Week 9 Sunday
Week 9 Sunday
How Not to Deal with Resentments
Ephesians 4:31-32; Colossians 3:8; 1 Timothy 2:8
We have seen how disruptive resentments and hate are to the total person. If we are to live abundantly, we must get rid of them at all costs. But how?
First, we must look at some of the ways we are not to use in getting rid of our hates and resentments. (1) We must not suppress them into forgetfulness and try to act as though we no longer have them. This treatment only drives them into the subconscious mind where they work as unconscious resentments. There they will produce conflict and disturbance, the person scarcely knowing what is causing the upset. We will be under nervous strain and probably lay our upset on all sorts of causes, everything except the real cause. To suppress the resentments does not get rid of them, for then they simply work their havoc at deeper and more dangerous levels. No one can play tricks on life and escape the consequences. We must bring resentments to the surface and face them honestly, with no subterfuges, no evasions, no suppressions. We must not push resentments down into the subconscious mind.
(2) If we avoid suppression, we must not try the contrary method, expressing our hatreds and resentments. Some psychiatrists prescribe this way, lest suppression set up a complex in the subconscious; and there is no doubt that we can get temporary relief by giving the other person “a piece of our minds.”
A young lady who had been tense and frustrated came away from the telephone quite relieved and elated after having told someone just what she thought of him. Her outburst did relieve dammed-up resentments. A woman who had pains, first at the base of her spine, then in the middle of her back, and then between her shoulder blades, was asked by her doctor what it was that was bothering her inwardly. She blurted out, “Well, I think I’d be well if I could tell my husband just once to go to ___.” Perhaps she would have been relieved momentarily, but the resentments would fill up again and be ready for another spillover. No, expression is not the remedy; it is merely dealing with a symptom instead of with the disease.
O God, my heavenly Lord, I am dealing with something too devastating to try to heal it lightly or to temporize. Help me go to the roots and find release there. But I will need more than your help; I will need your grace. Help me take your grace for this task. Amen.
Week 9 Monday
Further Suggestions of How Not to Deal with Resentments
Titus 3:3; 1 Peter 3:8-9; 4:8-9
Yesterday we considered two ways we are not to use in dealing with resentments and hates: suppression and expression. To suppress hate means to create a sore boil at the center of our subconscious being. To express them makes sore boils on the body of our social relationships. Moreover, if we give people “a piece of our minds,” we shall probably lose our own peace of mind!
(3) There is little use in trying to run away from or avoid circumstances that give rise to resentments. A doctor found a patient nervous, unable to sleep, collapsed. He asked if his home relations were adjusted and happy, and was told that they were. Then, as an afterthought, the patient replied that he and his mother-in-law didn’t get on. That was the point of conflict. The doctor sent the man and his wife off for a vacation, away from the mother-in-law. Good, but not good enough; for while there would be temporary respite and a letting down of tensions, yet they would tighten up again as the prospect loomed up of having to meet the same situation. The remedy was a mere temporizing, for the relief was only temporary.
(4) Trying to do as one woman said she did is good, but also not good enough: “When filled with resentments, I would go to the piano and bang out my resentments through Mozart’s Sonatas, with apologies to Mozart.” That would give temporary relief and act as a feeling drainer, but it did not tackle the causes.
(5) Nor will it do to nurse our resentments in our minds. That only makes them worse. They will carry over into the whole of life and spoil it. One woman said that when she entered the quiet time for prayer, the only thing she could do when she became quiet was “to chew on my resentments.” The quiet time simply brought to the surface what was a continuous fact: a nursed grievance.
All of these methods are attempts to heal over a boil. And to heal over a boil is a dangerous act; it may drive the poison in. The poison must be drawn up and out.
O my Lord, I am tempted to do everything about these resentments, everything except the one thing I must do: get them up and out. But I shall resist that temptation and be inexorable with myself. I shall need your help, for I cannot get them up alone. The roots have gone deep. Help me. Amen.
Week 9 Tuesday
Forgiving for Christ’s Sake
Matthew 18:21-35; Luke 6:37; 23:34; Ephesians 4:31-32
Perhaps you are saying, “If the methods just discussed are not the way to overcome resentments and hates, then what is the way?” A young Chinese student looked into my face at the close of an address and said, “Please teach me how to love the Japanese.” The iron had gone deep, so it was a real problem with him. An Armenian said the same thing to me: “How can I forgive the Turks?”
