Grudges: Missionary Killjoys

by Levi Keidel

We had been in the States on furlough for over a year. Our last term on the field had been unusually grueling. Any tired missionary fresh home on furlough suffers some stresses of psychological readjustment. But, ordinarily, a year is ample time for one to be refreshed, restored, and highly motivated to return.

We had been in the States on furlough for over a year. Our last term on the field had been unusually grueling. Any tired missionary fresh home on furlough suffers some stresses of psychological readjustment. But, ordinarily, a year is ample time for one to be refreshed, restored, and highly motivated to return.

But I wasn’t. Depression and discouragement dogged me with pernicious mental and physical weariness. To this was added the stress of not knowing why. I certainly couldn’t blame my circumstances. My doctor examined me and gave me a clean bill of health. I was not carrying heavy responsibility. I attended Bible lectures. I had ample time for study and meditation. My wife and children were happy. To my knowledge, everyone around me cared about me. But knowing that my circumstances were ideal didn’t lift my spirits; rather, it depressed me further. It simply meant that the “why” of my problem would be more difficult to find.

A dentist and a few of his close friends offered to pay my way to a five-day laymen’s institute on the West Coast. I was almost weary of seeing the familiar faces of others who were running the conference and convention circuits, and I was dubious that another conference would do anything remarkable for me. But this event proved different in more ways than one. I believe I found in it an important part of my answer. I was seated with several hundred laymen in the beautiful Mirror Room of palatial Arrowhead Springs Hotel in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California. We had just finished breakfast, and were listening to Dr. Henry Brandt, a Christian psychologist.

“Many men don’t want to be happy,” he said. “They’d rather be mad than glad. They’d rather nurse a rankling grudge. They cling to their misery and love it. I asked one man why he was so bitter towards his wife. He said, ‘I want her to know how unhappy I am.’

“When a man harbors a grudge like that for 20 years, it becomes as precious as an heirloom—a prized possession. Every so often he takes it out, dusts it off, looks at it; he couldn’t do without it. To give it up is the supreme sacrifice.”

Inwardly I agreed. I’d known people guarding festering resentment like that.

“Such a man can’t be a good man,” Brandt continued. “Whatever good he has is being drained from him by his grudge. He is always depressed. His grudge structures his total outlook on life. Ask a man like this, ‘What was the best thing that happened to you last week?’ He’ll say, ‘What d’ya mean? I want to tell you what is wrong with the world and why it’s right for me to be mad at it.’ His bitterness spills out on everybody around him.”

Then Brandt recounted an experience he’d had while visiting Zaire. A veteran missionary came to him for counsel. This missionary was liked by the Zairians; he’d served them faithfully. Disturbances connected with the coming of political independence had so inflamed the atmosphere that one of his most trusted church leaders had hotly offended him and spit in his face.

Later, when the missionary returned, the church leader apologized profusely. The missionary brushed it off as having been incidental. Then problems began to crop up in his interpersonal relationships. They became so critical that he seriously considered asking to be transferred to another location.

After probing the man’s past, Brandt helped him see that while he had verbally forgiven his offender, deep down his feelings of love and respect for the man had never been fully restored. He’d been harboring a deeply buried grudge. The bitterness of this grudge was now affecting relations with all who worked with him.

The solution was not a change of geographic location; the pattern would simply recycle itself. The only solution was recognizing the grudge as sin, confessing and renouncing it, refusing to give it further sanctuary, and committing himself, with the help of God, to love his brother fervently.

I had an uncanny sense of identification with that missionary. Maybe Brandt could help me. I knew the psychological surgery could be painful; but if there was some hidden abscess causing my trouble, this was the time to deal with it.

Brandt met me at the breakfast table the next morning. He wielded his scalpel with ruthless efficiency, located my problem, and laid it open for me to see. It was uglier than I wanted to admit.

On the field I had been given an important long-term assignment. I gave myself body and soul to discharging it. A gifted Zairian, Mr. A., was appointed to work with me. As time progressed, he became harassed with a growing number of complex domestic problems. He spent less and less time at work. He could not carry out his responsibilities. This seriously impaired the progress of our assignment.

During succeeding months tensions mounted. Frustration exhausted me. With the success of the project and my health at stake, I eventually insisted that the man be replaced. After a succession of long, draining palaver sessions, he was dismissed.

