Digging Up the Seed Root of Bitterness

How can you recognize bitterness?

Do you ever walk away from an unpleasant encounter and replay it in your brain?

Are your snappy retorts more clever and pointed in your mind the second time than what you actually said?

Can you imagine more amenable responses from that person you just mentally pinned to the wall when you had a second chance?

Do you feel better afterward?

Or do you replay it again and find an even more clever remark?

Or again.

How about one more time?

Dig up that seed root

I did it all the time until one day Jim Wilson spoke to a VBS crowd of adults about digging up the seed root of bitterness.

I’d never heard the terminology before, but I recognized the symptoms as rampant in my own heart.

Jim was discussing the passage in Hebrews 12:14-15, which discusses how to get along with others. It reads like this:

Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.

He pointed out that when we replay our agitation in our mind over a verbal exchange, we’re not letting go of our anger or bitterness from that conversation.

Instead, we’re pushing down the hurt and the desire to hurt in return, into our very souls where it can fester and bring forth ugliness.

You know, sinning.

Satire a problem?

We know a young woman who grew up in a family that did a lot of teasing, a lot of saying the opposite of what they meant in a humorous way.

The concept is their remarks were so preposterous, they couldn’t possibly be true.

I happen to like that sort of satire myself.

The problem was, the girl had heard this sort of cynical humor so often growing up, she no longer knew what was true.

Did her father really think her ugly, or was he just kidding? (She’s beautiful). Did her brother mean it when he implied she was an airhead, or was he joking? (Excellent grades all through college).

I watched her frustration with not understanding the joke–or was it a joke?

That brought to mind the Scripture passage about not provoking your child to anger. She got confused and  reacted with hostility–thus being labeled “difficult to get along with.”

Is it no wonder she’s a little bitter about her childhood?

What is bitterness?

How about this definition: resentment, a feeling of deep anger and desire for ill will.

What causes bitterness?

Sin, misunderstandings, frustration, a thwarted expectation of what we think we deserve.

I may be more sensitive to bitterness than to other sins because this is one that hits me often. Perhaps linked to self-pity, it stems from my way/choice/desire/clever remark being ignored or dismissed by someone else.

It makes me want revenge–which is why I so often rehash conversations that did not go well for me.

A check, now, on bitterness

Thanks to Jim Wilson, though, I’m more sensitive to that sin now. When I find myself continually reviewing a conversation and coming up with better lines, I now stop and ask myself, “What am I going to do about that bitterness?”

Left unchecked the sin of bitterness can corrode the soul and destroy the life of anyone–Christian or not. I prefer to confess the sin of bitterness, ask God to show me how to deal with disappointment, and move on, guilt-free.

I see bitterness all around me in society, not just in my own heart, and how it demoralizes and destroys everyone it touches.

There’s no reason to allow someone else’s reaction to me gut my peace of mind.

I refuse, now, to clutch the sordid pus-riddled corpse of self-centeredness to get in God’s way of teaching me a lesson or allowing me the relief of confessing sin.

How about you?

Jim Wilson feels so strongly about the prevalence of bitterness in our American culture, that he wrote a free pamphlet available on the Internet. I’ve bought copies and given them away for 20 years. It’s called How to Be Free from Bitterness, and you can read it yourself by clicking on that title.

It’s the least we can do.  🙂

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