Week 4: Bin the Bitterness

This week we're talking about bitterness. Show of hands - who woke up this morning and said, "I'd like to be a bitter person today?" Right? Nobody puts that on their vision boards. Nobody makes that a New Year's resolution. Nobody schedules "Be bitter during this two hour block" on their Google Calendars.

And yet, if I asked, and I'm not gonna, how many of us have struggled with bitterness at some point in our lives… how many of us STILL struggle with bitterness…. I'm guessing we'd have a lot of hands up.

Bitterness is destructive. This is not normal garbage. Bitterness has a tendency to be TOXIC. You can put it in the garage. You can slide it out of sight - but bitterness if left untreated grows and infects your whole house and every aspect of your life. Until one day you are treading water in a Death Star Garbage Compactor sized pool of unresolved emotional trauma.

If we're gonna get rid of the bitterness that infects our life, we're gonna have to understand it better. What is bitterness and where does it come from?

Bitterness is a very complex emotional state. Bitterness is not just being annoyed, or having a rough week and so you're feeling a little ennui and then it fades. One of the characteristics of bitterness is that it lasts. It sticks around. It's hard to get rid of.

Bitterness is more than just anger. But that's closer to the root of the problem. Psychologists define bitterness as a chronic emotional state marked by resentment, hostility and anger - usually rooted in perceived injustice, betrayal or long-term disappointment.

So those are some pretty heady things that people go through. These are world-altering, perspective altering, life-changing events. If you have experienced injustice and betrayal first-hand, you know how damaging THAT can be. You know how hard it can be to pick up the pieces after events like that. You know how much that can make you question everything you know.

But bitterness is more than just that - bitterness is often present when those things happen and you feel like you can't do anything about it. The people who betrayed you don't pay a price. The people who hurt you don't feel the consequences of their actions. Because of the systems or the consequences, you feel like you can't do anything about it. But you're still angry - even rightfully so.

And that leads to a dangerous situation that psychologists call "blocked anger." You're angry - and you can't do anything about it. And so what happens, because you can't express your anger or exact justice from the ones who hurt you - the anger needs someplace to go.

So instead of the anger being expressed outwardly, it turns inward. And you give it a home. Anger moves in. It hardens over time and lives within YOU. And it does damage. How do you know if bitterness has come home to roost? Honestly - I think this is one that most people can probably recognize easily, they just don't like to admit it. But in case you're not able to recognize it or you're in denial - if you are obsessively replaying the events that invoke anger or a sense of injustice in your head. If you simultaneously feel anger but a sense of powerlessness or hopelessness, then you may be dealing with bitterness. Here's an interesting question and also just an example of how destructive bitterness can be. If in addition to those feelings you are experiencing sleep problems, appetite changes, reduced libido, low motivation or social withdrawal… if your default state is emotionally edgy or aggressive - you may be feeling the very real, very harmful effects of bitterness.

Here's another way bitterness may show up - bitterness doesn't just affect you… oh no. It affects other people and situations in your life. See you're hurt, you're angry. You've felt betrayal and disappointment and injustice - well now that resentment that you feel toward those who did those things to you - it doesn't just stay reserved for those who hurt you in the past. Your resentment and distrust will leak into NEW relationships. Bitterness will stop you from being fully present and enjoying NEW experiences. Here's something else that happens - those emotions that aren't able to be directed at the people who hurt you - that "blocked anger" - sometimes it shows up as a short fuse with people in your life who had NOTHING TO DO with your original hurt and pain. You start externalizing blame and taking it out on the people around you. You just kind of have this simmering, smoldering anger under the service all the time that can actively, but usually more passively aggressively lash out at people who didn't contribute to your bitterness in the first place. You lash out at others indiscriminately. You get real good at holding grudges. Keep it up and then oh, you start getting that label. You are 'that' B. The B stands for bitter. Keep it up long enough and no one will want to be around you - your reservations will always be for "bitter, party of 1, bitter party of 1."

That's the really tragic thing - you've been hurt in the past, but bitterness will rob you of your present and your future too if you let it. Bitterness can become YOUR IDENTITY if you don't bin it up and take it out to the curb. In recent years, psychologists have pushed for the recognition of a disorder called PTED - Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder - where a person becomes stuck replaying and responding to a specific injustice and it literally reshapes their entire personality. You can become depressed, irritable or anxious. And it doesn't just change your personality - it also changes your self-image. Dwelling on what happened allows bitterness to become a permanent part of your character. And one of the most common ways it does this is by changing your self-image to that of "the victim."

