23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”
Acts 8:23 (NIV)
A note about bitterness: Bitterness is a trap. It ruins your perspective, it makes you focus only on yourself. It creates a false reality, where you are stuck in this look that is driven by anger, yet fueled by justice...it's a self-righteous prison where you are free to do or think whatever, because you aren't the one really feeling this way...THEY did it to you and THEY made you do it. Your loop is protected by the mirage of piety, because you are justified.
When you give into bitterness, it slowly yanks everything from you that is good...your self-respect, your happiness. It then progresses to take your integrity (personally I'm allowed to be bitter even if you know people shouldn't), your perspective (everything you do is judged through the filter of your bitterness) and you lose the capacity to see past your own situation...and there's the danger.
No other reality exists besides yours...so everyone else must be synthesized into your "world"...
Anyone who isn't bitter like you is delusional or naive...
Anyone else who has been hurt, but is joyful, is a novice that doesn't know real pain, pain like yours...
Anyone not angry is spoiled and annoying...
Anyone that suggests you are hurting yourself...they are crazy.
In other words, "joy" is your enemy...you become captive to sin. Oh yeah, it might let you crack a joke occasionally, to make you think everything is fine, but it isn't, and another thing...bitterness gets in your way with God, because no matter how you slice it, you have it because of your own sin.
It may not have been your fault, and you might be right and totally mistreated, but so was Jesus. We tend to forget that reality as well in the midst of our injustice. The purpose of the Bible is really two fold...to show you what God expects from you and what you can expect from God. Jesus, our example, lived a life where he was damaged, defamed, and destroyed (physically) and never once did we ever see Christ fall victim to bitterness. He's had more right to be bitter than anyone alive...no one has endured more injustice than Him, yet He continued to show us, by example, what He expects from us...but it's hard to get.
Jesus was never bitter...and if we are to have the mind that is from him, then neither should we be. Don't fall into the trap.
