See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled. Hebrews 12:15
That line check captain who you know doesn’t like you just made your check ride twice as difficult as any other captain, again. Your fellow ramp agent keeps using her seniority to push you into the worst possible shifts on the calendar. That senior flight attendant has been saying nasty things about your work to your fellow FA’s during the entire trip, and that trip happens to be a very long-haul international one. It’s all you can do, as a Christian, not to let bitterness lodge in your heart.
As fallen human beings we can harbor bitterness at home or at 35,000 feet. Whether it is directed towards someone within our closest family or at an airline colleague we only see occasionally the terrible fruit of this condition of the heart is the same in the end.
The Cold Logic of Bitterness
There is a certain cold logic to bitterness. Bitterness appeals most strongly to our sense of right and wrong, to our sense of fairness. Bitterness says that we have an ongoing right to hate those who have either hurt us or allowed us to be hurt by others. It is more interested in past losses than present and future gains. It spurns hope and doesn’t care. When we are caught up in the self-indulgent throes of bitterness, we would rather lash out at a loving God who would “restore the years the locust has eaten” than allow Him to restore those years to us.
Unrepentant bitterness is one of the biggest barriers to whatever degree of healing we can know in this life. To be bitter is to, by definition, remain unhealed. We cannot heal from that which we refuse to give up. Much of the cure of the soul is dependent on surrender, the surrender of what ails us to God. We cannot be healed of physical infection unless we are willing to let the doctor touch and cleanse the wound. Bitterness is a sort of spiritual infection. If we are not truly willing to let God put His hands on this angry, hateful contamination of our heart, He cannot and will not heal us.
This wound analogy can be taken a step further. Imagine having an infected cut and purposely rubbing dirt into it. The result of such an action is to make the infection worse and potentially spread it throughout the body. Every time we choose to entertain bitterness, we are making the infection stronger within us. This is the true insanity of holding on to angry unforgiveness. How many of us nurse a grudge? Every time we do, we are, in effect, sickening ourselves.
In fact, this same spiritual illness will eventually spread even if we do not actively make it worse by dwelling on it. Ignoring an infected injury ultimately has the same effect as feeding it. Acting as if it isn’t there just draws out the period in which it does potentially irreparable damage to our lives. Bitter resentment is just as destructive when left to itself as it is when consciously indulged; it just takes longer to do the same damage. In the end bitterness simply cannot be allowed to be present in our lives if it is not to destroy us. It must, by grace-empowered decision and action, be forsaken.
The Sad Reality of Bitterness
But it cannot go if we are not willing to let God’s grace in to help us let it go. The problem is we sometimes feel like we get something out of bitterness, maybe a certain perverse satisfaction in clinging to our hurts. The sad reality is that, on some level, those who remain bitter want to remain bitter. Perhaps it is a stubborn tendency to want to judge others. We do not want to release someone to the one true Judge so we hold onto what they have done to us and blame them for it in perpetuity. We would rather hate them than give in to a divinely inspired forgiveness that takes their punishment out of our hands. Such a state of heart only destroys us, but we do not care. We get some terrible false gratification from letting it define us. This is a particularly dark form of insanity.
The self-inflicted curse of bitterness spits in the face of both the healing and the Healer. It perpetuates a wrong relationship with God, others, and ourselves. It is idolatry because the “right” to be bitter is elevated above our absolute imperative to be obedient to God and forgive as He forgives. It is deeply wicked and incredibly destructive to our very souls.
Bitterness kills.