And then in the present and the future - those of us experiencing bitterness will have a harder time taking accountability for our own roles in our misfortunes, big or small, and we will tend to externally focus and obsessively blame OTHERS for our own shortcomings.

Now, we've been focusing on betrayal and injustice as main motivators behind bitterness, but there's another very common type that we need to address. It shows itself out in our lives in the same way, but we can also experience bitterness and "blocked anger" from feeling repeatedly invalidated or unappreciated… IE - you've been working hard at work for 5 years, you've been doing all the right things or so you think, and yet you get passed over for promotion and the new employee who's only been here a year gets it. If something like that happens enough times with big enough consequences or impact on your life - bitterness can rear its ugly head. You have "blocked anger" just in a different way. If your hopes get dashed - if you have experienced hardship after hardship, loss after loss, an unbelievable string of bad luck, or dashed hopes and unrealized dreams over and over again - then you may be a prime candidate to harbor bitterness. And that bitterness… can even make you feel at odds with your spiritual beliefs. Oh yeah. You ever been angry at God. You ever been bitter because of what you feel God allowed or because he didn't bless you like you thought He should, or didn't punish people like you thought He should?

It's okay. You're not alone. And it doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you a bad Christian. It just makes you human.

In Proverbs, a collection of wise sayings, we read -

Each heart knows its own bitterness.Proverbs 14:10

That's not just saying that each of us experiences things to be bitter about. Because odds are, generally speaking, that's true. But that verse is also a way of saying - "some pain is so personal to us that no one else fully understands it… except maybe God. Maybe Jesus."

And you know, I think is a good jumping off place to say

BITTERNESS PROBABLY WASN'T YOUR INTENTION

If you are struggling with bitterness right now, I don't believe that you set out to be bitter. You know how bitterness often starts -

BITTERNESS OFTEN BEGINS AS SELF-PROTECTION

We're hurt, and we don't like being hurt. So we try to protect ourselves from being hurt again. And so we build a wall. A wall of anger. A wall that doesn't let anybody in. A wall where we try not to feel anything inside by keeping everybody outside. By hurling rocks over the wall at anyone who comes to close to our wall. But that's the problem. That wall becomes our identity over time.

For years you could not think of Berlin without immediately thinking of the Berlin Wall. It became part of the identity. East Germany - Berlin Wall. Iron Curtain. Cold. Sadness. Until David Hasselhoff showed up one day and brought everybody together. That's right - Baywatch and Knight Rider's David Hasselhoff. It was not Reagan or Gorbachev who brought down the wall - it was Haseelhoff. Look it up.

Anyways - my point, and I do have one - what starts as self-protection - which you can convince yourself consciously or subconsciously is a good idea at the time, winds up being a wall that we build that not only defines our life… it shrinks our life.

BITTERNESS SHRINKS YOUR LIFE

It shuts out new relationships and opportunities. It shuts out the future and the present and keeps you trapped in the past. It closes you off to things that could be life-giving and fulfilling- in the name of "protecting ourselves against further pain or trauma or disappointment."

But you know what - that bitterness also walls us off from the abundant life that Jesus wants us to have. No matter what the intention. The apostle Paul gives this advice in Ephesians 4:31-32

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.Ephesians 4:31-32

It's a recurring theme throughout this series - but again, the Apostle Paul doesn't say "manage your bitterness. Get your bitterness under control. Make your bitterness work for you to protect you." NO! He says,

Get rid of all bitterness!Ephesians 4:31

It does us no good! Don't deny it. Don't spiritualize it. Don't pretend you're not harboring it. Don't rationalize it or spiritualize it - GET RID OF IT! Bin it up and throw it out!

Okay… but HOW? How do we get rid of bitterness? Because this verse is attached - it's part of a complete statement, I'm not gonna bury the lede. I think there's a number of things we need to do and I'm gonna share them with you with some examples from scripture - but I'm gonna say at the end of the day, it has to do with making a choice. It's a choice to live like Jesus.

Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.Ephesians 4:32

There's steps there - there's stuff we'll break down in a bit, but the very first thing we've gotta do is

MAKE A CHOICE

We need to make the choice that bitterness is not going to dictate our actions or our attitudes. We need to be conscious of the power bitterness has in our lives and we need to deny what it wants us to do. And that's a battle. It requires us to be on guard. It requires us to be honest. It requires us to know ourselves and admit that we're struggling with bitterness. And that's something we need to do - not just with ourselves, but with God and others.

ACKNOWLEDGE OUR BITTERNESS

The Book of Job, which I feel the need to say this right up front - is written as wisdom literature and poetry. It is not a historical narrative. It is a crafted STORY meant to explore the problem of righteous people suffering. It is not a record of real events. It is contained in the section of the Old Testament known as WISDOM AND POETRY and the manner in which it is written shows that it is both. It remains in the Biblical canon because it explores tough theological ideas and truths through it's narrative and it challenges overly-simplistic views of God, justice and faith in a way that literal history often does not. Okay - so if you read the Book of Job and say that's really messed up, how could God do that to Job because he made a bet with "the accuser" - not even the devil as we know him in modern literature - okay - rest assured, He probably didn't. If a literal Job actually existed, and that is debatable, the book of Job contained in scripture is a fictionalized and dramatized story rife with poetic license meant to make us think and wrestle with a difficult concept. And anybody telling you otherwise needs a remedial class on the Old Testament and Ancient Hebrew Literature as well as the nature of God as demonstrated and described by Jesus Christ.

But with that out of the way - there is a line in the book of Job that is going to help us today - it's doing everything it was meant to do - Job 10:1 Job says -

I am disgusted with my life. Let me complain freely. My bitter soul must complain.Job 10:1

Okay - not only is this a wholesale admission of what Job is feeling inside. He's saying the quiet part out loud - do you know who he's talking to? He's talking to God! That's his opening line to God! Job feels that he's been unjustly picked on. That he's within his rights to complain. And he knows he's bitter and so he is acknowledging his bitterness before God Himself.

Some other translations put this a bit more poetically - they have Job saying -

I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.Job 10:1 (NASB)

When was the last time you spoke in the bitterness of your soul. When was the last time you felt free to complain freely to God?

Here's why this is actually healthy. You're not gonna let go of a problem with bitterness, until you acknowledge you have a problem with bitterness. The first step on the road to recovery or change is admission that we have a problem.

And you know one of the takeaways from the poetic story of Job - and we can match this up with similar statements and observations throughout scripture - one of the takeaways is you can be real with God. You can approach Him with what you're dealing with. If you are angry at God, you can tell Him and it will not hurt his feelings. He is not going to stop loving you. He WANTS us to approach His throne of grace with everything we're struggling with. We may get answers, we may not. Job doesn't get the answers he wanted. He gets challenges and further things to chew on WHILE God restores Him. But what you will always get is a listening ear and a God who wants to comfort us and see us through and shepherd us through our darkest times and that includes bitterness.

So name it honestly. Dear God, I am struggling with Bitterness. You've gotta call it out before you can throw it out.

Lets talk about another scriptural example of an individual who named her bitterness and it could've defined her - it was on its way to defining her - but she made a choice to

Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.Ephesians 4:32

This woman's name was Naomi. And we meet her in the book of Ruth. And in chapter one of Ruth we find out that there's a severe famine in the land so Naomi's husband takes Naomi and her two sons and they go and settle in the land of Moab to flee this famine. But after settling there, Naomi's husband dies. And about ten years later, her two sons both die. And Naomi is alone leaving no one to take care of her. She hears that there are crops in Judah again, so she's gonna go back home - and she dismisses her daughters-in-law to go back to their family in Moab and hopefully remarry again. In that society - the patriarchy was alive and well and being under a father or husband or male family member was pretty much necessary to survive.

Now although Naomi shows mercy and love and thanks to her now widowed daughters-in-law, inside she is bitter. In Ruth 1:13 she says,

Things are far more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord Himself has raised His fist against me.Ruth 1:13

Here Naomi basically states that she thinks God has it in for her. Probably not. But when you go through hardship after hardship, sometimes you can come to that conclusion. She's not alone. Thousands of years later people still feel the same way.

