The ingredients define the soup. . .

We live at a time when the line between love and hate has grown very thin, indeed.  To some, it is the very same emotion -- only directed differently at different times toward different people.  You can only hate those whom you first loved.  We see that in Judas who must have loved the Lord at some point.  He certainly followed our Lord's call and rose to the esteemed position of treasurer of the band of brothers.  We all know that the one who handles the money is pretty high up on the totem pole.  But at some point that love faded and was replaced with distance, resentment, bitterness, anger, and betrayal.  It may seem like something odd or strange for Judas but it is more normal than anyone cares to admit.

Lovers and husbands and wives burn with passion for the other until they don't.  Something usually intervenes to raise questions where there were answers and doubts where there was confidence.  It is not that love fades like a deep color left out in the sun but it becomes its opposite across the fine line that once kept them apart.  We are disappointed.  Things did not turn out like we wanted or had hoped or thought was going to happen.  Disappointment gave way to some distance and the longing that once led us to be familiar becomes contempt that finds no room for forgiveness or love anymore.  Then it becomes resentment and that resentment embitters until nothing is good and everything is bad -- like those who tell you everything is gone wrong when everyone knows it is not everything but certain things.  The anger burns where love once burned and then betrayal kills what brought them together.

It happens to Christians and their God as well.  We think everything is grand in the beginning until we find that God did not do what we wanted or say what we think He should have said or give us what we desired or, worse, He forgave those we judged unworthy.  Then we cannot stand the Church or God anymore.  Love crosses the line and hate is born.  We resent the whole idea of Church and God until the things that once comforted us not offend us.  We stop going as if by somehow punishing God with our absence He will have to change and become like the God we want.  In the end, we are left with the bitter stew that poisons our lives with anger.  That anger shows by how easy and how we relish judging others, how smugly we point out their hypocrisy, and how easily we see the speck in the eyes of another but cannot see the log in ours.  

This is the recipe for a bitter soup that makes us sick with its poison and kills us by keeping from us anything good and salutary to life.  What we should eat to live and nourish us ends up killing us.  We cannot find joy so we cannot share it.  We cannot stomach disappointment so we disappoint.  We cannot outright offend God but we can resent Him until we no longer care about offending Him anymore.  Then  it is our sport to see how many we can taint with our judgment and how many we can deem unworthy or unrighteous or unredeemable.  Then we have come full circle and moved Jesus away from the judgment seat in order to occupy the throne for ourselves.  Its power we manifest by betraying all that we once know and counted upon and stood for -- then Satan has done for us and to us exactly what he did in Eden.

There is an ingredient that redeems the bitter soup so poisonous to us.  That ingredient is forgiveness.  We have it not in our larder but Christ has it and gives it our freely only to those who do not deserve it and those unworthy of its mercy.  But where mercy reigns, disappointment, bitterness, resentment, anger, and betrayal surrenders.  His blood is the higher power that is greater even than our smug and safe little circles of judgment and justified evil.  Of course, the problem is that we have grown accustomed to the bitter taste of the soup of life we make and the taste of mercy, while sweet, it must be learned by the eating.