Resentment and Forgiveness

Since we are approaching Forgiveness Sunday, I've chosen, with the blessing of His Grace Bishop Longin, to speak on the subject of Anger, Judgment, and Resentment, and on their cure: Forgiveness and Reconciliation. First I will speak about the problem and then I'll discuss the solution.

Anger, judgment, remembrance of wrongs, grudges, resentment: these are passions with which all of us struggle in one way or another. Why are we prone to them? According to the Holy Fathers of the Church, the power that causes anger was part of man's original nature, which was created "good" by God (cf. Genesis 1:31). The Fathers say that man's soul was originally created with three powers: the intellective or "knowing" power, the appetitive or "desiring" power, and the incensive or "fervent" power. Man was supposed to use his intellective power to know God, his appetitive power to yearn for God, and his incensive power to courageously repel temptation—beginning with the temptation of the serpent in the Garden.

Instead of using their incensive power to repel temptation, however, Adam and Eve succumbed to their first temptation: they ate of the forbidden fruit. According to the Holy Fathers, the essence of the serpent's temptation lies in these words: "Eat of this fruit and you shall be as gods" (cf. Genesis 3:5). St. John Chrysostom says that Adam "expected to become himself a god, and conceived thoughts above his proper dignity." [1] This is a key point which we'll keep coming back to.

When the primordial Fall occurred, man's original nature, created in the image of God, became corrupted. He acquired what the Holy Fathers call a fallen nature. He still had the image of God in him, but the image was tarnished: "buried," as it were, under the corruption of his nature. Now he had an inclination toward sin, born of his desire to be God without God's blessing. All of us share that fallen nature; there is a part of each one of us that wants to be God. In popular modern terms, that part of us is called the "ego."

When man fell, the three powers of his soul became subject to corruption, along with his body, which became subject to death and decay. Now man used his intellective power to puff up with knowledge and be superior to others; now he used his appetitive power to lust after other people, after the things of this world, after sinful pleasures, wealth, and power; and he used his incensive power, not against temptation, but against other people, against things, and sometimes against life and God Himself. The incensive power expressed itself as sinful anger and wrath. The first man born of woman, Cain, got so angry and jealous that he murdered his own brother, Abel. So, here we are, all members of the family of Adam and Eve, possessing a fallen nature that wants to be God, and a corrupted incensive power that gets angry at the wrong things.

Very clear teachings on anger and the incensive power can be found in the first volume of The Philokalia, in the teachings of St. John Cassian, a Holy Father of the fifth century. According to St. John Cassian, all anger directed at other people—all such wrong use of our incensive power—blinds the soul. He writes: "We must, with God's help, eradicate the deadly poison of anger from the depths of our souls. So long as the demon of anger dwells in our hearts ... we can neither discriminate what is good, nor achieve spiritual knowledge, nor fulfill our good intentions, nor participate in true life.... Nor will we share in divine wisdom even though we are deemed wise by all men, for it is written: Anger lodges in the bosom of fools (Eccles. 7:9). Nor can we discriminate in decisions affecting our salvation even though we are thought by our fellow men to have good sense, for it is written: Anger destroys even men of good sense (Proverbs 15:1). Nor will we be able to keep our lives in righteousness with a watchful heart, for it is written: Man's anger does not bring about the righteousness of God (James 1:20)....

"If, therefore, you desire to attain perfection and rightly pursue the spiritual way, you should make yourself a stranger to all sinful anger and wrath. Listen to what St. Paul enjoins: Rid yourselves of all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, and all malice (Eph. 4:31). By saying ‘all' he leaves no excuse for regarding any anger as necessary or reasonable. If you want to correct your brother when he is doing wrong or punish him, you must try to keep yourself calm; otherwise you yourself may catch the sickness you are seeking to cure and you may find that the words of the Gospel now apply to you: Physician, heal yourself (Luke 4:23), or Why do you look at the speck of dust in your brother's eye, and not notice the beam in your own eye? (Matt. 7:3).

"No matter what provokes it, anger blinds the soul's eyes, preventing it from seeing the Sun of righteousness.... Whether reasonable or unreasonable, anger obstructs our spiritual vision. Our incensive power can be used in a way that is according to nature only when turned against our own impassioned or self-indulgent thoughts. [2]

Here St. John Cassian is telling us that, when we use our incensive power against temptation—against impassioned or self-indulgent thoughts—we are using this power as it was originally intended to be used, according to our original, virtuous nature, created in the image of God. However, when we use our incensive power against anything else—especially against other people—we are misusing it, according to our fallen nature.