I could tell him only how one Armenian girl had been enabled to forgive a Turk. She and her brother had been attacked by Turks in a lane, and while she had escaped by climbing over a wall, her brother had been brutally killed before her eyes. She was a nurse, and later on, while nursing in the hospital, she recognized one of her patients as the very Turkish soldier who had murdered her brother. Her first feeling was: Revenge! He was very ill, just hovering between life and death. The slightest neglect, and he would die. And no one would know. His life was absolutely in her hands. But instead of revenge, she decided for Christ’s sake to forgive him. She fought for his life and won, nursing him back to health.
When he was convalescent, she told him who she was. The Turkish soldier looked at her in astonishment and said, “Then why didn’t you let me die, when you had me in your power?”
“I couldn’t,” answered the girl. “I just couldn’t, for I am a Christian, and my own Master forgave his enemies who crucified him. I must do the same, for his sake.”
“Well,” said the hardened Turk in astonishment, “if that is what it means to be a Christian, I want to be one.”
You can do what that Armenian girl did: You can forgive for Christ’s sake. No matter how bitterly wronged you may have been, nevertheless, for his sake you can forgive the wrong and have only positive good will toward those who have wronged you. It isn’t easy, but it can be done—by his help.
O God, the wrong has entered deep into my spirit. In my own strength I cannot forgive. But I am willing to be made willing. Take my willingness and add your power, and then I shall be able to forgive. For through you I can do anything—yes, anything; even this. Amen.
Week 9 Wednesday
The Basis of Resentments: An Unsurrendered Self
Matthew 14:3-12; Acts 7:59-60
While the central and fundamental motive for forgiving injuries against us is that God forgives us, and we therefore copy God as God’s children, nevertheless there are minor motives and techniques that we can use in dealing with resentments.
(1) Remember that at the basis of most resentments is a touchy, unsurrendered self. The fact that we have been able to hold the resentment shows that there is a self that is oversensitive because our will has not surrendered to the will of God. When surrendered to the will of God we throw off resentments as a healthy skin throws off disease germs. Unless there is inner disease or an abrasion of the skin, the disease germs can get no foothold. So, when resentments have gained a footing, it shows that there is a raw, sensitive self underneath that has become a culture for the rooting and growth of resentments. Suspect a self that can grow resentments; it is probably diseased with self-centeredness.
(2) Raise the question with yourself as to whether your resentments are rooted in imaginary slights, insults, and wrongs. When we are self-centered, we can imagine a group is talking about us when that group is talking about everything else but; we can read into actions and statements meanings never intended; we can go around with a suspicious, looking-for-slights attitude, and will find imaginary ones aplenty. By our very mental attitude, we can throw people around us into unnatural, closed-in attitudes that we interpret as intentional hurts and slights; but all the time we are oblivious to the fact that our own attitudes of self-centered sensitiveness created the very things in others against which we react.
Remember that when you go around with a chip on your shoulder, the chip is probably from the block above.
O God, my Lord, help me see myself clearly, for I defend myself; I gather self-defensive arguments around myself as a magnet. Let me then lay this resentment-gathering self at your feet for cleansing and release. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 9 Thursday
Dissolve Resentments through Prayer and Appreciation
Matthew 5:38-48; Romans 12:17-21
We continue our steps to get rid of resentments and hates. (3) Every time the name of the person against whom you are tempted to hold a resentment is presented to your mind, breathe a prayer for him or her. Meet every invading resentment with a barrage of prayer. It was said of John Forman, a saintly missionary, that all his thoughts of his friends turned to prayer. Make the rule in your mind that, invariably, all your thoughts of your enemies, real or imaginary, are to become prayers for them. Make the mind understand that and admit no exceptions. Soon you will have no enemies, for you will have no enmity. Prayer dissolves enmity as certain bacteria dissolve filth and turn it into clear water.
(4) Say everything good you can about the persons with whom you are unfriendly. The probabilities are there are many fine things in them. Fasten your mind on those fine points instead of on the resentment points. The outcome will be, in all probability, that the good will so overbalance the bad that you will find yourself thinking more and more of the overwhelming good and less and less of the insignificant bad.
(5) When you do have to speak of the faults of a person, don’t say, “I don’t like that person.” Rather, say, “I don’t like certain things in that person, and they are these.” After stating those faults, proceed to say, “But I do like these things in him or her,” and name them. End on the positive note. Negative thinking makes a negative person; positive thinking makes a positive person. If I have mentioned mothers-in-law in a derogatory way in many of my instances, let me end my thought of them as mothers-in-love, as one couple does.
