Hate Expectations

The fifth commandment, the same in Exodus chapter twenty and Deuteronomy chapter five, is:

“You shall not kill.”

Jesus raises the bar for His followers with this one. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter five, He says:

“You have heard that it was said to the men of old, “You shall not kill and whoever kills shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgement.”

In this teaching Jesus tells us that even being angry with others is sinning against the fifth commandment.

Some might object to this teaching where anger or dislike are understandable, or negative feelings seem to be out of our control, but, as with my other posts about the ten commandments, I want to focus on one thing I have done which has helped me keep this commandment, so I am not going much into the reasoning behind the commandment.

I wasn’t trying to keep this commandment when I gave up complaining for Lent- I think this must have been in 2016- which was the year I was baptised but ultimately giving up complaining has helped me to keep this commandment.

Before I became a Christian, I spent years trying to be better through thought, feeling and behavioural exercises, largely through introspection, analysis and acts of self-discipline. Some therapeutic practices I attempted for years involved recognising and labelling thoughts in order to improve my wellbeing. These practices also involved emotional awareness and recognising and changing unhelpful behaviour.

These methods did not make me happy, but the practice of self-awareness and habit of recognising and labelling thoughts as they occur helped me when I gave up complaining.

I quickly recognised complaints as they came into my head so I was able to reject them. Sometimes I could see that my complaint was not valid and revealed some sin, but the recognition alone meant I could distract myself from the thought, and so rejected the complaint to get out of the negative habit and keep my promise to God for the season of Lent.

My belief when I gave up complaining was probably that complaints are always unjustifiable, so I should stop. I have only recently realised this is probably extreme, but the practice of giving up complaining has helped me.

As I believed that complaining was not the right thing to do, and could see that giving it up was helping me to be more charitable towards others, I continued this effort to never complain, even in my private thoughts when Lent was over. Meaning I've been trying to live this way for about four years.

I found one of the hardest times to remain faithful to this discipline is when speaking to someone with a complaint. My immediate attitude towards another person is one of desiring to affirm them so they feel good and happy. When people complain they are looking for validation for something and I have never found a way of successfully validating a person who is complaining (whether I agree or not) without:

1. Being dragged into the complaint
2. Inadvertently upsetting the person because I refuse to enter their complaint, usually by changing the subject or not responding at all
3. Causing actual anger by trying to posit an alternative to their complaint; for example, I might speculate charitably about why a person said something which hurt someone else and the complainant usually feels invalidated and sometimes even attacked because of this
4. The complainant wrongly believing I am agreeing with them through my effort to listen and provide a neutral acknowledgement of what they’re saying in order to validate them and problem solve if relevant, but without complaining.

The question of how to socialise without complaining remains unanswered by me at this juncture, I will just have to take up complaining again if I wish to keep people happy.

I have learned a valuable lesson about anger through this different outlook. I found when people try to engage me in a complaint, one common underlying reason is because they have/had an expectation of another person/institution/ideology/plan etc. and that expectation hasn’t been met. So they feel angry because their expectation was not met- the old expression “great expectations, great disappointments” comes to mind.
Anger is one response to the disappointment, I am speculating about anger directed at other people in these circumstances. In their anger sometimes the complainant then seek out someone else to validate how they feel, they might want them to listen and usually join their complaining. I think they want the person to agree partly for validation but also so they can bond over these negative feelings.

Expectation-Disappointment-Anger-Complaint-Please don’t call Ciara

This was helpful to recognise as these complaints usually involved criticising another person. Putting others down is against love and therefore against God. I found often the complainant had unreasonable expectations, or had allowed themselves to be scandalised by toxic media or some other dubious influence and so I didn't agree with their complaint anyway.

So, my recognition and rejection of joining in these kinds of complaints is something which I would like to try to continue to do, at least in certain circumstances, even if I soften my “no complaints” rule.

Lots of people are complaining at the present time about the toxicity of journalism and the media, and rightly so. It is toxic, but it is that way partly because the gross media is popular- it gives people complaint fodder. People love getting together to complain about the things they hear in the Press, especially when it involves scapegoating some public figure or unpopular institution.

One thing which was rife in my pre-Christian life was bonding over putting others down. It is a cancer of our culture and I was guilty of putting myself and others down to try and gain acceptance from others and make people laugh.

It reminds me of chapter 23 in the Gospel of Luke, St. Luke includes in his version of the Passion of Jesus that King Herod and Pontius Pilate become friends, even though they had been enemies, and they bond over their abuse of Jesus- the scapegoat.

It is interesting that Jesus says whoever is angry at another is “liable to judgement” that means that there are consequences for our anger.

One reason I say this is interesting is because often feelings of anger at another person can be the result of our judgements of them. Someone said or did something once and we characterise them in that way because we've judged them.

Jesus famously taught us to treat others as we would like to be treated, see in chapter seven of Matthew’s Gospel.
This means we can expect the treatment we give to others. So, if we want to be judged and for people to be angry or spiteful towards us when we let people down, then that makes the complainant attitude I’ve described towards others acceptable.
If we would rather people forgive us when we make mistakes, then we need to try and forgive disappointments and let go of our anger.

It can be quite hard not to get dragged into peoples complaints of others, and sometimes people are angry for very understandable reasons, but in those situations it usually hurts the angry person to feel the way they do, so it's not a loving thing to encourage this in people.

In the expectation-disappointment scenario my own anger is not that difficult to check because I don’t expect much from people and think I'm more inclined to turn anger inward, which is just as bad, but not what I'm reflecting on here.

If someone mistreats me or lets me down I try to take the view of St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians when he says:

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”

It is not the naïve belief that there is no malice in another person, but it is the charitable acceptance that bad things happen and sometimes they involve me. Life and people can be unfair and disappointing.

As a Christian I am aware of my own part in other people’s disappointments- I know I am a sinner and have hurt people in my life, I have let people down, and so gladly realise that I’m not in a position to put others down as I am guilty of the same.

With this acceptance of our collective human weakness, myself included, I have an inner peace and greater love for others, meaning it is easy for me to avoid feeling or remaining angry towards others.

God wants us to be interdependent on each other to an extent, and that reliance on others means we have to expect certain things from people. Therefore, sometimes when expectations are not met we will be let down, which can be disappointing.

As I’ve concluded that it does not seem reasonable to live a life completely devoid of complaints and disappointment, it is necessary to have a solution for these experiences to prevent myself falling into sins against love. Breaking the fifth commandment is a sin against love, especially love of other people, and is therefore against the teaching of Jesus.

Lovely Jesus, helping us to have peace and not be angry or judgemental.

When I feel I have a valid complaint or feel disappointment I give it to Jesus Christ by speaking to Him in prayer.

I also have to accept that sometimes I complain and feel disappointed and I’m being unreasonable, and that can be quite difficult to accept, but when I recognise this and I feel bad I turn to God then too.
He cares about how I feel in all these situations and through my prayers- my conversation with Him- Jesus helps me to overcome negative feelings, love people and keep the fifth commandment.

If this Blog post is not what you expected, why don’t you give it to Jesus and keep your complaints to yourself?
If you tell me, as stated previously, I will not know how the Hell to deal with your complaint. Can’t remember why I left customer service nine years ago…