BITTER OR BETTER? THAT CHOICE IS OURS.

“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” (Hebrews 12:15).

For years I hated my dad.

I can assure you that I get no joy out of that sad-but-true confession. It’s simply a fact of my life’s journey, one from which I thankfully recovered.

While I won’t trouble you with the particulars of my conflicts with my dad, let’s just say that I learned some bitter lessons through that ordeal. The single most important of which is this: When God “put me together,” He did not hardwire into the complex web of my DNA structure the capacity to harbor hate. He never intended for me to become, let alone remain, bitter.

The same can be said of you.

Unresolved bitterness is a quicksand of the soul. An unwelcomed interloper. An uninvited intruder. A bandit bent on robbing us of the very essence of life itself. By definition, bitter people are not happy people. They tend to be angry, resentful, critical, often spiteful, cantankerous individuals who darken every room they enter, dampen everyone’s mood with whom they interact, and deaden every conversation in which they engage. They’re just not pleasant people. Not the kind of individuals you’d like to hang out with. In the words of the writer to the Hebrews, bitter people “defile many.”

I should know. For years, I was one of them. The poisons of my bitterness flowed through my veins. The toxins of my pent-up anger repelled everyone who dared to cross my path, leaving me to languish in the loneliness that I myself created.

I am well aware that there are many complex contributing factors to what has become a nationwide epidemic of clinical depression. There is no “one-size-fits-all” cure because there is no one cause. But given my own dance with depression, I cannot help but wonder how much of the depression diagnosed today is the direct result of unresolved bitterness. I can tell you that in my case, much of my emotional meltdown was caused precisely because of the energy-demands of my prolonged hatred. Nothing will drain our emotional reserves faster than inappropriate and misappropriated anger.

Thankfully I learned that there is a better way.

Make no mistake about it. Bitterness is a choice. A choice that we do not have to make.

Consider the basics. As a function of our fallenness, it’s human nature to hate. That has been true since the beginning of the biblical narrative. In Genesis 3, Adam rebelled against God, plunging the human race into a sorry state of sin. One short chapter later, in Genesis 4, Adam’s angry son Cain killed his brother Abel. “Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?...Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.’” Tragically, rather than Cain mastering his sinful anger, his sinful anger mastered him. You know the rest of the story.

From that day to this, our natural, normal inclination is to react to those who wrong us with anger. When we allow our anger to fester, it invariably morphs into bitterness. And bitterness, when left unchecked, will destroy us.

Exactly like a metastasizing cancer gradually destroys our bodies, over time bitterness eats away at our souls. This is precisely the reason that at the point where we are wronged, God provides an instant antidote to our human tendency toward bitterness – “the grace of God” – the desire and the power to make the right choice (to forgive the wrongdoer) rather than the wrong choice (to become bitter). He then begs us to make absolutely sure “that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many.” The stakes are that high.

As Paul wrote his beloved church in Ephesus, “Get rid of all bitterness…Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.” Easy for Paul to say, until you realize that Paul wrote those words from a Roman dungeon. But because Paul chose God’s grace over anger, forgiveness over bitterness, Paul was eventually able to triumphantly declare, “My dear friends, I want you to know that what has happened to me has helped to spread the good news. The Roman guards and all the others know that I am here in jail because I serve Christ.”

Forgiveness always wins. Bitterness always loses.

No doubt about it. Our hurtful circumstances will either make us bitter or better. That is a choice that we alone can make. That is a choice that we alone must make.