(6) Remember that fastening upon other people’s faults is usually a defense mechanism. By doing so, you are probably attempting to lift yourself up by pushing them down. It won’t succeed. In mentally picking flaws in others, you create a worse flaw in yourself; you become a sensitive, critical person, just like the thing you habitually center upon.
God, my Lord, I would be rid of all that corrodes my soul. I know that my attitudes of resentment and criticism eat like acid into my moral nature. I would ask you to deliver me completely from the last tiny root of resentment. Root it out. Amen.
Week 9 Friday
Loving People for What They May Become
Matthew 5:25-26; Luke 22:32; 2 Corinthians 2:7; Galatians 6:1-2
We continue climbing the ladder out of the pit of resentments and hate. (7) If, in going over the things in the person against whom you hold resentments, you find little to love or admire, then love and admire what the person may be. You do not have to be dishonest in your thinking and like the things a person does. But you are now committed as a Christian, and you love people as Christ does: He loves them not for what they have been or are, but for what they can be. Your love then becomes real and redemptive.
(8) If there is a sudden flare-up and a consequent breakdown in relationships, get into the habit of settling disagreements at once. Don’t let them get cold and become fixed in thought and attitude. Jesus said, “Make friends quickly with your accuser” (Matt. 5:25). This is sound, psychologically and morally. I know of one couple who have a beautiful wedded life. Perhaps one of the secrets of their happiness is that they decided, when they married, never to leave a room in which any disagreement should take place until they had settled the matter. Their difficulties, therefore, always ended in laughs, because neither of them could go until an agreement was reached; they were prisoners of their own agreement, and there was no open door except into good will.
(9) See if there isn’t a reason in the other person for the things you resent. A very outstanding surgeon would see red every time he saw W.P.A.* workers. Their slowness and dawdling got on his nerves; he was fast developing a complex, for every time he saw them his face would flush and his ears go red. Then one day, he noticed them at quitting time, putting away their tools with the same slowness. “Why,” he said, “these men are sick from undernourishment, from lack of vitamins, and from parasites.” He set himself to rehabilitate them, and in doing so helped himself—he lost his own complex.
O God, I come to you to gain understanding sympathy. I am resentful because I don’t understand. Give me clear insight and sympathy that I may read in the lives of others the things that make them unattractive to me. And when I understand, help me to forgive. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
* Works Progress Administration, a federal agency created during the Great Depression (1929–39) to employ people in carrying out public works, often construction of infrastructure.
Week 9 Saturday
Final Steps for Overcoming Resentments
Matthew 11:25-26; Luke 6:37; 17:3-4; Ephesians 4:32
(10) Go out each day to do some positive good to the person against whom you hold resentments. Wear down the hate and opposition of others with your own good will. A Japanese student and a Chinese student were in the same university, and the Japanese disliked the Chinese intensely. But when the Japanese student was ill, the Chinese student brought food to him every day. This kind attention broke down the enmity, and they became fast friends.
A man and his wife were constantly quarreling. The quarrel usually began over the radio; she wanted music, and he wanted the news. Then one day he was changed and let God into his little soul. When he returned home and the tension point came, he walked to the radio and turned on the music. His wife looked at him in surprise and said, “But this is the news hour.”
“Yes,” he replied, “I know, but I thought you would enjoy the music.” She could scarcely believe her ears, but responded by getting up and turning on the news! From that moment they solved their problems by thinking of the other person first.
(11) Like Martin Luther, be inwardly “too glad and too great to be at heart the enemy of any man.” Be so preoccupied with good will that you haven’t room for ill will. George Washington Carver, the great African American scientist and saint, rose to fame through his chemical discoveries and service to the farmers of the South. Someone asked him to reveal the name of the university that had accepted him as a student, and then, on discovering he was a man of color, had refused him admittance. Dr. Carver consistently refused to tell, passing the incident off as nothing. He had what somebody called “the peace that passeth not only all understanding but all misunderstanding.”
Someone said to me, “I don’t think you know when you are insulted.” I replied, “I am not looking for insults and so don’t see them.”
When Jesus announced his program at Nazareth, he read from Isaiah, until he came to the words “the day of vengeance of our God” (see Isa. 61:1-2; Luke 4:18-19). Then he closed the book. You do the same. Leave vengeance to God; use only redemptive good will.
O God, my Lord, nothing that anyone can do against me compares with what I have done against you. You have forgiven me—help me forgive others. And help me forgive graciously, not grudgingly, for you have forgiven me so graciously. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.