For any ex girlfriends who are still reading, for some reason. And for those possible girlfriends to whom this applies so much that I doubt if you will ever be a girlfriend again:
The Bitter Draught. Adriaen Brouwer. 1605-1638. Oil on Wood.
And I think this painting finally made bitterness real. Bitterness is a response to something really bitter. But does it make you bitter or do you leave the bitterness in the cup. The sin of others is real, causing this reaction. But do you let the reaction make you? Is this expression frozen on your face years after you have had that draught?
G. K. Chesterton is most famous for the adventures of his Father Brown character. A lowly priest whose paradoxical poetry is actually more adept at solving mysteries of the Sherlock Holmes variety than said Holmes. As he says, when things go wrong you don’t need a practical man you need an impractical man. For Chesterton the modern man was too practical to be of any earthly good. Chesterton had a great imagination, which is a very useful way of figuring out what might have gone wrong. You might call it intuition or logical extrapolation but truth about the world can be attained by this method. Modern man doesn’t really care for this sort of thing. We go in more for the empirical. Which is why you hear “don’t judge me until you walk in my shoes.” so often. Because for the modern, truth is only attained by experience, or sense perception. Chesterton played on this theme often. Men are always asking Father Brown how he knows about the depravity of man, since it is assumed that he does not have any first hand experience. “He could have read about it.” As C. S. Lewis said explaining how the creator of Sherlock Holmes may not have actually been addicted to opium. That it is possible for Conan Doyle to accurately portray an opioid addict without being one. And this is the case with Father Brown. Though he didn’t read about the depravity of humanity he heard it every day in confession. This seems like the proper way for a Shepherd of God’s flock to come by truth, reality. Again our evangelical culture seems to prefer even that our shepherds have gone astray and had a dramatic conversion experience, themselves. Building generations of solid Christianity seems to be best done, not by learning things the hard way, but by wisdom imparted from others.
I recently read a small book by Jim Wilson on the subject of Bitterness. He goes through a number of examples of people he has counseled and how they overcame bitterness. Of course he had some first hand experience as we all do. But I’m guessing the subject would not have been so filled out, or possibly addressed at all were it not for all of his counseling experience. And it was like finally having the cypher which unlocked a lot of my past experiences. It seems to me that a lot of the things people do doesn’t make any sense. As the Architect of the Matrix says “The problem is choice”. And as another pastor has said, if it made sense, it wouldn’t be sin. And so hearing Jim explain what bitterness actually was, made some of the actions of others in my past make sense. “Oh so that’s why there were doing that.” Now this isn’t about blaming others, or missing my own sin, but that’s what a detective does, he tries to explain the nonsense of others. And that’s what each and every one of us must do every day, with ourselves and others. And a lot of times it’s easier to see our brother’s faults, which is the point of fellowship, iron sharpening iron. We need to be wise in sorting these things out and we need to help others sort them out. As this is happening to you, it just seems crazy. Why is she so mad at her father for something 20 years ago? Why is she so upset at men in general because of something her boyfriend did 10 years ago? Why is there never a clean slate with me? Why does she never want to resolve anything? Why does she find fraternity with others based on sharing the sins others have committed against you? Oh I see bitterness. It seems to me that this sin is more prevalent in the fairer sex. It also seems that as the fairer sex takes over our culture, this is one of the sins of our age. Victimhood is everywhere, everyone wants in on the act. When you are sitting in the counseling situation and one person has a list of grievances going back to the beginning of time and the other person is sitting their with their mouth open, chances are that the first is female and the latter is male. But why do we side with the woman? Why do these lists of sins guarantee that she is right and he is wrong? Why are women’s sins so cool?
Bitterness is a failure to forgive. It may have been triggered by actual sin on the part of the other person. But then your responsibility begins. Do you forgive them, or hold it against them? It never occurred to me that Jesus’ teaching about restoring a lost brother from Matthew 18 could be so turned on it’s head. Rather than a confession or church discipline being about restoring a brother, bitterness turns it into confirmation. A confession becomes proof that they really did wrong you and now bitterness says you should hold it against them forever. Every time you say you are sorry(This ads an extra peril to the apology given to make peace, or get physical affection, when you don’t think you really sinned. Don’t do this.), it’s just a confirmation that she can add this to the bitterness list, rather than considering her own sin. This is not love. Love is quick to forgive, it is yearning for repentance in another so that they might be free of their sin, and fellowship might be restored. Bitterness is keeping tabs, because a focus on the sin of others seems to make our sin less of a big deal. Another aspect of this was made clear to me by another girlfriend. She was always accusing me of weird things that didn’t make any sense. And it became clear that she thought accusing me of what she was doing somehow erases any fault on her part. I just never would have thought about doing such a thing. It’s another side of the bitterness sin. It’s all about the sidelong glance, the comparison. You want your column to look better than their column. But this means there is always a loser. This means there is never a comparison with the actual standard, a Holy God. In which case, who can stand? How can you have any fellowship or unity when someone is always losing? We should find common ground in all being losers, in all being sinners before a Holy God.
Tracing the messy entanglements of sin complicates what God has expressed simply, “Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself”. I wish the ridiculously simplistic version of clenching your fists and ‘loving’ from a frozen Disney princess were true. But it’s not. Things are more complicated than that. I was recently struck by this phrase from the prophet Isaiah: “I am a man of unclean lips amongst a people of unclean lips.” There are two categories, yourself and the company you keep. The company we keep today, loves institutionalized unforgiveness, bitterness. It loves the sins women have a propensity towards. Whole fields of psychology have grown up based on digging up the faults of others and focusing on them. We must be aware of these trends and fight them actively. This is not an easy thing to do, as clearly seen in the story of Lot and his Pillar of Salt. We are connected with the people around us, often in ways we should not be. We are to be spreading the light to them, not trying to fit in with their unclean lips. This is the Gospel light that must shine on our own hearts and which we must take to the world. Isaiah saw his evil and the evil of those around him because “his eyes had seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” The sidelong glance was not the right comparison, the right comparison was between Heaven and Earth, God and men. To see things in perspective is to cleanse your own heart and then run to the world to offer them the only true relief. The world doesn’t need more bitter stories passed by judgmental whispers in your office. The world doesn’t need more lists of sins carried on nearby shadows everywhere you go. The world needs the repentance of the Gospel, even repenting for holding on to the sins of others. The world needs the forgiveness of your brother because He first forgave you much more.
Further Reading:
How to Be Free From Bitterness, Jim Wilson