Resending Resentment

By Audrey Stallsmith

We recently were asked to pray for a Christian couple whose son had just shot his estranged wife, leaving her in critical condition. That, of course, would be devastating on many levels. Not only was that couple’s ex-daughter-in-law barely hanging on to life, but their son was also likely to spend most of his life in prison, possibly leaving his children parentless.

This tragedy raises a variety of issues, the most obvious of which I wrote about years ago in my article “Full of Violence.” And the man’s parents are probably asking themselves whether they didn’t raise their son right, bringing up the whole issue of parental responsibility which is being addressed in another court case just now. But it actually wasn’t the killing but the timing of it that puzzled me.

I’ve read enough about domestic violence to know that this sort of thing usually happens immediately after the woman leaves and is a controlling husband’s reaction to not being able to control his wife anymore. (Although I have heard of at least one instance where a wife shot her husband under similar circumstances, that seems to be less common.)

In this circumstance, however, the wife and her new boyfriend already had a child together. That seems to indicate the separation hadn’t happened recently.
In that case, what caused this explosion could have been custody issues.

I’ve been startled, in episodes of true crime shows like Dateline, by how many otherwise seemingly respectable people are willing to kill to keep their children to themselves. And, yes, that does include mothers as well as fathers—and even grandparents.

But another possible explanation that occurred to me was festering resentment. That word derives from the French resentir “to feel again.” And “again” is the key word here, as in “over, and over, and over.”

Any dissolution of a marriage is likely to cause excruciating pain because it is the pulling apart of two who, according to scripture, had become one flesh. But it is going to be far worse for the person who keeps poking at the wound by deliberately raising the same sensations of pain and outrage in himself or herself over and over again.

Of course, that outrage often is due to hurt pride more than to love if the man believes that his wife’s wanting to leave implies there is something wrong with him. Not always true, of course. The wrong could be in the wife’s wants rather than in her spouse. However, in cases that culminate in violence, there is likely to have been violence in the marriage earlier as well, which may be what impelled that wife to leave.

Physical wounds which aren’t allowed to heal are likely to become infected the longer they remain open, as is apparently the case with psychological ones too. And, eventually, a man’s former love for his wife may turn to hate as he convinces himself that she has ruined his life.

But he actually has ruined his life himself by not being able to release his resentment, which we might think of as re-sent-ment, his sending the same angry thoughts to himself over and over. And he then may proceed to ruin, or at least seriously scar, the lives of his other family members and children if he resorts to violence because he can’t get his way any other way.

Although we females are less likely to commit homicide, we often kill relationships due to our own resentments. I recall that I was angry over something someone said shortly after my mother's death. I think in that case I probably was using my resentment to distract me from the reality of that death. So, a little harping may occasionally have its uses.

But I knew even at the time that I was being ridiculous and that nobody should be held to what they say under such emotional circumstances. And that, as a Christian, I was going to have to let it go. Even with all that self-knowledge, though, it did take me a while to dry up that little wound. So, I can understand why it takes much longer for the big ones.

However, the violent son mentioned above was supposed to be—or at least once was—a Christian himself. Therefore, I think we need to realize that, when we keep our emotional wounds raw, it isn’t bad bacteria that may infect them but badness itself.   

So, we must learn to stop picking at those wounds, even though that admittedly is easier said than done, especially in cases where we think we have been treated unfairly. But, if we are going to insist on justice, on receiving what we believe to be owed to us, we put ourselves in a precarious position.

After all, our salvation is due to the most colossally unfair transaction in history, that of the innocent Christ taking the punishment for the guilty rest of us. And, as one of his parables reminds us, if we refuse to forgive the smaller debts others owe us, God will stop forgiving the huge one that we owe to Him.

What strikes me about Paul in the book of Acts is how many times he was flung—sometimes literally—out of a new city, often at the instigation of his fellow Jews. That might be called a broken relationship too since, although he still loved them, most of them definitely didn’t love him. But he never hung around complaining about the unfairness of their persecution.

I’m guessing he was remembering how unfairly he once had persecuted Christians himself every time he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and moved on to the next town and the next task God had in store for Him. His life no longer was dedicated to getting his own way, but rather to spreading the good news about God’s way.

Once you have made a deliberate decision to forgive, every time your mind goes back there you can tell yourself, “I’ve already forgiven that, so I’m not allowed to think about it anymore.” And resentment that isn’t being fed eventually will die of starvation.  

As for that whole responsibility thing, do we get to blame our parents for the way we turned out? I don’t believe so. As that shooting I mentioned earlier proves, even people who have had morals drilled into them since their childhood can do terrible things, while people raised under the worst circumstances may turn out to be the brightest and best of adults.

And that, too, may all come back to the question of what we choose to harp on and what we choose to leave behind us.