bitterness and secondary gain

Bitterness and Secondary Gain

7-30-09

Trials and hardships come into our lives as discipline, and, if we are trained by them we produce a harvest of righteousness (See Hebrews 12:7-11). However, they are sometimes painful and many of us bear wounds from these trials; wounds that need healing.

In our trials we can choose to rejoice in life even if afflicted or distressed by circumstances. By doing so we will find that the strength of God’s grace becomes a strong tower inside, protecting us from the onset of bitterness. This is important because if we become bitter we will not find God’s grace and strength. Then our wounds will not only hurt us, but others as well (Heb 12:15). I feel that the Lord wants to talk to us in more depth about the impact of bitterness on our lives.
Bitterness is not just a bad taste in the mouth. It is a condition of the heart that can form us into its image, and an entity that demands to be served. Bitterness becomes a master we serve. However, serving bitterness makes us feel as if we are in control. As a wounded person we can choose to place our lives in God’s hands, or we can decide to take more control over our lives to ensure we are not wounded again. When bitterness resides within us, we do not see it as a separate entity, but as our own self. (Just as when we think that all our thoughts originate from our own mind, a bitter person thinks that his decisions and actions are his own will.) It takes discernment to know if our thoughts and decisions originate from bitterness or from grace. According to scripture there is One who separates (dividing the soul and spirit, joints and marrow, judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart). It is the two-edge sword of the Word and the Spirit of God (Heb 4:12). Only through the Holy Spirit will we have discernment when bitterness tries to influence us.

How does bitterness defile? And what is its method? Bitterness can cause us to seek a reward for our suffering. This reward is called “secondary gain”. Within his mind, a bitter man will say “What can I benefit from this?” Though we don’t often hear our thoughts speak this, if we are bitter, we can see a sort of bargaining system in our attitudes about suffering. It is this bargaining system that defiles us. When illness incapacitates us, we can seek God’s grace each day and the strength found therein to do His will, or we can withdraw from all contact with God and man, finding our comfort in other places. But if we withdraw we will find that the comforts that come to our mind will eventually become like familiar friends. And this is how a bitter man becomes conformed by his bitterness.

The comforts that come to our mind when serving bitterness wear the cloak of justification. (e.g. “I have had this sore knee for months, with no healing in sight. So I will take the closest parking spot, even though I don’t have a handicapped sticker.”) As a result, If a disabled person comes and finds no close parking space, one’s justification will allow no empathy for the other disabled person. Self-justification disallows empathy because it (justification) looks for self-reward. The friendship of self-justification seems sweet, for it always allows a bitter person permission to avoid unpleasantness, or to indulge in fleshly appetites. But these friends never provide discernment about which thoughts and circumstances are from the Lord. Though the thoughts that befriend and justify us in bitterness seem to lead to comfort, they can never lead us to true strength. Nor can they lead to repentance, for they give permission for us to be molded into our own image and not the image of the Holy Spirit.

What is the end result of bitterness, which is aided by the desire for secondary gain? It is fruitlessness. Remember that the Bible calls bitterness a “root”. It is as if each of us is a tree, and our roots go deep into the soil for nourishment. But bitterness causes a root to change, and nourishment does not come up to our branches to form fruit. We can see this happening in our lives if we avoid God’s calling to lay our lives down and become molded by the Holy Spirit. The end result (or fruitlessness) will be that we become justified within ourselves, feeling that it is right to remain in our own image.

Often our inner healing begins with repentance. Though we are wounded, we must not hold God in the same light as a person who would sin against us. Always, God is good. He remains holy and perfect, though sometimes we may not understand Him. He is just and kind, and unlike bitterness, His grace will form us into a strong fruit-bearing saint.