Being hospitable is nothing to complain about …

Arnold H. Glasgow is said to have noted, “Some folks make you feel at home. Others make you wish you were.”

Most people have experienced both kinds of hospitality. There are homes where a guest quickly senses that the welcome is genuine and that the host is glad to have someone there. There are other occasions when the invitation was certainly real, but before long the guest begins to sense that his presence has become an inconvenience. In both cases hospitality has been extended, but the experience of receiving it can be very different.

We usually assume that someone who practices hospitality is happy to do it. That assumption is understandable because hospitality itself is an act of welcome. But people sometimes do what they believe they should do even when they would rather not do it, and Christians are no exception. A Christian may sincerely choose to practice hospitality in obedience to Scripture and then struggle with resentment when that hospitality becomes inconvenient or costly.

That makes the wording of 1 Peter 4:9 particularly revealing. The Christian Standard Bible reads, “Be hospitable to one another without complaining.”

The word translated “complaining” comes from the Greek word gongysmos. Peter’s original readers would have understood it as grumbling, murmuring, or complaining that expresses dissatisfaction or discontent. The English Standard Version therefore translates the verse, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”

There is more in that word than simply being in a bad mood. Gongysmos describes discontent that is expressed. The dissatisfaction may be voiced directly to the person involved, spoken to someone else, or muttered more quietly, but it has found its way into words. That is why grumbling, murmuring, and complaining can all legitimately translate the Greek word. Each describes a way dissatisfaction can be voiced.

One place where the same word appears helps clarify an important part of its meaning. Acts 6:1 describes a complaint within the early church because Greek-speaking Jewish believers believed their widows were being neglected when food was distributed. The apostles took the problem seriously and acted to correct it. That tells us that gongysmos does not automatically mean someone is complaining about nothing. A person can have a legitimate reason to be dissatisfied and still complain.

That is particularly helpful when reading Peter’s instruction about hospitality. Hospitality can create genuine difficulties, and Peter does not write as though those difficulties disappear simply because someone is a Christian. His words confront the grumbling that can arise when a person has decided to be hospitable but is unhappy about what doing so requires.

There are several reasons people may complain about being hospitable:

• • Inconvenience. Hospitality can interrupt plans, routines, rest, work, or personal time. A person may agree to receive someone and then resent the disruption, especially when the need arises unexpectedly or interferes with something the host had planned.
  • Cost. Feeding people costs money, and providing lodging uses household resources. This could be a substantial burden in Peter’s world, and it can still be one today. A host may want to help and nevertheless become frustrated by what that help is costing.
  • Loss of privacy. Home is private space, and hospitality means sharing it. Someone who values quiet, solitude, control of the home environment, or uninterrupted family time may find the loss of privacy much harder than anyone else realizes.
  • The work involved. Hospitality requires effort. Food may need to be prepared, sleeping arrangements made, needs attended to, and additional cleaning done afterward. When someone is already tired, that work can become a source of resentment.
  • Frequency. Receiving people occasionally may be enjoyable, but continually being expected to do it can feel very different. A host can eventually begin thinking, Why is it always our house? Why are we always the ones doing this?
  • Lack of reciprocity. People notice when generosity repeatedly flows in only one direction. Someone who regularly welcomes others may begin resenting the fact that those same people seldom extend hospitality in return.
  • Feeling taken advantage of. Some guests overstay, expect too much, fail to help, behave inconsiderately, or gradually begin treating another person’s generosity as something they are entitled to receive. A host may continue helping while feeling increasingly used.
  • Disliking the person being served. Hospitality is much easier when the guest is someone whose company the host enjoys. Biblical hospitality is not limited to enjoyable people. Sometimes the person needing to be received is irritating, demanding, socially awkward, or simply someone the host would rather not spend time with.
  • Competing desires. The host may have wanted the evening alone, planned to go somewhere, hoped to finish some work, wanted to watch television, or simply desired uninterrupted time with family. Hospitality may require setting aside those competing desires in order to give that time to someone else.
  • Social pressure. A person may host because others expect it, because a spouse wants to, because refusing would be noticed, or because being known as hospitable carries approval within a church. The person opens the home while privately wishing there had been an acceptable way to say no.
  • Religious obligation. A Christian may know that Scripture teaches hospitality and think, I am supposed to do this. That conviction can lead to genuine obedience, but the person can also begin treating hospitality as a Christian requirement to complete rather than a person to receive. The box is checked, while the complaints reveal resentment over having to check it.

That final reason may be one of the easiest for Christians to overlook. There is nothing wrong with doing something because Scripture commands it. In fact, obedience often requires doing what would not otherwise be personally preferred. But it is possible to become satisfied with having performed the required action while ignoring the initial attitude.

Someone can think, I invited them, didn’t I? I fed them. I gave them somewhere to stay. All of that may be true. Yet the guest may also have heard throughout the visit how inconvenient everything was, how much extra work had been created, or how badly the host needed the house back.

That is where Peter’s word becomes uncomfortable in a useful way. The hospitality itself does not cancel the grumbling. Providing what another person needs does not make complaints about providing it irrelevant. Peter brings the two together because both affect what kind of welcome another person actually receives.

This is also why the wording of the New Living Translation stands out in this particular verse. It reads, “Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.” That expresses the positive attitude the translators understand Peter to be calling for.

The difference in translation becomes useful because “cheerfully” can easily be heard as a description of temperament or emotion. Some people naturally enjoy having a house full of guests; others do not. Peter’s wording does not make a naturally outgoing disposition the standard for Christian hospitality. His command can be obeyed by someone who would genuinely prefer a quiet evening at home, because the issue he names is grumbling rather than personality.

That distinction also keeps the verse from demanding artificial enthusiasm. A Christian does not have to manufacture excitement about every opportunity to host or pretend that sacrifice feels pleasant. There is room for an honest recognition that something has been given up. The challenge is learning to bear that sacrifice without turning the person who receives the hospitality into the target of resentment.

This is where Christian maturity can subtly reshape an ordinary evening. Instead of rehearsing what the guest has cost, the host can recognize that the very sacrifice creating the temptation to complain has become an opportunity to give something meaningful. Hospitality that costs nothing may be enjoyable, but hospitality that costs something can become an expression of love precisely because the host chooses to give without keeping a running account of the inconvenience.

That choice can also reveal something about the way Christians understand generosity. A gift ceases to feel much like a gift when the recipient is repeatedly reminded of its price. The same is true of hospitality. Constantly advertising the sacrifice places an unspoken debt on the person who received it, as though gratitude must now include sufficient remorse for having required anything.

Peter leaves room for a better kind of generosity. The host can deal honestly with limits, decline requests when necessary, and establish appropriate boundaries without turning accepted hospitality into an occasion for resentment. Once the welcome has been given, the person entering the home can be treated as someone worth receiving rather than someone who must spend the visit compensating emotionally for the inconvenience.

Perhaps this is where Glasgow’s observation becomes a useful measure of hospitality. Making someone “feel at home” involves more than making space in a house. It allows the person to receive what has been offered without wishing, before long, that home were somewhere else.

Scotty