Complaining to the Wrong Person

One night last week, I was asked to be the official scorer at the basketball game in Gettysburg.  The regular scorer, Keith Scott, couldn’t be there.  I’ve done it before, and I was happy to fill in.

When you’re the official scorer, you wear a striped shirt, like a referee, so that everyone knows who the official scorer is.  So, I was wearing a striped shirt.  I did not look like a referee in any other way--I had a grey sweater under the striped shirt, and I was wearing tan pants, not the black that a referee wears.  Plus, I have thick glasses and no one would ever confuse me for someone who’s athletic.

I say this because it plays into an incident that happened at halftime.  Just a few seconds before the half, one of the referees called a technical foul on a player from the visiting team.  I don’t know what prompted the technical--I didn’t see anything obvious, but I know that most referees don’t like giving technical fouls.  My assumption is that the player must have said something he shouldn’t have said, but I don’t actually know.  Anyway, the fans of the visiting team were upset at the call, and I don’t really blame them.  Had it been my team, I probably would’ve been upset, too.

So, we got to half time, and I went out to the lobby to use the rest room.  And one of the fans of the visiting team started complaining to me about the technical foul call.  I shrugged my shoulders, smiled, and said, “Hey, I just keep the scorebook.”  But he continued to complain.  Again, I said, “It’s nothing to do with me.  I just keep the scorebook.”   He started walking away, but he continued to tell me what a bad call that technical had been.  I said again, “Buddy, I just keep the scorebook.”

Now, I don’t want to be too hard on this guy.  I’ve been known to get a little wound up at a sports event myself.  Plus, he was not abusive, he did not use any bad language, and he did not get in my face about it.  Mainly, I just thought it was kind of funny that he was upset at me for the technical foul call, when in fact I had no responsibility for it whatsoever.

After a while, though, I started thinking.  How many times have I gotten upset about something, and taken it out on someone who had no responsibility for it whatsoever?  A store clerk who can’t help it that they’ve run out of something.  A receptionist on the other end of the phone who has no ability to help me with my complaint.  I’m sure I’ve done that more times than I care to remember.

And then I thought, how often have I done that to God?  How often have I been upset at God for something that God really had nothing to do with?  Something that was the fault of my own mistakes, or my own stupidity.  Something that was the result of the actions of others, because all of our actions affect other people.  I’m sure I’ve done that more than I care to remember.

Realizing how silly that man looked for complaining to me about a technical foul makes me realize how silly I look when I complain to someone who has nothing to do with my complaint.  Obviously, I need to stop doing that.  But it also makes me feel better, in a way.  Because if I can forgive this person in this situation, then how much more can God forgive me when I do the same thing?  God is much greater than I am at everything, including forgiveness.  So if I can forgive this man, I’m confident that God has forgiven me.

That’s not an excuse to continue bad behavior.  I still need to work on this.  But it’s wonderful to know we have a God with a huge capacity to forgive us when we ask for forgiveness.