On the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer yesterday, Thursday, October 20, 2011, there was a picture right underneath the banner.  It showed two soldiers gritting their teeth after alighting from a helicopter. They were evacuated from the nine-hour gun fight in Basilan against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, (MILF) to a hospital in Zamboanga City. One was gritting his teeth with the weight of the wounded soldier he was carrying in his arms.  The other, the wounded soldier, was gritting his teeth because of the pain.

I saw the video clip of the same two soldiers on the 6:00 o’clock news the night before, but truly, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Right on the faces of those two soldiers, you see anguish and pain so clearly, you almost feel it. You recoil at the sight but the anguish and pain is so palpable. The caption at the bottom of the picture used the words: outnumbered and overwhelmed. You don’t only feel their pain, you feel their anger and their fear.  It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Medical science explains the bitter taste in the mouth as a reaction to stress.  When we feel stressed, our mouth becomes dry as our heart rate races. The dryness of the mouth is due to the absence of saliva.  The absence of saliva makes us feel a dry hollowness in the stomach as digestive acids rise up the esophagus leaving the characteristic bitter taste in our mouth.  Fear, anxiety, anticipation of pain and anticipation of humiliation leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

That reaction to stress is so common and so universal among humans that the Bible often uses the same metaphor of bitterness to describe the aftermath of sin. Sin feels and tastes good and pleasurable at the start.  But sin is deceitful because once sin has taken root in one’s life, sin is bitter and its effects on the mind and the emotion is just as bitter.

Hebrews 12:15 warns us:” Looking diligently…lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.”  It will do us well to heed the warning.  But if we don’t know the context of the warning, we cannot appreciate the warning, we cannot profit from the warning.  I decided then to find out why bitterness is a root; how bitterness can be a root that springs up; how when bitterness grows unchecked, it defiles the life.

From common experience in school, when in science class we were learning about the sense of taste, the teacher inevitably assigned children to bring different kinds of food and substances and the students take turns in tasting them.  Coffee and ampalaya are bitter.  Once you taste it, the bitter taste lingers on the tongue.

In Genesis 27:34, Esau was the first person recorded to have experienced bitterness.  He lightly esteemed the worth of the birthright.  In the Old Testament, the birthright is given to the firstborn, not only guaranteeing to him the inheritance of his father’s wealth but also the spiritual leadership of the home.  He will be the family’s priest, the one who will lead the whole family in the worship of God.  Esau liked good food and wine, he liked the outdoors and the thrill of hunting.  While he may have coveted the inheritance of the birthright, he did not relish the demands of spiritual leadership.  When his brother Jacob traded him a pot of red bean stew for the birthright, he did not pause to consider it:  he grabbed the pot of stew. What made him bitter was the realization that Jacob not only took advantage of his hunger, Jacob also took advantage of his absence.  Jacob disguised himself and inveigled his father into giving him not only the inheritance but also the blessing.  The loss of the inheritance and the blessing was most bitter to Esau.  He did not realize that the inheritance and the blessing could not be separated from the obligation of spiritual leadership.  Because in his heart he spurned the spiritual leadership, he was disqualified from the inheritance and the blessing.  What made it so bitter was not just the disqualification from the blessing and the inheritance, what made it even more bitter was that he was duped by his own brother.

In Exodus, the Hebrews‘ life in Egypt was characterized by bitter bondage and slavery.  When they escaped Egypt, God ordered them to commemorate their flight from Egypt in Passover where they eat roasted lamb and bitter herbs.  The bitter herbs were to remind them of the pain and suffering of their existence in Egypt.  God’s purpose was for Israel to lose the desire to return to Egypt’s abundance, Egypt’s wealth and Egypt’s learning; God also desired that Israel will be grateful and thankful to God for his salvation.

In Deuteronomy, God warned Israel that if they turned away from the worship of God in spirit and in truth and instead, turn to worship idols ( the way the Egyptians and the Canaanites worshiped idols), their destruction would be bitter.  True enough, God made good on his warning.  There was much bloodshed and pain when Israel was destroyed by Babylon and then again, when Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome.  Until today, Israel is still in bitter conflict with the Arab states surrounding her who refuse to recognize her existence as a state.  The armed conflict in Israel is a bitter reality everyday.

