Rooting Out Bitterness Is a Community Project
It Takes a Village . . .
One of the most common causes of depression, especially during seasons of illness, cloudiness and stress, is bitterness. Sometimes the wrongs people have done to us can become like a song playlist in our brains, set on endless repeat. Or it can become like a pile of boxes and other clutter that you can’t help but trip over as you go about your life. And it can become demoralizing.
Now, we are Americans, which means we are individualists, sometimes to our detriment. No wonder so many of us are depressed. Yet the Bible says that combatting bitterness and its attendant depression is a community project:
See to it that . . . that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled . . . Hebrews 12:15 (ESV)
Note that that passage is not addressed to individuals, but to the whole church. We are all charged with ensuring that a “root of bitterness” does not grow like a weed in anyone, ourselves or others. That’s because if it does it will “defile many.” When the root “springs”, it pools and its caustic bile sloshes out onto others.
So how do we get help each other dig up bitterness by the root, so that it does not return? The phrase just before that one says “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.” In short: we must receive the grace of God, and then having obtained it, apply it to others. Church is a place that only admits sinners. Therefore, there is sin in every church, and for every sin there must be forgiveness, lest our souls become cluttered with the detritus1 of past hurts.
Is there someone you need to forgive? Do it yesterday. Is there someone you know whose heart is cluttered with offenses done to them, and their bitterness sloshes out onto others? If you see something, say something. Don’t let them fail to obtain the grace of God. For we are never more like God than when we forgive.
Detritus | de•tri•tus | da'tridas, 'detradas: Waste or debris of any kind.