In an era marked by division and discord, Rick Hughes explores the spiritual underpinnings of societal anger in The Flotline. This week’s episode details the destructive nature of bitterness and hatred while emphasizing the transformative power of forgiveness. Hughes calls for a revival of spiritual principles as a means to heal personal and communal fractures, inviting listeners to reflect on their role in nurturing a harmonious future.
Welcome to The Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to The Flotline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next few minutes, stick around, would you please? It’s just a short time of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and as you know, no manipulation. We don’t con people. We’re not trying to solicit money. We’re not trying to sell you a book. We’re just simply giving you information. That information, our prayer is, it will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. If I’m able to do that, you have the freedom, you have the privacy, you have the opportunity to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. But that’s my job. Your job is to listen. God gave you two ends, one to sit with, one to think with. And success in your life is going to depend on which one of those ends you use. Heads, you’ll win. Tails, well, you’re probably going to lose. It is possible for you to live a life of losing yourself losing out on everything that God has offered you. The worst thing you can lose out on is eternal life, because the Bible says it’s appointed unto man once to die and after that to judgment. There’s no doubt that each of us are responsible to make a single significant decision to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Bible says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. That is the most important decision you would ever make. And the greatest loss you could ever have is the loss of eternal life with God the Father and the Son in heaven. So please consider that. There’s a lot to lose and a lot to gain. What a wonderful life we have. And if we learn to live this Christian life, this unique life that God’s given us, identified by the Lord Jesus Christ when he was here, when he walked on this planet, he identified it to us. He showed us what kind of life it was. And we are told in the Bible to emulate his thinking. The Bible says, let this mind be in you. It was also in Christ Jesus. And we know that he thought with divine viewpoint, not human viewpoint, divine viewpoint. He didn’t write a letter to dear Abby asking her what he should do. He knew what to do because of what the father told him. The same is true for you. What you need to do is in the Bible, in the word of God. I promise you that. And human viewpoint may tell you something completely opposite of what the Bible says. So as we present these radio shows, our objective is to give you accurate information to help you understand the word of God and how it applies to your life. And in this particular case today, we want to talk about something that’s going on in this country. This country is full of anger. This country is full of rage. This country is being split in half by factions that hate each other. The Republicans hate the Democrats. The Democrats hate the Republicans. The Blacks hate the White. The White hate the Black. The Spanish hate this. They hate that. I mean, I’m not picking on anybody, but look at what I’m talking about. Hatred, hatred, hatred. These people hate the police. These people hate this politician. These people hate that politician. It’s all on the internet, all on social media, all on the news. I’m not into politics. I’m not into talking about politics. So I don’t spend time commenting on politics on this radio show. However, if any of us like you and me who keep up with current events, we look at what’s going on, we can read between the lines. There is an internal fracture in this country to some degree. Not as bad as some people may have you believe because I mean, if you go out and look on the interstate, In your city, maybe you live in a city like Dallas or Houston or San Francisco or San Diego or Los Angeles or Atlanta or Pittsburgh, you’ll see busy people on this interstate, running up and down the interstates, going to work. And they’re not all crazy. Most of them are pretty squared away, great people. But there are a lot of people that are not on that interstate. A lot of people that are deceived and a lot of people that are full of bitter, vindictive, vile hatred, even for this country, even for people in this country like you, because you don’t line up with their views and they don’t mind telling you what a loser you are when you don’t line up with their views. So we’re fractured. America has been fractured like never before. And I think it’s the deliberate plan. I think people want this. I think this is exactly what’s wanted. I think there are an awful lot of angry people in America and rage is the national symptom of that. Unhappy, bitter people, and you know what’s funny is unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. So if they’re unhappy in Georgia and move to California, they’re going to be unhappy in California because unhappy people are easily manipulated. Because most of the time it’s an emotional thing. No doubt we’re becoming manipulated in America. No doubt we’re divided. No doubt we know what the future holds for this country. And I am sure this is exactly what Satan would wish to happen in this nation. He would love to see us split down the middle and divide and fail as a free client nation for God. And no doubt, if we continue to go down this road, we will do that. We will split and we will make our future very unsure. And this appears to be exactly what some people wish because there are a lot of people seeking to reshape our nation right now into a more humanistic, progressive society. And like you, I dread this concept, but it appears we’re rushing headlong into it, headfirst into