Often anger is evoked in us because of our pride. This again is a function of our fallen nature: that part of us that wants to be God. As would-be gods, we want to be in control, we want things to go our way. When things don't go our way, when other people don't follow our lead and go along with our program, we get angry. This leads us to judge others. Judging others is one way of playing God.

God is King, and He is Judge. Of course, it's best to be a King. Therefore, in trying to play God, our ego first of all tries to get above others and above life itself by playing King. We can try to be King in many ways. It may be by trying to run the show and get our own way. It may be by seeking acceptance, approval, praise, respect, popularity, earthly security, or an important position. It may be through our achievements and abilities, which are used toward ultimately selfish ends. It may be through vanity over our looks, our intellect, and so on.

Even if we were to have the world at our feet all the time, and thus confirm our King-status in our own mind, we would eventually feel conflict—for we're not meant to be King. You can see this vividly in the lives of celebrities, many of whom, having risen to the "top" in the eyes of the world, are filled with inward conflict.

Most of us, however, find it impossible to play King all the time. The world is not at our feet. We try so hard to get our own way and make things work out exactly like we want, but it just doesn't happen that way. People don't want to cooperate with our own way of doing things. We don't get enough of the respect and admiration we need in order to keep up the illusion of our Kingship. On the contrary, we often experience the exact opposite: rudeness, disrespect, neglect, abandonment, injustice.

What is the ego—our fallen nature—to do in this case? How can it still play God? How else than by judgment? As we said, God is King and He is Judge. When we can't be King, we take the loser's way of playing God: we become the Judge. No matter what happens to us, or what people have said and done to us, we can always seem to get above them by being their Judge. For a time it feels great! Other people and the circumstances of our life made us feel less like a god; they have hurt and humiliated us. But we can still be a god in our own mind by judging!

Judgment brings with it an exhilaration of false power. Its energy comes from the wrong, prideful use of our incensive power. But, like playing King, playing Judge eventually leads to inward conflict. If we are setting ourselves up in God's place, our soul cannot fulfill its original purpose of worshiping, serving and loving God. Thus, each time we judge, we're placing a barrier between ourselves and God. A wall immediately goes up.

If left unchecked, anger and judgment will pass into what the Holy Fathers call "secret anger," "remembrance of wrongs," or "resentment."

Resentment—prolonged anger—is deadly to the soul. St. Tikhon of Zadonsk says: "Just as fire if it is not extinguished quickly will swallow many houses, so anger if it is not stopped right away will do great harm and will cause many troubles. [3] The Holy Apostle Paul tells us: Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil (Eph. 4:26–7). "If we take St. Paul's saying literally," writes St. John Cassian, "it does not permit us to keep our anger even until sunset. What then shall we say about those who, because of the harshness and fury of their impassioned state, not only maintain their anger until the setting of this day's sun, but prolong it for many days? Or about others who do not express their anger, but keep silent and increase the poison of their anger to their own destruction? They are unaware that we must avoid anger not only in what we do but also in our thoughts; otherwise our mind will be darkened by our anger, cut off from the light of spiritual knowledge and discrimination, and deprived of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. [4]

Why is resentment such a deadly sin? The Holy Scriptures tell us that God is love. Therefore, explains the Russian Holy Father St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, "Resentment or rejection of love is rejection of God. God withdraws from a resentful person, deprives him of His Grace, and gives him up to spiritual death, unless the person repents in good time so as to be healed of that deadly moral poison, resentment. [5]

If for whatever reason we do not forgive someone and hold onto our anger, it will truly be to our own destruction. It can poison our entire lives, make us the captives of the devil, and eventually prevent us from entering the Kingdom of Heaven. To help us not to lose our salvation due to resentment, God allows us to feel inward conflict. This inward conflict helps us to become aware of the fatal danger of the malady of resentment, and to seek to be cured by the Supreme Physician, Jesus Christ.

The inward conflict may take many forms. We may feel weighed down, unable to breathe lightly or freely, as if we are captives. We may experience irrational fear, commonly known as anxiety. We may become susceptible to physical ailments. In most cases, we will feel an inward emptiness. That emptiness comes from the fact that, by holding onto our anger and judgment, we have separated ourselves from God. We no longer have His Grace, His Life, inside us, and without that we are just hollow vessels.

