Working as a family physician for four decades, I have seen lives destroyed by many agents. I have witnessed cancer taking the life of the young, heart disease kill people in their prime, and addiction rob the lives of many. Of all these agents of destruction, none compare to the devastating impact of bitterness. Bitterness will turn the wise into fools, the wealthy into beggars, and the delightful into the disgusting. Bitterness will steal your wealth, your health, and at times, your life. You do not want to remain bitter.
There is no adequate medical or psychological treatment for the misery produced by greed-fueled bitterness. Some therapies will lessen the pain of the misery, but they are not a cure. The only effective remedy is spiritual. If you are living in a pond of misery, you are also bitter. No life circumstance can cause you misery without you being bitter. You will need to address the bitterness if you hope to escape the misery.
This book looks at the early signs of bitterness so you can pull them out by the roots before they have a chance to establish themselves as a tree of bitterness.
This book takes a look at the dangers of bitterness in your life and the subtle ways bitterness can present and develop.
The last chapter on knowing how to live in a bitter world.
Bitterness is the internalization and personalization of a real or perceived injustice with a persistent and intense rumination about the injustice or the agent of the injustice, resulting in more damage caused by the bitterness than could ever be caused by the injustice.
You may have suffered some horrible abuse and feel your bitterness has merit. Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse is never justified. Civil society needs strong laws with harsh penalties for abusers. If you have suffered abuse, you do not have to live the rest of your life defined by the pain of the abuse. Abuse is a legless, hungry tiger growling on the other side of the room. Bitterness gives the tiger legs and claws, so now it can tear you to shreds. Do not allow your bitterness to provide a destructive power to abuse.
When I first began this journey to write about bitterness, I naively thought it would be a simple task. Bitter people are victims, victims of their own making, imprisoned by their own hands. Working as a family physician for four decades, I have seen lives destroyed by many agents. I have witnessed cancer taking the life of the young, heart disease kill people in their prime, and addiction rob the lives of many. Of all these agents of destruction, none compared to the devastating impact of bitterness. Bitterness will turn the wise into fools, the wealthy into beggars, and the delightful into the disgusting. Bitterness will steal your wealth, your health, and at times, your life. I thought it would be a simple matter of just stating the evils of bitterness, sound a loud warning, and I could then move on to another topic. My simplistic view may be of help to someone who is not bitter, but it has no value to those who are already bitter. Bitterness tosses away reason and makes the bitter person both blind and deaf. If it is possible to help someone caught in bitterness, we must look behind the scenes and address the causes of bitterness. This journey led me to explore the roots of bitterness, the actions, directions, thoughts, and beliefs of someone bitter. The bitter feel they need more to feel complete, and this led to an exploration of greed and self-centeredness. If greed and self-centeredness are behind bitterness, then what is the cause of greed and self-centeredness? This awareness led to a path where only the brave dare venture, an exploration of spiritual emptiness. There is no adequate medical or psychological treatment for the misery produced by greed-fueled bitterness. Some therapies will lessen the pain of the misery, but they are not a cure. The only effective remedy is spiritual. If you are living in a pond of misery, you are also bitter. No life circumstance can cause you this degree of distress without you also being bitter. You will need to address the bitterness if you hope to escape the misery. So if you are not bitter, I hope the strong warning to avoid bitterness, like the poison it is, will be sufficient to keep you on the right path. If, on the other hand, you are bitter, and living in misery, then I pray you will have the courage to read on and allow God to guide you out of the hell of bitterness.