c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) An e-mail virus dubbed “Sobig” coursed its way around the Internet last week, clogging e-mail systems worldwide.

It looked normal, with a message saying, “Please see the attached file for details.” If the unwary recipient opened the attachment, that unleashed the virus.

Once again, something good and productive got twisted in the devilish hands of a few. The medium that enables us to stay in contact with far-flung friends and to conduct business efficiently without travel or expense became a channel for trouble.

Do I stop sending e-mail in order to avoid the occasional virus? Or do I get smarter? If I ditch one thing, how do I know that the next thing won’t be worse?

A person ends one marriage, for example, and remarries basically the same person, only now it’s worse. A congregation bounces one pastor, calls another, and soon finds itself in the same grinding conflict, only now it’s worse. People flit from job to job, only to discover that work remains work.

Rather than exchange one mess for another, sometimes we need to examine the mess we are in. Get smarter about it, study ourselves as the one constant in each mess, look for a resolution better than complaint or escape.

When his disciples recoiled at the difficulty of his teaching, Jesus warned them that even harder teachings lay ahead. The issue wasn’t his teachings, but their capacity to comprehend and to accept. If they complained about a little, how could he entrust them with a lot?

Complaining about the little is a constant in religion. Over the years, I have heard church members complain about every aspect of church life. Too much change, or too little change; music too loud, or music too soft; pews too empty, too full, or too hard; not enough flags, or too many flags; sermons too long, or sermons too short.

I have heard wrangling over money, power, the pastor’s car, the pastor’s spouse, the organist’s tempo, the acolytes’ shoes, communion wine, thank you notes, pastoral calls, new members, old members. I have heard immediate complaints when a sermon hit home, as well as lurking, simmering complaints about leadership.

Complaining is the refuge of the powerless. Like truck bombers and virus writers, complainers try to protect themselves by passively wounding another and by shifting a burden elsewhere. Nothing gets resolved, of course, or learned or improved or healed. Hurting someone else doesn’t improve one’s own situation.

Jesus poses a special challenge to complainers. His teachings are steppingstones, leading inexorably to life-change. He warned his followers that they would see “greater things than these.” If they accepted one teaching and remained open to the next, they would cross the river and see the land of God’s promise. It would look different from anything they knew.

The tendency of religion is to draw lines: this far and no farther. We portray the Bible as meaning only one thing and not a dozen more and surprising things. We want to freeze God’s revelation in doctrine, as if nothing further waited to be said. We defend our inherited folkways as if they captured eternity, rather than a passing moment’s attempt to understand. We enshrine half-truths, rather than risk moving on to fuller truths. We fight change as if it were a mortal enemy, new ideas as an incarnation of evil, and so we strand ourselves midstream on stones that are incapable of sustaining weight.

I can understand why religious leaders freeze the moment. It is their way to retain power. But why do the rest of us go along? God has so much more to show us and to give us, but we stand on stones, complaining and resisting, afraid to move on, pillorying those who dare try the next stone, admiring those who stopped three stones back, and thinking ourselves brave for being rigid.

I think it’s time we tried another way: listen and learn, not complain. Take the steppingstones offered us, rather than stop, get stuck, and call it faith. Believe that God has more to show us, rather than assume God has exhausted his revelation in what we already think we know.

DEA END EHRICH