Some weeks later word reached me that a prominent church leader, Rev. B., had fixed me with blame for the entire incident.

“How do you feel toward Mr. A.?” Dr. Brandt asked me.

“I have no particular feelings about him. I don’t hate him.”

“But do you love him?”

“Well, when his domestic problems interrupted his work schedule, I took a lot of time trying to help him.”

“Did you do it because you really loved him, or because you wanted him to get back to work so the project would succeed?”

I was guilty.

“How do you feel about Rev. B?”

“I didn’t gossip about his accusing me; I kept it to myself.”

“Did you harbor ill feelings toward him?”

“Well, to be honest with you, I didn’t feel the ill will I harbored toward him was as serious as his falsely accusing me. I simply kept my feelings to myself.”

“He gossiped about you. Don’t you see that you’re patting yourself on the back for not gossiping about him? You’re proud of the fact that you are better than he is. You’re using that pride to salve your conscience against the grudge you are carrying. You’re using your goodness to conceal your sin. Pull your grudges out into the open and expose them for the sin that they are.

“Hebrews 12:15 warns us that harboring a root of bitterness within you will trouble you; it will cause you to fail of the grace of God; it will defile those around you. Do you remember what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:5? ‘Love does not keep a record of wrongs’ (TEV). It’s a good thing you didn’t return to the field with these feelings; you’d surely have run into trouble.”

Well, surgery was over. I needed space for recovery. I went outside and sat on the close-clipped lawn in the sunshine, and tried to further think through my problem. What is the source of a grudge? Resentment. Anger. What does a hidden grudge eventually spawn? A desire for revenge. Revenge is an ugly word. I didn’t want to admit that it was one of my subdued desires. The patriarch Lamech manifested it in its most primitive form. He boasted to his wives, “I have slain a man for wounding me . . . If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech (will be avenged) seventy-sevenfold” (Gen. 4:23, 24, RSV). Deep down, this is probably the kind of revenge we like most. It obliterates those who oppose us. It is the revenge of overkill.

But this kind of revenge endlessly recycled leads to annihilation. God couldn’t watch this happen. So he introduced to Israel a new concept of revenge: “Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye,. . . stripe for stripe” (Ex. 21:23-25). Man may not be happy with restricted revenge, but he can live with it. When Jesus came, he claimed to supersede the Mosaic concept of revenge. He said, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for those who abuse use you” (Luke 6:27, 28, RSV). Human nature rejects this as totally unreasonable; or at best, impractical.

Take Peter, for example. He was human, and practical. He was ready to avenge with his sword the rights of his Lord. But by the time he was old, he’d come tosee it Jesus’ way: “If when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you (wrongfully), leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted (himself) to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:20-24, RSV).

Lamech said, “For wounding me, I killed.” Jesus said, “For wounding me, I will heal.” Inherent in vicarious suffering there seems to be a mystical power to heal. Jesus’ power to heal arises from his having suffered vicariously for us.

The New Testament teaches that nothing warrants my holding any kind of grudge against anybody. It instructs me to leave vengeance in the hands of God, who by his very nature must judge justly. I am to reciprocate love to the one who has ill-treated me, and thereby release the power of my wounding for his healing. Jesus stated clearly that “if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your trespasses,” and he used the parable of the unforgiving servant to confirm it (Mk. 11:26; Mt. 18:23-35).

Of course, if I so choose, God allows me to enjoy my “delicious spites and darling angers,” as Tennyson put it. But by doing so, I imply to God that I want to dispense judgment because I can do it more justly than he. This divorces me from God’s grace. It effectively drains the situation of its healing, reconciling potential, and my concealed bitterness defiles, rather than heals, those around me.¹

Sam Shoemaker put it another way. When we refuse to love and forgive our neighbor, the umbilical cord by which God feeds his forgiving and healing grace to us is severed; and into the vacuum rush fears and uncertainties about our own well-being.²

Endnotes
1. In those moments of waiting, God gave me grace to uproot and expose my grudges, and to confess them as sin. I gave my will to him to love people, in spite of who they are or what they might say about me. I left the conference feeling like a new man.

2. Sam Shoemaker, And Thy Neighbor, ed. C. C. Offill (Waco: Word, 1967), p. 11.

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