“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” – Malachy McCourt
I learned when I was a boy to be hypervigilant and wary of authority figures in my life. There was just enough unpredictability and chaos in my family life to make me suspicious of people in positions of power. When my parents acted in ways that seemed to me to be arbitrary, I became frustrated and anxious.
The Origin of Resentment
I appreciate Eckhart Tolle’s description of childhood pain:
Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain. Children, in particular, find strong negative emotions too overwhelming to cope with and tend to try not to feel them. In the absence of a fully conscious adult who guides them with love and compassionate understanding into facing the emotion directly, choosing not to feel it is indeed the only option for the child at that time. Unfortunately, that early defense mechanism usually remains in place when the child becomes an adult. The emotion still lives in him or her unrecognized and manifests indirectly, for example, as anxiety, anger, outbursts of violence, a mood, or even as a physical illness.
The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted, and then let go of joining together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body. It consists not just of childhood pain, but also painful emotions that were added to it later in adolescence and during your adult life, much of it created by the voice of the ego. It is the emotional pain that is your unavoidable companion when a false sense of self is the basis of your life. This energy field of old but still very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body. Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (pp. 156-158).
A Flash of Anger
Anger is an emotion that serves an essential but limited function. In the wilderness, anger arises automatically in response to a physical threat. An approaching wild animal activates the fight or flight mechanism in our brains, causing physiological changes in our bodies that are optimized to help us survive. We can easily observe this process in nature, where conflicts among wild animals are intense and awe-inspiring, but always short-lived. Conflict in the wild leads to death, injury, or, more often than not, withdrawal and de-escalation.
Our modern world has added enormous complexity and power to this natural process. We now face external stimuli that our brains perceive as threatening in ways that we have not sufficiently evolved to handle. Indeed, it is increasingly common to allow our minds to be hijacked perpetually by external stimuli. Many of us access social media and the news media from moment to moment, or at least hour to hour, across multiple devices and channels. Our brains swim in a toxic sea of adrenaline, cortisol, and sugar. Our heart rate rises and stays elevated. We are stressed out. A third of Americans (that translates to approximately 108.6 million people) now show signs of clinical anxiety and depression, according to a recent study by the CDC.
When I am in fight or flight mode, I carefully curate my list of arguments proving why I am right about everything. I conquer my enemies in my imagination, where I win 100% of the time. Resentment is like rocket fuel, igniting my ego’s powerful engines and propelling me into oblivion at escape velocity.
I was not meant to live this way. Indeed, in my faith tradition, I was taught never to let the sun go down on my anger.
“Righteous” Anger
American culture values individual freedom above all else. Our heritage as an obstinate nation dates back to the Revolutionary War, where, with the help of the French, we threw off the shackles of King George. Later, we fought a civil war to settle, once and for all, whether we could prohibit our fellow citizens from buying, selling, using, and enslaving other human beings, upon which the southern economy was founded. We are still fighting the Civil War today in so many ways.
The American spirit is a resentful one. Americans bristle against being told that some words and symbols are not socially acceptable. Many Americans hate being told that they must shelter in place or wear a mask in public. In my home state of Michigan, protestors of Governor Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders, carrying assault rifles, shouted at police and heckled lawmakers from the spectator gallery in the senate chamber.
It is ironic that, despite our reluctance to be governed, our country has repeatedly appointed itself as the guarantor of freedom and democracy in the world. We have muscled our way into numerous armed conflicts based upon assumptions that, in retrospect, turned out to be completely wrong. With some notable exceptions, we have sent our soldiers to many places where their presence was neither necessary nor appropriate. After causing massive destruction, they have most often retreated from the theater of war without having established either freedom or democracy.
Our national propensity to violence also plays out on an individual level. We confuse resentments as “righteous” anger. In the inspiring book, Unoffendable, Brant Hansen offers divine wisdom about the proper context of anger in the context of modern Christianity.
Here’s what I think, given that we’re to “get rid of all anger”: Anger will happen; we’re human. But we can’t keep it. Like the Reverend [Martin Luther] King, we can recognize injustice, grieve it, and act against it—but without rage, without malice, and without anger. We have enough motivation, I hope, to defend the defenseless and protect the vulnerable, without needing anger. Seek justice; love mercy. You don’t have to be angry to do that. People say we have to get angry to fight injustice, but I’ve noticed that the best police officers don’t do their jobs in anger. The best soldiers don’t function out of anger. Anger does not enhance judgment. Hansen, Brant. Unoffendable (p. 8). Kindle Edition.
Hansen goes on:
Being offended is a tiring business. Letting things go gives you energy. And while I thought the idea of choosing to be “unoffendable” was ludicrous, I’ve tried it. And I’m not perfect at it, but I’m much, much better than I used to be. I just let stuff go. I go into situations thinking, I’m not going to be offended. No matter what. I can let stuff go, because it’s not all about me. Simply reminding myself to refuse to take offense is a big part of the battle. Hansen, Brant. Unoffendable (pp. 12-13). Kindle Edition.
Importantly, God doesn’t need us or ask us to be angry on his behalf:
Yes, we all deal with crazy people. Judgmental people. People who believe, deep down, that their job, after being invited into the party that is the kingdom of God, is to keep others out of the party, and then pat themselves on the back for “taking a stand.” I hear from them often. Hansen, Brant. Unoffendable (p. 43). Kindle Edition.
Here is the truth of the matter:
War is not exceptional; peace is. Worry is not exceptional; trust is. Decay is not exceptional; restoration is. Anger is not exceptional; gratitude is. Selfishness is not exceptional; sacrifice is. Defensiveness is not exceptional; love is. And judgmentalism is not exceptional . . . But grace is. Hansen, Brant. Unoffendable (pp. 40-41). Kindle Edition.
The bottom line from all of this is that God is not calling me to be angry and to troll social media, pointing out the errors and shortcomings of everyone else. God is not calling us as a nation to send our armed forces around the world to cause “regime change” when a foreign government falls out of our favor. God is calling us to love and not hate. It is only by releasing anger, including the right to be offended, and taking the actions of love that we can make a positive difference in the world. This approach also provides the best path toward personal serenity. What would happen in our country – in our world – if we stop being offended and start looking for ways to bring people together to solve our common problems?
How I walk back from the ledge of resentment
A post like this is challenging to write because life is complicated. I have more questions than answers. I do not pretend to be an expert in the healing of resentments. For most of my life, I have been overly sensitive to criticism and prone to resentment.
All I can say is that, at this moment, when I find myself on edge or easily provoked, I choose to abstain from social media and news media for days or weeks at a time. Instead of pursuing the dopamine rush that accompanies my taking offense at some person or cause, I feel called to put down whatever I am holding (physically or metaphorically). I take a mental inventory of the many things in my life for which I am grateful. Peace begins quietly to take root in my heart and soul.
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” – Martin Luther King Jr.