Bitterness

I want to throw out a couple of scenarios this morning and help that to lead into our talk that I believe we need to be concentrating on this morning. Take for example, that someone you trusted has cheated you out of a large sum of money. Or another person got the promotion or raise that you deserved. Or you’ve been unfairly criticized while trying to do your best. Or you have children who continually disappoint you. Or you suffered an ego-deflating setback in your office. Or maybe you’ve discovered that your spouse is having an affair. Or these days it seems that the harder you try, the more things seem to be going wrong. All of these scenarios have one potential. They have the potential to lead you into bitterness. And maybe as you listened to these scenarios or maybe as the word bitterness came out, you thought to yourself – that struck a chord! If it did, I want to ask you to engage with what I’m speaking, because bitterness is a frozen form of latent anger and resentment.


Bitterness grows out of our refusal to let go when someone or something is taken from us. Bitterness is being constantly hurt by a memory and is holding on to a hurt until it has a hold on you. Someone once said: ‘Unresolved hurt leads to resentment; unresolved resentment leads to anger; unresolved anger leads to hate and unresolved hate leads to bitterness and bitterness is one of the most debilitating attitudes that one can have’. Truly, bitterness is an unhealthy emotion. Bitterness is often characterized by an unforgiving spirit and generally negative critical attitudes.

What is it that causes bitterness? Very generally speaking, I would say three things: Hurtful words, hurtful attitudes, hurtful actions, they all have the potential to produce bitterness and resentment. But does bitterness affect us? Yes, it does. Bitterness makes us look foolish sometimes. Bitterness provokes people to do silly things and to say silly things. Bitterness hurts us. Bitterness is an emotional suicide. Someone once said, ‘Bitterness is drinking poison while hoping the other person will die’. It might be a facetitious statement but one that is so true. It’s a very slow form of destroying one’s peace of mind. It prolongs the hurt and it makes us miserable. Bitterness makes everyday life miserable.

And normally bitter people have an amazing memory for the tiniest detail and they wallow in self-pity and resentment. Every offence is recorded and they are always ready to show others how much they have been hurt. Bitter people defend their grudges constantly. They feel they have been hurt too deeply and too often and this exempts them from the need to forgive. And their hearts are sometimes so full of resentment that they no longer have the capacity to love. That’s a sad place to be, isn’t it, when we lose our capacity to love, to see beautiful things around us? When we get so myopic in our thinking that everything we see or hear or that happen to us, we turn it into a bitter response and we get cynical.

The thing with bitterness or resentment is it takes control and it consumes and robs us. Bitterness is more than a negative outlook on life. It is a destructive and self-destructive power. It makes us focus on what we haven’t got, rather than what we have got, and that itself takes away the joy of living. In a nutshell, if that’s some of the negative things associated with bitterness, then very quickly we recognize that bitterness is something that we ought not to entertain.

So it begs the question, how do I overcome bitterness? Dean Galloway in his book, ‘The Awesome Power of your Attitude’ says that there are 4 things that you need to know about bitterness so that you can make better choices.

The first one is this: Prevention is better than cure. It’s better to prevent bitterness than to try and cure it. Look at cancer. Look at the amount of money that is going into medical research to find a cure for the disease. Why? Because everybody has realized what a destructive disease it is. Once it gets a root into our lives, it spreads rapidly. And bitterness has the same potential to destroy us. Medically, too, it causes fatigue, backache, ulcers, headaches, drains our vitality. It is an oppressive and destructive emotion that is at the root of anger and resentment and hate and other negative emotions, which when not dealt with, can even lead to violent behavior. The Bible says this, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile away.” What does it mean? It means that bitterness even has the potential to stop God’s goodness from flowing into our lives. Instead it takes the place of God’s goodness and causes trouble and keeps God away. J. C. McCauley says this ‘keep your heart right even when it is sorely wounded.’

The second thing that you need to know: Learn to recognize the three ways that the destructive attitude of bitterness works itself out.