the deep waters of national degeneracy and think nothing about it. into the deep waters of socialism and believe it to the delight of some people that it’s great and this is what needs to happen. And we need to redistribute the wealth and we need to give this to those and give that to them. And listen, if you’re a Christian like I am, you’re not allowed to hate anybody. And God didn’t put us here to hate people. That’s a terrible sin, hatred. No one of us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are allowed to hate anybody. Don’t forget those words, God so loved the world. That’s John 3, 16. He didn’t just love a few people, people that think like you and I think. He loved the world. He loved people that don’t even think like you and I think. He loved politicians that are in the other vein and not in your vein. He loved them. And the Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross and died for every person in this planet so that whosoever will may come. So God’s love has been manifested. God’s love has been made available to every one of us on this sin-infected planet. Now, sometimes the Bible talks about God and uses a big word. I’ll call them anthropopathisms. Anthropopathisms is a way of describing human characteristics to God. So we can kind of understand his viewpoint, but it doesn’t actually possess these characteristics. Like God hates Esau, but loved Jacob. God doesn’t hate anybody. These anthropopathisms are used to reveal and explain God’s policy towards mankind. mankind in terms of human frame of reference so that we can understand that language of accommodation, how God thinks about these things. And the purpose of the anthropopathisms in the Bible is always to explain to us in our own language where we can understand God’s attitude, God’s policy, or God’s modus operandi toward a person or persons so that we as human men, humankind can adapt to the divine policy and understand what the divine policy is. God wants you to do this and not do that. God wants you to do this and not do that. So you will find anthropopathisms about God where it says God loves, God hates, God gets angry, God scorns. All these are used in the Bible so we can understand the divine policy in human terms. We can understand God does not approve of that. But it does not mean that God cannot and God does not fall in love, nor does he maintain a love relationship like you and I would. His love is not sustained by emotion. You know, you love your wife and you get emotional, or she loves you and she gets emotional, or you love your country, you love this, you love that, somebody treats you right, you love them. God doesn’t work on that. God is not emotional. That’s what’s hard for people to believe sometimes because if they get emotional, they think God gets emotional. God doesn’t think like you think. It says in the Bible, his way is not your way. His thoughts are not your thoughts. He doesn’t think in terms of emotion. He’s not a sucker for tears, for people crying. I’m so sorry, God. Please forgive me, God. I won’t ever do that again, God. And that’s a lie. You probably will. But what God is impressed with, what I understand he’s impressed with, is what he did for you. Not what you can do for him, what he did for you. And that is giving his only begotten son. On the other hand, human emotions, those things that you and I have, they do demonstrate hatred and love and anger and scorn. And if you are angry, if you’re full of bitterness, if you allow your emotions to control you, then living like this will lead to some sort of preoccupation with yourself. And that’s fueled by your arrogant self-justification, blaming everybody else is wrong. It’s everybody else’s fault. They’re all a bunch of losers. I hate them all. And eventually it leads to you being freaky, mentally unstable. You want to go out and correct everybody. And if you go far enough, you might want to go out and take it in your own hands and do some stupid stuff. That’s what happens when bitter emotional people lose self control. And you may be in a stage of doing that right now. If you don’t get your emotions under control, you’re not allowed to hate. You’re not allowed to be bitter. You’re not allowed to be vindictive and vilify those that you don’t like. In second Timothy chapter three, verses two through seven, the Bible gives an attitude. of what many Americans today are living by. If you let me read it, it describes the attitude of many different Americans. Listen carefully. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, Boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without any love, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of God, treacherous, thoughtless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Oh, they may have a form of godliness, but they deny the power of it. In fact, you should avoid these people. Because they are immoral, arrogant believers. And they creep into people’s households and captivate silly women who are loaded down with sin and lead them on by their multifarious lust. Does that sound like America today? Wicked, without virtue, arrogant, boastful, disobedient, lovers of money, ungrateful, haters of parents. Well, rage in America is an indication of that. And there’s a lot of it. An indication of bitter people, bitter people in this nation. Think they got a raw deal. Maybe they did. If you get a raw deal, let me explain something. Have you ever been treated unfairly? What did you do about it? Did you get mad? Did you jump up and down? Did you cuss? Did you shout? Did you yell? Did you scream? Did you blow a top? See, you can do one of two things when you’re treated unfairly. You can forgive them for what they did, or you can react and try to get even with them for what they did. Most people would react with anger and try to get even. You get cheated in a car deal, cheated in a purchase that you made, you get cheated in a loan that you gave someone. If you get cheated at the ball game, you get