by Aaron Weiss

​When describing an ailing relationship, one of the words that gets tossed around a lot is resentment. Resentment can be described as a negative emotional response towards an event or situation when you felt mistreated or slighted by someone else. Resentment also arises somewhere down the road of envy when someone discovers that the key to their limited sense of happiness is awkwardly tethered to the misery of someone else. Resentment promises relief but delivers more pain. Resentment hollows a person out over time. To quote a great psychologist and mentor of mine, Dr. Randy Johnson; resentment needs to be addressed because “you cannot resolve what you resent.” 
 
In an effort to serve you and briefly address what is one of the most troublesome realities when working towards repair in ailing relationships, I want to offer a helpful image for resentment so that you might reconsider your connection to resentment. 

Simply put, resentment is a cage of our own creation... We fashion iron bars and thick walls made of thoughts overtime. These bars are built up by our negative feelings, hostility, bitterness, and negative self-talk. We ruminate in thoughts, like, “if only he changed, then I wouldn’t feel this way.” 

Resentment embodies blame, builds in patterns of avoidance, and grows stronger through passive-aggressive behaviours. However, because resentment causes us to feel as though we are trapped unless that other person changes, gets punished, or comes to their senses, we essentially lock ourselves into our cell and throw away the keys. In fact, while locked in resentment, we throw the keys at the feet of our perpetrator, thinking, “if she really cared, she would set me free.” Or, “I will feel free when he knows what he has done.” 

The painful irony of prolonged resentment is that it ultimately locks you in a dungeon of your own design from all the joys of life while setting your perpetrator free. Through resentment, we convince ourselves that we are building a prison for someone else, all the while inhabiting its walls as its prisoner.

While the initial reflex of anger towards an injustice is the appropriate emotional response, it also needs to be addressed and managed accordingly. Feelings of resentment, therefore, may be telling you that you are attempting to hold someone else accountable for their words or actions through unhealthy means. In other words, feelings of resentment may alert you to an oppressive situation that you need to remove yourself from or find appropriate means to address. To circumvent the early warning system of our anger which prompts us to pursue more constructive thoughts and actions, increases feelings of resentment. Instead of slowing down enough to see the bars and walls being built around us, we hide within them as self-destructive means to address our pain. To stretch the analogy, one might find some utility in their self-imposed cage as, albeit a miserable place, it has become both a familiar place where the perpetrator cannot reach them and is fantisfully held accountable for their crimes in the lived pains of the one imprisoned by resentment. 

How are we released from resentment? At times, resentment is the result of many offenses heaped up over time. When it comes to our closest relationships, resentment may be a byproduct of “negative sentiment override.” (Gottman, 2011). Imagine wearing a pair of glasses that causes us to evaluate someone in a negative light because, after many offenses, we can no-longer see them in a positive light. Like operating in relational overdraft, we treat that person like they owe us something they refuse to pay back. In this state, resentment reigns and we begin to see our closest relationships in an adversarial way. We are up when they’re down, and down when they’re up. It’s backwards and counterproductive to resolving conflict and repairing relationships. 
 
So, how are we released from resentment? 
 
Here are three keys to pick up and unlock the cage of resentment: stop comparing, try gratitude, and embrace forgiveness.

How Are We Released From Resentment?

1) Stop Comparing. Theodore Rosevelt said, “comparison is the thief of joy.” Resentment diminishes the sources of joy in our lives because we simply do not pay much attention to them. Comparison allows all the goodness in our lives to fade into the periphery while something else beyond our grasp occupies the whole of our attention. In a sense, this is an invitation to shift your focus onto what is life-giving. Again, if resentment is akin to locking oneself away and throwing the keys at our perpetrator’s feet, the unhealthy focus becomes one of aggravation - “don’t you see how you’re hurting me?! Why do you get to go free while I am left here to rot in my resentment?!” By stopping comparison, we begin to give our attention to that which will begin to set us free from our self made prisons instead of that which will only cause them to grow.

How Are We Released From Resentment?

2) Try Gratitude. If resentment invites us to play a zero-sum game of evaluating our successes through the knowledge of another’s loss, even the greatest gifts of our lives become unreliable sources of joy because we cannot simply enjoy them for what they are - gifts.. Gratitude is the antithesis of resentment. Gratitude serves as a 180 degree course correction to begin practicing the posture which will begin rewiring one’s focus towards appreciation that has been negatively shaped through resentment. This takes practice to see, savor, and share all that we are grateful for; but it is the sort of activity which knocks down walls one at a time.

How Are We Released From Resentment?