1. You’ll tend to have bitterness towards God. And if you’re carrying bitterness toward God, it is destructive, because we rely on God everyday to be our source of wisdom and strength. If we have bitterness towards God then it shuts out that one avenue that enables us to rely on somebody who is infinitely more wise and patient and powerful, from our lives.
2. Bitterness against people. It works itself out in bitterness against each other. And you and I cannot afford the luxury of carrying bitterness toward one another, because it will only destroy our own lives. We are relational people. God has made us to live in a relationship with each other. And bitterness takes us away. Bitterness isolates us and keeps us away from communion with each other.
3. 3. Bitterness can be directed towards oneself. Self-pity is a form of anger with ourselves. You may be bitter toward yourself because of something wrong that you did, or some failure from the past. But whatever the cause of bitterness toward yourself, you need to deal with it. Don’t allow bitterness toward yourself, toward others and toward God, to stay.

The third thing that you need to know about bitterness is it always brings bad results. Bitterness brings up and causes trouble. “See to it again”, the Bible says, “that no bitterness grows up to cause trouble”. People who have bitter attitudes also have twisted perceptions. All they see is the wrong they want to see in other people. Sometimes we are blinded to our own destructive attitude. We don’t take responsibility for our ugly attitude and actions. The sad thing is that not only do we reap the fallout and destruction of our relationships at the moment, but it stunts our growth and development, both emotionally and spiritually. And sometimes bitterness is so uncontrollable. It just continues to eat into us.

S.I. Macmillan says that there are at least 50 different diseases that are associated with bitterness. It eats into us and it will finally destroy us. There used to be a TV program called Amos and Andy, and in one of the episodes, Andy kept slapping Amos on the chest. Until one day Amos decided that he had endured enough and he would fix Andy once and for all. So showing Kingfish, another friend of his, some explosives tied to his chest underneath his jacket, he proudly said, ‘The next time Andy slaps me on the chest; he’s going to blow his hand off’. That’s the same way that bitterness is. Andy hadn’t stopped to think of the consequences of his retaliation. He didn’t realize that in trying to destroy somebody else, he would completely destroy himself.

The fourth thing that you need to know about bitterness is that you can always choose. You can choose the better attitude. This past February I was in the United States and I met a person who used to be a baseball commentator. A mutual friend arranged for us to have lunch together, and when I met him, I was taken aback by his face. It was one of the most disfigured faces I had ever seen. And then I heard from my friend that he had been a baseball commentator who, when he was lighting the firecrackers at the end of the game after his team had won, it had blown up in his face. He had gone into hospital after hospital for multiple reconstructive surgeries on his face. And he still looked so bad. But he came and met us and I was struck by the fact that he had such a positive attitude. Everyone who passed us turned to look and stare, but he was just so confident and at peace with himself. As we talked he told me about one person who changed my life. He said ‘when I was in the hospital, a nurse came to me and said that there were always 2 things that happened in that ward – people could get better or they would remain bitter. The choice is always up to the patient. She said that he could fill his life and his thoughts and every waking moment, thinking about why and who was responsible for those faulty firecrackers, and he would never get better. Or he could look at it as something that just happened and not hold bitterness and get better. He said that today he was a better person because of that.

Friends, I don’t know where you are in life, whether there is a root of bitterness that has been able to find a seat in your life. But however, wherever or whatever you are, it is a destructive thing. The sooner that you deal with it, the better. You can look ahead and say these are good thoughts and I’ll make sure that I prevent bitterness from coming into my life. Or if you have bitterness within you, if there is resentment, you need to deal with it. How can you deal with it? Take it to God and say, ‘God I don’t want this root of bitterness and I don’t want to be destroyed. It has the potential to take away my joy but I want my joy. It has the potential to take away peace and color my decisions, not to use wise tactics in my work. It has a debilitating influence on me and God, I want you to take it away. I open my hand to you and I let you take care of it. I want to let go’. Maybe that’s the kind of prayer that you need to make this morning, so that you can enjoy your life and not have a root of bitterness destroy you.