Tomorrow Canadians will be going to the polls to find out who will run this Country Federally. It’s been interesting to watch. There is a Socialist-lite party known as the New Democratic Party whose sole goal it would seem is to maintain a minority government so that they can peddle their influence as swing vote holders. Their platform is based on complaining about those in power without actually offering anything of substance as to how to alternatively run the country. In other words the NDP thrive in chaos and complaining. If you think about it, this is the sweet spot for anyone who enjoys some influence while shirking any real substantive duties. You look good and progressive because you can critique everyone and everything all the while not really having to do anything.
It’s the same way in the church, but instead of the NDP you have those who dress up their complaints in platitudinous prayer items and “concern” which they’ll voice for anyone foolish enough to offer them an audience. These individuals get to complain all they want, exert a little influence over some lame ducks, and come out looking like spiritual giants all because they’ve learned to dress it up in Christian-speak. Yet nothing edifying for the church is done, only the stroking of a few massive egos. There is also a strange correlation between amount of complaining with attendance at church activities. More specifically, those who complain the most are the least participatory amongst the church population. That’s because, according to them they have other more important and spiritual matters to deal with, such as hours of private prayer, reading through the Bible again for the (sighs) one hundredth time, or attending other meetings with fellow blowhards where they get to talk about how spiritual they are and how unspiritual their home church is.
The question begs: Why don’t these trouble making people just leave? The answer lies in my NDP example. A few years back my province of Ontario was stupid enough to actually vote the NDP into power (thankfully only on a provincial level). When it came time to actually tackling our province’s financial woes the NDP government decided that they would spend their way out of it, sort of like an person with huge credit card debt spending more money in order to get themselves out of financial trouble. In the end the province was in massive debt (duh) and the NDP were promptly voted out of power. Now back to the church troublemaker and the question of why they won’t leave. First, if they left and went somewhere else someone at the new church might call them on their baloney and ask them to actually do something, which would leave the troublemaker open to attack and critique from others like them. Second of all, they may actually be incompetent. And third, like the NDP they’ve found the complainer’s sweet spot at their current church, which allows maximum complaining, maximum self aggrandizing, with minimum work. Why would anyone want to leave such a perfect position? They wouldn’t.
