“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”  --Matthew 7:3-5
 
     Jesus dealt candidly with those He encountered arrogant enough to judge other people while remaining blind to their own faults. Though he was addressing the sin in our lives, the principle at the root of this passage applies to our work lives as it still does these centuries later to our spiritual lives.
 
     Complaining about our jobs is considered our privilege as workers, though most of us are careful about how, when and where we do that complaining. Sometimes, it isn’t so much about complaining as it is about processing our frustrations and sorting out how much is ‘them’ and how much is ‘us’. Also, there are times when complaining is the way we call attention to inequities, unsafe working conditions or circumstances which put the public good or the good of the company at risk.
 
     Too often, though, our complaining is used to defer other people's attention from our own flaws and inadequacies, or to place the blame for those flaws or inadequacies at someone else’s feet. More often than not, the whining is designed to shift our own attention from our flaws.
 
     In this passage, Jesus taught our focus must always be first on our own sin, our own wrongs. If this is true for something so vital as our spiritual lives, how much more so must it be true for our work lives. Was Jesus telling people not to speak out against sin? No, certainly not! But remember the admonition to do everything we do in love?

 

     Only by confronting the reality of our own sins can we be humble enough to effect positive change in others who are sinning. Only by confronting the reality of our own work flaws, our own tendencies to contribute to conflict, our own tendencies to be insensitive to other employees, will we ever be humble and sensitive enough to effect valued change through constructive approaches.
 
     Complaining almost always contains elements of negativity, like anger or jealousy or covetousness, and when we introduce those elements into any corner of our lives, they eat away at us like a worm in an apple. Prepare your heart today to avoid complaining at work, and look to the matters in your own job performance which may be improved by you. God will be glorified in that simple act.
 
     Is complaining our right? Perhaps there are occasions when it is our responsibility, but it is never our right. As Christians, our words should be designed to bring about effective, selfless change, and where possible, to inflict as little personal insult as possible. Anything else is an indication that we see the speck in the other person’s life while ignoring the beam in our own.

 

--Randy Kilgore