Why I Was Bitter (How Christ Makes Me Better)

I never forgave people. Never.

I heard that many people struggled with forgiveness, too. This subject receives so much treatment in our churches, too.

People walk around full of bitterness, resentment, easily hurt feelings, because they do not know that they are forgiven from all their sins.

I was the same. I never felt that I was forgiven for some things which I had done wrong.

I was bitter, because I was living under this constant sense that I had to measure up to a standard, and if I failed, then I would have to suffer with consequences of some kind.

This standard bore down on me as I was growing up because of a parent who never let me forget when I had failed.

I was left at the airport when I was fourteen years old. My mother had gotten so tired of my depression, and I was depressed because of the never-ending standards of shame and reproach which comes from AA.

She wanted us to live by the empty mantras of that terrible cult, a set of standards which grants none of us peace. Why? Because the debt for our sins and failures never ends. Never.

Everyday, when I was living in a crummy apartment filled with frustration and fear, not sure if I was doing the right thing or the wrong thing. I never understood the shame and frustration of those days, until recently.

The Gospel of Grace has opened my eyes to so many wonderful things. The Bible is an open book which speaks to me in wonderful ways.

The truth is, that many preachers on TV are doing a really good job, and some of them are magnifying God's grace in ways which I would have never understood before. Those people who were preaching the Gospel had no idea that at home, I had an abusive parent who was teaching me lies in the Twelve Step program.

I remember Pa Robertson, and many other people, who shared with the world that they broke free of alcohol addiction and other perversions through Christ and Him Crucified. He gives us life, yet in many churches, especially churches which highlight or promote the Twelve Steps, people do not break free. They do not get sober, or they end up switching sins from one element to another. Many alcoholics, for example, become religious fanatics or AA-fanatics.

Just terrible, and that's what I grew up with.

I was bitter, because I was living, or rather dying under a program which grants no rest, no freedom, no release from our sins:

"For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins." (Hebrews 10: 2)

The the writer of Hebrews talks about the one who offered the full and final sacrifice for our sins:

"10By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (Hebrews 10: 10)

and then

"12But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;  " (Hebrews 10: 12)

When Jesus died on the Cross, He paid for all our sins:

"And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;" (Colossians 2: 13)

Now, for the longest time I had believed that Jesus died for me, but the fullness of His grace was never made clear to me. Why? The AA cult, and the constant shame which was placed on me from someone else who  had raised me in AA, and who in turn never forgave others, because she never felt forgiven:

"31Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." (Ephesians 4: 31-32)

We are "forgiving one another" actively when we understand that Christ has forgiven us in the past, and this action touches into our present and our future.

Whatever one's bitterness, God's grace through Christ makes us better, and we receive this grace as we understand how fully and forever forgiven we are in Christ!