What do rotten tomatoes have to do with Yom Kippur?
I believe this is a word that many could find helpful to consider today.
Yom Kippur
the Day of At-one-ment
by Donna Diorio
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” Isaiah 58
Yesterday
morning, on the eve of Yom Kippur I was thinking about how bitterness
is the greatest poisoner of human beings known to man. It is like a
tomato that over ripens on your kitchen counter and starts to go bad.
Every tomato that the rotten spot touches begins to pass along the rot
to other tomatoes. Human bitterness is like that too.
When a tomato starts to rot in one place the whole tomato doesn't have
to be thrown out, the rotten part can be cut away and the rest of the
tomato used. If you see a rotten spot on a tomato the first thing to do
to save the rest of the tomatoes is to separate the good from the bad.
Of course this is all a spiritual lesson because life in our times is
wrought with situations to create bitterness in human beings. You look
around you and you will see the signs of bitterness lurking in people
everywhere. Let me be the first to say I have had a battle with
bitterness creep in my life too and if it were not for the LORD, it
would have overtaken me and destroyed me long ago. I have had to cut off
the bad spots like on the tomato in my life a few times.
I believe bitterness is one of the great battles of the age we live in.
In Matthew 24:12 when Jesus was speaking of the spiritual environment
of the approaching last days, He said "Because of the increase of
wickedness, the love of most will grow cold."
In the original language that reads that because of the increased
transgressions of (God's) law, the "agape" (affection, good will, love,
benevolence, brotherly love) will "psycho" (a primary verb which denotes
properly a forcible respiration of breath to be made or grow cool or
cold). You know, like you blow cool breath on your hot drink to cool it
down.
That's what harboring bitterness over transgressions (both real and
imagined) by other people against us does, it kills off our affection,
good will, love, benevolence, brotherly love. It becomes "psycho" breath
blowing on our relationships, not only with the person directly
involved with our bitterness, but if left alone and not excised, it will
begin to spread to others around us. Like that rotten tomato on the
counter top, it will cause rot to set into every single tomato that is
situated close to it.
There is a way out. The first is for us personally. There are probably
not many of us that haven't had things happen in our lives that have
caused a poisoned place of bitterness to form in our hearts and minds.
Bitterness that is given free reign to populate our thoughts will poison
our hearts. The only way to free ourselves from this is to take it to
the Cross of Yeshua, Jesus. We lay down the "debt" we feel the person(s)
owe us - their transgression against us - at the Cross of the Messiah
who died to pay off ALL transgression debts.
Many of us feel we have the right to cling to certain transgression
debts because they hurt us so much, but Matthew 18, Jesus tells us we
absolutely have no right to cling to the debt. . . and if we will not
forgive the debt as God has forgiven us, then we - even those of us who
are saved - open the door to tormenting spirits. That means physical,
mental and spiritual tormentors (demons) have access to us to cause
greater pains because we will not give up our 'right' to bitterness.
Addictions, phobias, physical illnesses, mental illnesses, anxieties,
fears, murderous or suicidal mental oppression.
For a person that has come to faith in Yeshua/Jesus, we can repent -
which means to acknowledge our sin of bitterness but also to turn away
from it. Sometimes you are challenged over and over to walk that out,
but we just have to in order to keep our own spiritual freedom. This is
important too, because if you look around, you will see how it is not
just individuals but great groups of people have been overwhelmed by the
impact of bitterness that is dominating everything about their lives.
Bitterness is the greatest poisoner of mankind and there is only one
thing that a person walking with God in the Holy Spirit can do about
that too: to rightly view their predicament of having been overcome by
the poison of bitterness. Whether they are believers in the Lord who
don't know how to free themselves, or unbelievers trapped in unbelief
and the bitterness of life, pray for them to see that Yeshua, that Jesus
came to set the captives free.
Captives of what? Captives of the poison of bitterness because it is an
even bigger problem of humankind than all other forms of captivity.
We don't fight hate with hate. We don't fight the poison of bitterness
with our own bitterness. To get free, it is a spiritual ordinance of
God's instruction, we have to forgive our way out it. Matthew 18 affirms
this truth.
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