In the book of Ruth, Naomi changed her name.  She wanted to be called “Mara” meaning bitter because she was suffering hardship and hunger, loss of social status and bereavement because of the death of her husband and her two sons. Her future existence was bleak.  She would have no choice but to glean in other people’s fields, it was a life of poverty and want. Her husband and her sons died after they left the land of promise during a famine to seek their fortune in Moab.  Leaving the Promised Land to live in a Gentile city is a sign of backsliding.  Backsliding brings bitterness.

In the first book of Samuel, Hannah was childless.  She was taunted unceasingly and bullied by her husband Elimelech’s other wife, Penninah who had many chidlren.  Hannah’s constant humiliation from being childless was so painful to her, she earnestly prayed to God for a son in the tabernacle.  Her prayer was with great anguish and bitterness of soul.  Hannah was a woman of faith, her husband Elimelech was a Levite, and yet, they were not spared their share of marital and family problems. No one is exempt from suffering.  Suffering which results from obeying God brings God praise and honor but suffering as a result of sinful choices brings bitterness because it cuts off our fellowship with God, the God of comfort.

In the book of Proverbs, King Solomon warns his son against committing adultery.  He says that the end of the adulterous woman is bitter and the man who is entrapped by her into adultery is a fool.

The prophet Jeremiah was sent by God to warn Israel that she will be attacked and destroyed by Babylon if Israel does not return to the Lord.  Israel had become hopelessly mired in idolatry that God has been provoked.  Israel’s idolatry is taken by God as a rebellion against his kingship. The backsliding and rebellion of Israel against God brought bitter consequences: captivity, exile and loss of national identity.

In the New Testament, Peter’s rash show of loyalty and his impulsive pride got the better of him.  He drew his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane in a vain effort to escape the soldiers who have come to arrest Jesus Christ.  And then, after Jesus was arrested, Peter followed afar off.  When he was singled out and accused of being of the same company as Jesus, all his loyalty, his pride, his bravado gave way to his cowardice and his sense of self-preservation.  He denied even knowing Jesus Christ.  He denied Jesus Christ three times in a row.  And when the cock crowed, Peter remembered how Jesus had warned him but that he did no listen to the warning.  Jesus knew that Peter’s love of self, his pride in himself would lead him to deny Jesus Christ.  His anguish and weeping was bitter.

Bitterness consequent to sin is pictured by slavery and bondage.  The bitterness of sin brings pain. Masakit.  The bitterness of sin brings misery, in Tagalog, it is masaklap.  The bitterness of sin is not only deceitful, it is poison.  It affects the whole person, his mind, his emotions, his will, his words, his acts, his deeds.  The bitterness of sin brings pride and self-assuredness, even conceit and arrogance.  It leads to the denial of the faith.

Often, we sin because we desire to obtain something or someone, we make choices that are meant to obtain that coveted something or someone.  If one is truly a child of God, God will see to it that once you obtain that something or someone, bitterness will fill your mouth such that that thing or person, status or attainment you had so desired proves itself distasteful in the end.  It’s like wanting cake and wanting to eat it too.  You take one bite, just a taste and it is so sweet, but eat more, swallow it hungrily and then you will find that the sugar leaves a stale bitter aftertaste on the tongue.  That’s a picture of the effects of sin, the bitter consequence of sin.

Beware of the root of bitterness!  Beware of the root of spiritual poison:  it’s the seemingly small compromises, small “mistakes” and lapses of judgment, it is the small seemingly insignificant choices we make that invite sin into our lives.  Sin is always deceitful.

David Wayne Cloud in his Study Series on the book of Hebrews quotes Barnes :  “The man who commits sin is always under s delusion; and sin, if he indulges it, will lead him on from one step to another, until the heart becomes entirely hardened.  Sin puts on plausible appearances and pretences; it assumes the name of virtue; it offers excuses and palliations, until the victim is snared; and then, spell-bound, he is hurried on to every excess.  If sin was always seen in its true aspect when man is tempted to commit it, it would be so hateful that he would flee from it with the utmost abhorrence….Sin deceives, deludes, blinds.  Men do not, or will not, see the fearful results of indulgence.  They are deluded by the hope of happiness or of gain; they are drawn along by the fascinations and allurements of pleasure, until the heard becomes hard and the conscience seared — and then they give way without remorse.”

The bitterness of sin shoots, it buds, it blades, it grows and finally, if unchecked, it brings forth fruit– bitter fruit that defiles.