03 Oct How Gratitude Heals a Bitter Offense

Guest Post – Dr. Patrick Ball – Family Physician, writer, and musician

I know an individual that has spent their entire adult life in bitterness. Bitter means “angry and unhappy because of unfair treatment” and spent means “having been used and unable to be used again”. Think about that. Angry, unhappy, used – and unable to be used again. Wow. What a terrible waste, right?

There is a clear and direct link between emotional and physical health that has been proven in multiple research studies over the last few decades. Taking care of your emotional health can be perhaps a less straightforward process than a daily routine of physical exercise, but it is absolutely necessary for the greater good of all dimensions of your life.When maximized, a healthy emotional life can work as a lubricant or protectant to help all of the other dimensions (physical, spiritual, mental and social) perform much more efficiently in an exponential way. This, in turn, helps with consistency issues in regards to maintaining the health of these dimensions which, once again, has an additional exponential effect.

So we must approach the subject with some intentional process that helps us turn the abstract into a more concrete process. Learning to identify negative social factors early, and correcting them, can go a long way towards promoting positive emotional health. One of the more important such insidious negative factors that can slip unidentified into our lives is the issue of Offense.

Offense can easily be found in a hundred places once you have trained yourself on where to look for it. Scripture says “It is impossible that no offenses should come” – Luke 17:1. Sometimes it might be a small problem such as a harsh word from a trusted individual.  It can be a much greater issue such as an unfaithful partner in business or, even worse, in marriage. To be clear these are all actual, real objective hurts actively inflicted by others that by definition lead to actual, real emotional pain. The problem becomes when the emotional burden is enough that it overshadows your entire health – coloring everything.

Offense is a corrosive, living thing (needing little nourishment to live) that scars and disables everything it touches. Like water in a sinking ship it must be swiftly jettisoned for a vessel to remain afloat. If not aggressively addressed it does, without exception, lead to ruin.

Probably the biggest obstacle to overcome in the healing of this emotional wound is the obstacle of pride. Not an arrogant, narcissistic sort of pride but more of a “lack of purposeful humility” pride. C.S. Lewis says “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” The focus is outwards.

Offense causes real pain so we feel justified in our reaction of anger. To return to the image of the sinking boat taking on water, however, feeling justified does not do anything to remove the oncoming water and repair the damage done to keep the vessel afloat. Feeling justified can become an easy posture that does absolutely nothing to prevent the boat from sinking and drowning everybody on it including, possibly, the ones you love.

This leads us to the most fundamental antidote for Offense. Gratitude. Simply being grateful. Gratefulness leads almost directly to the purposeful humility, the letting go of pride, that we are looking for. It is the release that we are longing and striving for. It is a green,  life giving  pasture instead of a dark forest of trees reaching out to pull us back into their darkness. This in turn leads to the releasing of the oppressive emotions of bitterness and anger that have been weighing down our boats, which are our engaged lives, into deeper colder waters. Feel free to feel justified as long as you like, but just don’t expect it to help anyone or anything in anyway. That’s the choice that all of us are left with in the end.

You don’t have to like the offense or the motivations of the offender, but you most certainly do have to forgive them, completely and with love, to free yourself from the  gravity of the black hole they are on your life. Otherwise it is a wrong done twice with the potential of the second becoming more devastating than the original.  Don’t underestimate it. It is deadly enough when you are aware of its power.

John Bevere,  in his book “The Bait of Satan”, states that “hurt people will become more self-seeking and self-contained” and “you need to realize that when you sow the love of God, you will reap the love of God. You need to develop faith in this spiritual law – even though you might not harvest it from the field in which you sow or as quickly as you would like”.

This law, or principle, is unchangeable. Delving in the black art of offense produces suspicious, dangerous black fruit. Sowing love from the Source of all love reaps … love. Gratefulness begets freedom. What would you rather have in your life? What is your choice?

Guest Post – Dr. Patrick A. Ball – Family Physician, writer, and musician