Tim Keller, in his new book, Forgive, with this wonderful insight on how bitterness can destroy us by, essentially, turning us into a ghost who can’t move from the space he’s confined to.
Keller:
“Unless you forgive deliberately, thoroughly, and with all the help Christ offers, your anger will ‘defile’ you, as Hebrews says.
Our English word wrath comes from the same Anglo-Saxon root as our word wreath.
Wrath means to be twisted out of your normal shape by your anger.
And the same Anglo-Saxon word also gives us the now somewhat archaic word wraith. We don’t use it much anymore (unless you read The Lord of the Rings), but it’s an old word for a ghost, a spirit that can’t rest.
Ghosts, according to legend, stay in the place where something was done to them, and they can’t get over it or stop reliving it.
If you don’t deal with your wrath through forgiveness, wrath can make you a wraith, turning you slowly but surely into a restless spirit, into someone who’s controlled by the past, someone who’s haunted.”