So Naomi dismisses her daughters-in-law, but one is bound and determined to stay with her and go with her. Her name is Ruth. And Ruth, she says this beautiful thing to Naomi - she says -

But Ruth replied, "Don't ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!"Ruth 1:16-17

That's a beautiful declaration of love and commitment and self-sacrifice to care for Naomi. And what is Naomi's response?

When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she said nothing more.Ruth 1:18

She said nothing more. Now - reader, this is open to interpretation. But seeing how bitter Naomi is, I think it's perfectly logical to imagine that

she said nothing more.Ruth 1:18

wasn't just acceptance. It might've had some attitude with it. Bitterness. Rolling eyes - fine.. whatever… suit yourself… can't get rid of her… we'll see how long this lasts… not getting my hopes up… don't die on the way to Judah or anything.

Why do I think that? Why is that possible? Because let me tell you how bitter Naomi was. Rather let her tell you herself -

So the two of them continued on their journey. When they came to Bethlehem, the entire town was excited for their arrival. "Is it really Naomi?" The women asked." "Don't call me Naomi," she responded. "Instead, call me Mara, for the Almighty has made life very bitter for me.Ruth 1:19-20

Mara means "bitter." You know what the name Naomi means? "Pleasant." So here is someone whose name was pleasant - who people are excited to see - who now says "call me bitter." Folks - this is the lengths to which bitterness can destroy someone's life or outlook on life. Naomi goes on to say -

I went away full, but the Lord has brought me home empty. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has caused me to suffer and the Almighty has sent such tragedy upon me?Ruth 1:21

Oof. Well, at least you can say that Naomi got the first part right about dealing with bitterness.

ACKNOWLEDGE OUR BITTERNESS

She certainly acknowledges her bitterness. And Naomi not only acknowledges it in front of God. I mean, she keeps name checking The Lord as being the person she thinks is responsible for her bitterness. But she also admits it to her peers. Her daughters-in-law and the family and friends that she reunites with in Bethlehem.

Now, the good news is is that the story doesn't end there. Not for Naomi OR Ruth. We don't have time to read it all today but Ruth goes out to get some grain, and she is the recipient of the kindness of Boaz - who happens to be a close relative of Naomi's and also a kinsman redeemer, meaning that he had the ability to marry and provide for Ruth. But here's what else it meant. A kinsman-redeemer could often buy back land that was sold due to poverty - he could redeem Naomi's land from when she left. He also could marry a childless widow to continue the family line. This would ensure protection and restoration for both Ruth and Naomi. And starting when Naomi hears about Ruth's meeting of Boaz in Ruth chapter 2 Naomi does an couple of important thing to help shake the bitterness that clings to us. First she shifts her focus from the past to the present.

SHIFT YOUR FOCUS FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT

Remember - Naomi is bitter. She could've just as easily said, "Don't get to attached. Maybe God kills him like he let my husbands and sons die." Oh I know. Cynical. Harsh. You don't know people who say things like that? You don't know bitter people like that? Okay then. But here's what happens, Ruth comes back with a ton of food and tells the story of how Boaz was looking out for her. And in that moment - Naomi says

May the Lord bless him!Ruth 2:20

and that's when she starts laying backstory on Ruth about Boaz and who he is and how things work in Judah with the kinsmen redeemer. And we don't know. We don't know if it's the joy of the moment. If it's the idea that "there is hope" or if Naomi just got out of her own head and her own heart for a minute but she was no longer dwelling on the pain of the past. She was actively engaged in the hope of the present. Because she starts giving advice to Ruth about what to do next.

One of the cruelest things that bitterness does is it keeps us trapped in the past. It makes our yesterdays the loudest voice in our todays.

Alright. Real talk. How many of you have imaginary shower arguments? Alright. More real talk. Confession is good for the soul. How many of you have imaginary shower arguments with people from your past or you replay moments from the past except this time you think about what you should've said.

Healthy isn't it?

Alright. Maybe the imaginary shower argument isn't your venue. You ever been physically present with people around you but you've got that thousand yard stare because emotionally, you're still arguing with someone from five years ago?

Ever do it in church? Hey it's okay. I've done it too. I used to be running the AV back there on Sunday mornings and something in the script would trigger me and then before you know it I'd be back there going "don't take that tone with me, let me tell you something,.." And before you know it I'd missed three slides because I wasn't being present I was frozen in the past!