3) Embrace Forgiveness. Forgiveness is the act of removing or canceling a debt. Resentment can be the result of experiencing real offences and an awareness of injustices that have incurred an unpaid debt. It may sound counterintuitive to suggest releasing the other person of that debt, whether that is a relational wound or emotional cost; but, by embracing forgiveness, one begins to understand that the experience of resentment is one of paying down the debt of an injustice over time through the experience of being locked up in the cage of resentment. Forgiveness frees the forgiver from having to set the record straight. Forgiveness does not ignore injustice, but forgiveness does relinquish one’s right to be the judge. Unlike a hung-jury, the act embracing forgiveness allows those trapped by feelings of resentment to go free. 

This post can also be found on, 
​https://www.masterscounselling.com/s/stories/working-through-resentment 

by Trevor Rysavy

Friendship is a subject I’ve thought a lot about in my lifetime. Of all of the earthly things I possess, it’s my friendships that I value the most. Here are some of the principles I have used to develop these precious gifts. ​

Those who have complained to me about their lack of friends seem to do so only when a friend could have made a significant difference. All of my valuable friendships have been acquired the same way a rock is polished smooth; consistent activity over a long period of time. It is similar to depositing funds in a savings account. One cannot deposit funds for one month and expect to have sufficient wealth to make a dream purchase. Money must be regularly deposited over a number of weeks, months and years to provide the wealth sufficient to make large purchases. Similarly, friendships require constant ‘deposits’. Friendships that attempt large ‘withdrawals’ without ‘deposits’ suffer the same consequences  as an empty bank account: the end result is ‘insufficient funds’. ​

​Too many people pursue servants rather than friends. The cultural mantras of the day encourage us to seek friends for what we can receive rather than telling people to find friends to serve. In this way, friends are one of the primary opportunities for us to obey the ‘one another’ commands that we see in the Bible. What we may not realize however, is that these commands are ‘rigged’ with the side benefit of developing friends in the process. Millions of friendships have begun by helping an acquaintance build a fence, run an errand, shingle a roof or finish a project. If we lack the friendships we are looking for, we should take an inventory of the needs of those we would like deeper friendships from. Then, we should meet those needs as best as we can. Meeting a need may lead to your next greatest friend.

​True friends are not too afraid to admit their need for others to battle loneliness, sin or a variety of other troubles that we experience regularly. James 4:6 says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’. You could almost say, ‘God opposes the proud but gives friendship to the humble.’ While it is true that pride will thwart almost anything, it is especially true that it prevents deep friendship. Pride can prevent you from asking for counsel when you really need it and can also prevent you from taking it seriously when it is given. It can prevent you from requesting prayer and from sharing your weaknesses. As love covers a multitude of sins, so pride prevents a multitude of friendships.

One of my best friends commented recently that he was grateful that, ‘no conversation is off limits.’ What struck me about his comment was not only that I value that as well, but that it also was a determiner of the depth of my friendships. True friends are not afraid to ask what I think and are even less afraid of my answers. Those closest to me ask about my marriage, my sin and whether or not I actually like country music for real. I tell my friends what makes me angry and what prayers have not yet been answered. I’ve rode in silence because my friends have my permission not to have ‘their best self’ when we’re together. I have never regretted it. A real friend needs to know they can cross a boundary without trespassing the friendship. If your friendships have sharp boundaries around humour, opinion, doubt and issues of the heart, then it might be time to find some deeper friendships. ​

Too many times I have heard a person complain that they ‘just need more friends’. It is similar to a speaker who complains about having no listeners. People don’t listen to someone who doesn’t offer much in what they say, and people who are terrible friends rarely have them. My experience has always taught me that those who have friends know how to be friends. Many times, the starting point for developing friendships is to ask the question, ‘What would I want in a friend?’ The second step is then to start acting like the friend that we want. As people who are more assimilated into the culture than we care to admit, we are used to blaming others for the lack of true friends. If we are the kind of friend worth having, then over time we will have exactly that, friends. ​

by Aaron Weiss

This is a timely word for a consumerist society which has wrongly made the experience of church a consumeristic one. Consider how fortunate and oblivious we’ve become to embrace the phrase “church shopping” in comparison to the first century church?! Our attendance and financial support to the gathering of our choosing has propagated an incorrect perception that the church is meant to satisfy me…
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​As a follower of Jesus, the church is not meant for you - you are meant for the church. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul refers to the church like a body functioning as a whole with many parts. No individual part can stand alone and hold its value. What good is an eye if it cannot share its seeing with the body? What joy is there in the body when the eye shares its sight? Believer, you are made for the body of Christ. ​