The Cancer of Bitterness Part I

Bitterness has an effect similar to cancer. It eats away at a thing so extensively that anything that was even healthy or in tact, soon deteriorates. Bitterness inhibits our ability to think clearly. We are so focused on the wrong that has been perpetrated against us, that we may even find ourselves conjuring up various scenarios on how to get even, so as to attempt to hurt the other person. We want them to feel what we have felt. We want them to know exactly what they have done to cause us grief. If it were possible, we want them to be able to look inside us and know the anguish that they have caused.

We are sometimes surprised by the terrible and gut-wrenching shootings we hear about on the news. Many are affected, lives are destroyed… and what of the shooter? For a solitary moment in time, he found satisfaction. We can always predict how these stories end, however. The temporary, yet morbid pleasure always seems to inevitably end with the shooter snuffing-out his own life.

What about the woman astronaut who was part of a love triangle. Her obsession over the relationship between the man and the other woman was so surprisingly intense, that she unpredictably traveled cross-country, with a Depends diaper (so as to not make any bathroom stops), with the intent to kill her lover and the other woman. While we may never think of shooting down people in a mall or actually going to the person’s home and in some way try to hurt them, our feelings of resentment, bitterness, and anger, has the potential to lead to irrational behavior.

Would you ever think of taking a fistful broken glass and squeezing as hard as you could, to the point that the edges of the shard pieces of glass puncture your fingers and penetrate all the way through? Yet, this is a picture of one who is overcome with bitterness. The very feeling of bitterness is irrational. While those who have hurt us are living life as usual (with absolutely no thought of our present pain), we can live miles apart and find ourselves turned inside out. The acid-eating effects of bitterness do not merely stop with a mere emotional pain. Left unchecked, bitterness has a way of insidiously and unsuspectingly affecting us physically. One medical journal notes that the stress [which derives from pent-up feelings of anger and resentment] can cause severe health problems and, in extreme cases, can cause death.

The most important issue to address is not merely to identify the effects, but the cause of bitterness. In order to overcome the stronghold of bitterness, we must first understand that the feeling of bitterness is self imposed. Indeed, we are initially hurt by those who intentionally or unintentionally caused us harm, but the pain that comes from holding onto that hurt is self-inflicted. While the hurt caused by the other person was real and was perhaps deserving of the offended parties anger, the pain that comes from the anger and bitterness long after that terrible period when they were hurt, is a pain which can no longer be blamed on the original perpetrator.

We must recognize that this acid-eating, cancerous disease of bitterness is one that is not caused by someone else, but one which is caused by us. Just like cancer, it would be senseless for me, as your doctor, to say that you, the patient, can rid yourself of this rapidly growing disease on your own. In fact, you can’t do it at all. You need someone or something (from outside of yourself) to cure you- if you desire complete healing. You could say “No, thank you” and attempt to do it on your own, perhaps choosing to take an over-the-counter medicine. You may say that this response by you would be ridiculous. You understand that over-the-counter medicines won’t help rid you of cancer, much less its symptoms. Yet, we may respond to the root of bitterness - and the pain that it causes - with a similar attitude: “I can deal with it on my own (I don’t need anything or anyone)”. Like the cancer patient who is in need of a doctor and medicines that work, we need to deal with the cancer of bitterness, not looking within, but looking to something - or rather, Someone - outside of ourselves...