You know, maybe here's the secret as to why Naomi shifts her focus from the past to the present in chapter 2. Okay - in the past Naomi had gone through devastating things. Enough to make anyone bitter. She lost her husband. She lost her sons. But beyond that - here's something I'm not sure we think about - she wasn't just mourning the loss of her husband and sons - you think Naomi had a vision of the future and what it would look like? With her husband and sons? Growing the family - getting grandsons, expanding their home in Moab… You think Naomi was mourning the loss of the future as she imagined it too? Yeah.

Bitterness keeps us trapped in the past. But shifting our focus from the past to the present can give us hope for the future. Suddenly in Ruth chapter 2 with the appearance of Boaz and his favor toward Ruth which is trickling-down to Naomi - Naomi is able to envision a different future. A new future that has hope. It's not the same future she had envisioned previously and mourned the loss of - but it's still a good future filled with hope and blessings to come. The story is not over.

Bitterness tries to lie to you. It says your story is over and you'll forever be dealing with the pain of the past. But healing acknowledges that there is a future. There is still a path to abundant life and joy to experience even if it looks different than what we imagined initially.

Here's something else that Naomi does that helps her start throwing off the shackles of bitterness - she shifts her focus from herself to others.

SHIFT OUR FOCUS FROM SELF TO OTHERS

Going back to Ephesians 4:31-32 for a moment - the message was get rid of all bitterness - then what -

Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.Ephesians 4:32

It's a total focus shift from yourself, focusing on the inside, to focusing on others and the outside - be kind to EACH OTHER, forgiving ONE ANOTHER. Put the focus outside of yourself. And that's what Naomi does. In Ruth chapter 3, Naomi says

My daughter, it's time that I found a permanent home for you, so that you will be provided for.Ruth 3:1

and from then on out, you can see Naomi is giving advice, step by step of how to win Boaz' heart including - hey… when he lies down to sleep, go "uncover his feet," wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Yeah there's a part they didn't teach us in Sunday School. It's called a euphemism. But the point being - from that moment on - we don't see Naomi referencing her bitterness. She doesn't tell anybody else "call me bitter." Because she started focusing on someone else, because she started focusing on the present and the future and not the past. You know how the story ends for Naomi? It says that Boaz took Ruth to become his wife, and Ruth get's pregnant and then in Ruth chapter 4 it says

Then the women of the town said to Naomi, "Praise the Lord, who has now provided a redeemer for your family! May this child be famous in Israel. Me he restore your youth and care for you in your old age. For he is the son of your daughter-in-law who loves you and has been better to you than seven sons!" Naomi took the baby and cuddled him to her breast. And she cared for him as if he were her own. The neighbor women said , "Now at last Naomi has a son again!Ruth 4:14-17

Do you think Naomi was bitter after that? Doesn't sound like it.

Look, sometimes we can be bitter because of what we've lost or because our future doesn't look the way we thought it would. And we can get hung up on that and stuck in the past. But one of the recurring themes throughout the whole of script is that God redeems. He can take a bad situation and bring good out of it. He has plans to give His people hope and a future. Just because our future looks different than what we thought it might look like doesn't mean that we have no future and doesn't mean that there aren't blessings to come. But in order to truly experience them - part of the abundant life that Jesus wants His followers to have, we have to bin the bitterness.

Now, I gave you some tips today from scripture.

ACKNOWLEDGE OUR BITTERNESS

SHIFT OUR FOCUS FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT

SHIFT OUR FOCUS FROM SELF TO OTHERS

And these are all, I believe, very helpful when it comes to taking out the bitterness in our lives. But bitterness it's a complex emotion. And I don't expect these three things to solve every case of bitterness out there. There's more things that I think we can do, more things to learn from scripture, and we'll talk about some more of them next week.

Thank you for letting me share with you today. If you're dealing with bitterness, I hope you've already begun the process of binning it up and taking it out to the curb. And I hope you'll join us next week as we talk about even more ways to release the bitterness in our lives so we can enjoy the abundant life that God gives us. Until next time, may God loosen the grip of bitterness within us. May old wounds lose their power and may your hope be stronger than your hurt. God bless you. Have a great week!