difficulty.  The grumbling condemned and punished by God is of a very particular irrationalistic kind.

God complains about sins in Mosaic Law and the prophetic writings, for condemning them is by default already a form of complaining, and for the aforementioned logical reasons, it could not be evil in itself to complain about evil, which, if it exists, deserves opposition by nature.  Jesus sometimes vehemently complains about the Pharisees at length in Matthew 23 and elsewhere; Paul himself complains about a variety of people or their sins in his New Testament writings, something that is the case literally every time he objects to anything at all.  Complaining could not be sinful on its own by Biblical standards or otherwise, as this would be logically impossible.  The object of, motivation for, and execution of the complaint would dictate its moral status.  Is it oriented towards truth, as in, does it object to something demonstrably/probably false or evil?  Is it uttered with the intention of honoring the truth or advancing petty selfishness?  These factors make it valid or invalid.


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