Our spiritual emptiness may express itself in a generally dissatisfied and cynical attitude, in which we're always attracted to negative thoughts and words about others. We may try to fill the void with drugs or the excessive use of alcohol. Interestingly, the Alcoholics Anonymous "Big Book" says: "Resentment is the ‘number one' offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stems all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. [6]

Sometimes our resentment hurts the person we are resenting, sometimes it does not. However, in either case we gain nothing; we only lose, for in either case we are the ones who are hurt the most. Let's say someone has actually wronged us. If that person repents, he will be forgiven by God. But if we hold onto our anger, we will not be forgiven and will suffer the consequences.

"Amartia sounds like "hamartia" which if I am not mistaken is a Hebrew word and it means the same thing--missing the mark."

Probably the same word. I suspect the Jews stole it from the Greeks, like the Japanese took kimono from us! :)

" But isn't life one big missing of the mark? Don't even our best efforts usually miss the mark?"

You know, in practice and reality, it probably is. But we are called to "be like God" and so we have to try. That's why the sayings and writings of our holy monastics, the real spiritual athletes, the Olympians of theosis, are so cherished by us. By undertaking an active prayer life, receiving the sacraments and practicing at least some of the monastic ascesis in our lives "in the world", like the Jesus Prayer, we can, with God's grace, advance somewhat towards our goal.

In biblical Greek, there are what are known as "breathing marks" before many initial vowels. For many centuries Greeks have ignored these breathing marks, and simply pronounce the word. Western scholars of Greek, for whom Greek is a dead, not a living, language, prounce Greek the way they think ancient Greek was pronounced (of course no one knows!) The word is written as 'amartia (with that little apostrophe). Anyway, modern-day Greeks will pronounce that word as "amartia," (and will write it without the apostrophe, since breathing marks have been dropped in modern Greek orthography. Westerners, for whom Greek is still the old dead language, will pronounce and write the term as "harmartia," since they translate the breathing mark using an "h."

I found this regarding the Hebrew, and I assume it is probably true: "The Hebrew equivalent of 'hamartia' is 'chata'."

Now, I very much would predict that if you study it, the fullness of the concept of "amartia" is probably Hebrew at its basic root, and "amartia" was probably the Greek word selected to carry the concept, probably by the translators of the Septuagint Old Testament, long before the birth of Christ.

A concern for missing the mark of perfection with relation to God and morals doesn't strike me as a pagan Greek philosophical concern, but I may be wrong.

Orthodoxy has been described as Hebrew concepts conveyed and expanded with the Greek language -- probably the most powerful language in the world for conveying Christian theology. Part of Christ's coming 2000 years ago "in the fullness of time" was that Greek at that point was the common language of the Roman empire. The language played a huge role in the flowering of Christianity, both in the sense of missionary work, but also in the ability to express with precision the faith that Christ had given to his apostles.

" I trust in God's grace and love for us to make our efforts and even our mistakes into something good." But we have to keep trying, no matter what. Once upon a time, a brother came to Abba Sisoes, one of the Desert Fathers, saying:

'I have fallen, Abba; what shall I do?' The old main said to him, 'Get up again.' The brother said, 'I have gotten up again, but again have I fallen.' The old man said, 'Get up again and again.' So the brother asked, 'How many times?' The old man replied, 'Until you are taken up either in virtue or in sin. For a man presents himself to judgment in that state in which he is found.'

I think there is a such a thing as righteous anger

+Paul reminds us that none of us is righteous. Sin cannot be corrected with sin. If we do what our nature demands it is sin. We can hate the sin but not the sinner. Forgiveness is a commandment, which should come from our hearts.

We live in a fallen world where conflict is imposed upon us but others or by our own pride and arrogance. We find ourselves outraged or pushed to do things that are inherently wrong -- and we do it as a greater or lesser evil but evil nonetheless.

What makes me most angry is when I see people who claim to be Christians slandering and viciously attacking other people who are quite obviously Christian themselves (e.g. Alan Keyes).

Such actions demonstrate no love for the Church. And if there is no love for the Church, how can there be love for Christ?

It is a struggle for me when I see this kind of thing...

It is a struggle for me when I see this kind of thing...

Do you wish them well or do you wish them ill? Do you think you are better than they are? Do you think they are sinners and we are not? Do you not wish that they find the right path and find love for their neighbor, and that you find forgiveness in your heart? Or do you want vengeance? Isn't vengeance God's?

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