Bitterness in the Bible is shown as a poison. It spreads through our whole body with self-focus and self-talk. It could even be described as a cancer that becomes denser and larger as it grows inside our body. It is a blackness inside. Author Adrian Rogers says, “a bitter person is hypersensitive, ungrateful, insincere, holds grudges, and has mood swings”. Bitterness is taking a hurt and multiplying it.  Bitterness has many negative effects on us, but the most dangerous problem with bitterness is that it disconnects us from our healing God.

It can be difficult to get rid of. Bitterness can sometimes even seem to us that it is the only thing we have left after a crime, an unfairness, or injustice that has occurred. After all the pain and suffering, the one thing we have left is the precious right to be bitter. We feel that if we were to give up on this right, we have let evil win. However, I think a lot of us who have fought with bitterness know that there is no joy in it. We know that it binds us to the hurt. We may want to give up on this bitterness from time to time, but when we try to give up on it by own “will power” we find it is not easy because we have to look inside ourselves to get rid of something that is already an extreme focus on ourselves.

We defeat bitterness, and we defeat the injustice that causes it by keeping our eye on the light. That light is Jesus Christ.

Jesus says, No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.  If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light. Luke 11:33-36

When our body is full of light there is no home for the darkness. Bit it is critical to understand here what is going on. When we give up our bitterness to Jesus and keep our eye on his light, we are not giving into evil. We are doing the opposite and defeating evil by giving it over to the God-man and savior of our souls. Jesus is the only one who can ultimately destroy evil. To Jesus, we give the right to vengeance. God makes all things right either on the day of judgement, through local authorities in this world which we may or may not have a legitimate part to play in our hurt, or the miraculous work of Jesus Christ on the cross. At the core of it, when turning over our hurt to Jesus we are giving up our failed self-rule and must let Christ be the judge. We must give up our sense of entitlement to always hang on and seethe over our hurt.

I know for me that in giving up bitterness I am giving up on a false narrative of life. That is the narrative of life as high school. Those who work and study the hardest and do the best on “life’s tests” should get a proportionate and certainly bigger reward if they do well. It is our belief that there should be heaven on earth as we live in a completely just society.

Yes, all of us Christians are called to be a peculiar people who strive for the good of all in creating a just society as followers of Christ. But we need to understand that right now on this earth, under the rule of the “Prince of this World”, we will not live in a just society. That is why we must focus on Jesus and the grand work of God. Jesus’ work is the saving of God’s own ordained children from a real and despicable evil.  Jesus will burn this evil, at the right time, in an unquenchable fire and that those saved will dwell in a new heaven and new earth as revealed in the Word of God.

Instead of clinging to the downward spiral of often petty and sometimes deeply legitimate bitterness, we can cling to the upward movement of light that is Jesus. One of the surprising things to me when it comes to prayer is that according to Jesus, that in order that we can best see him, in order to pray effectively, we must forgive. In forgiving, we are not just closing our eyes and pretending not to see evils work and letting the sex offender run again a muck in the Sunday school. But in forgiveness we are paving the way to heal. We are destroying one of the enemy of our very souls best weapons. This weapon is a constant re-dwelling on a hurt. We are removing our auto replay tape of injustice that runs again and again in our minds. We are crying out with all our might, and in our internal being, to a God who dwells not only in, but outside the fallen world, that we live in. We are replacing that bitter tape going on again and again in our mind with God himself as we dwell on the words, works, and life of Jesus and his promised eternal kingdom and respond accordingly. We are saying that yes God we have faith, not in your general existence as a theory, but we have faith that you really will wipe all tears away and that “vengeance” is indeed yours and peace is ours.

One of Jesus’ most telling parables is found in the book of Luke chapter 7. It is one we should read repeatedly. We are very keen on others harm & offenses against us, but often underestimate or are not self-aware of how we have hurt others. These are hurts and pains that we do not have the capability of fixing or making up for. In this parable, Jesus tells the story of a rich landowner who has a poor debtor with an an un-payable dept come to him. Jesus forgives the dept but the man turns around refuses to forgive a small dept owed to him. In keeping an eye on the light of Jesus, we walk knowing that we have been forgiven and our charge is to also forgive.

Doug

The words of British poet Robert Abrahams say it well, “For some men die by shrapnel, And some go down in flames, But most men perish inch by inch, In play at little games.”  Our goal is to identify the little games and put a stop to them and put the right weight on the right things.