mad. Parents get out and fight on the field. They fight, fight, fight in the middle of the baseball field, get thrown out of the game. Mad, angry. But there’s a better way to live. The Bible says you can forgive people. That’s a wonderful thing about the Supreme Court of Heaven. It’s open 24 hours a day. You don’t even have to deal with it. You could just take it to the Lord and say, Father, here’s what’s happened to me. Please handle it for me. Bitterness is the number one system of self-deception. It results when you react to people, when you react to situations, when you react to circumstances and environment in your life. That sort of bitterness is a sign that you have your eyes on people and not on the Lord. And when you get bitter, that’s a reactionary sin, and it is a failure. Take note of this. It is a reactionary sin. It is a failure to take responsibility for your own decisions. And this leads to self-deception. Bitterness says, I’m right. I’m right. I haven’t been treated fairly. I’m not going to take responsibility for my own decisions. I’m going to blame it on somebody else. That’s what a bitter person does. That’s what the arrogant person does. Anger, wrath, quarreling, slander, they’re all part of this bitterness concept. You don’t get angry unless you have bitterness in your soul because in anger, you’re reacting to someone that maybe even a person you love. Bitterness is both anger and irrational hatred. It’s the desire to hurt someone else called malice. So you have to be careful. Anger, wrath, all these sort of things, they will destroy you. You have to stay out of that. The Bible says do not get involved in it. Listen to Ephesians 4.31. All bitterness, all anger, all wrath, all quarreling, all slander must be removed from you along with your malice. That’s a mandate from the Apostle Paul to the believers in Ephesus. Anger is the Greek word thumos, thumos, T-H-U-M-O-S, and it means to boil over with anger, to explode like a thunderstorm. anger and wrath, get rid of the wrath. Wrath is another word for anger, but it’s called orge, O-R-G-E. It’s a different type of anger, it’s a slow irrationality. And it builds and builds and builds and leads to hatred. And that hatred puts a shroud around the victim. Hatred is something that you rationalize. Wrath is very bitter resentment, and it leads to an even stronger hatred. So in wrath, you react to somebody that you hate. Listen to the verse, all anger and all wrath Put it away along with quarreling, slander, and malice. Quarreling is the word craw-gay, don’t quarrel. That’s an onomatopoeia in the English language. It’s a word that sounds like what it spells like, craw-gay, K-R-A-U-G-E. And it means to make the sound of a crow. You know how a crow will crawl early in the morning to make that crawl noise? And that’s what Kroge is. It’s you, loud, noisy, vociferous. It’s you going around, running your mouth, putting somebody down, telling anybody that’ll listen, what a jerk that gal over there is. What a weirdo these people are. I hate them so much, and look what they did to me. It’s you being, arguing, irrational dissatisfaction in your life. This is very important. This is where a husband and wife can truly be mean towards each other sometime if they get full of bitterness, if they start to slander each other. It’s a vehement, irrational expression of emotion, total dissatisfaction. It’s a desire to become quarrelsome. That’s what crogué is. Slander is a vilification and defamation of a character So if you slander somebody, you defame them. You vilify them. You slander them. You run them down. To who? To anybody that will listen because, oh, you feel great because you hate them so much that you’ve run somebody down and told somebody else what a loser that person is and how terrible that person treated you, and it’s just not fair. Where did you get a certificate of fairness given to you when you were born? You’re going to be treated fair all your life. Come on. Well, the problem is you can’t handle it. You can’t handle it when someone doesn’t treat you right. So you get all bent out of shape and all bitter and all angry and all mad. And you’re not listening to this verse. The Bible says that all of that leads to malice and malice is your lust to hurt somebody. It’s your lust to do something malicious to somebody. You know, when a person gets bitter, one of the things they do is they amplify the flaws of another person. So maybe that other person has made some mistakes, but a bitter person will amplify that and jack it up to where by the time they’re through talking about it, it’s the worst person in the world. And they multiply that person beyond reality. And all of that comes back and just increases the bitterness within their own soul. So a bitter, arrogant Christian is terrible. Bitterness is this arrogant animosity. It’s you hating this politician. It’s you hating this spouse. It’s you hating this child. It’s you hating this group. It’s your anger and your cruelty that would lead you to do something irrational and harmful. This monstrous combination of arrogance and emotional sending leads to vindictive behavior and implacability, and this is why we see some of the things we’re seeing in the world today, in our nation especially. You haven’t seen anything yet. It’s coming. More than you can imagine, it’s coming. When certain people don’t get their ways, they will destroy. They will burn. They will cuss. They will yell. They will shoot. They will kill because they hate. And that’s exactly what’s happening in America today. We’re hating. We’re in an age of rage. What’s going to change it? I don’t know. Maybe you got a better idea than I do, but I don’t know what’s going to change it unless it’s a revival. Unless people come to the knowledge of God and confess their sin and are willing to admit they’ve been wrong, and that’s not going to happen because the arrogant, self-righteous, self-justifying person doesn’t see himself as he really is. He sees himself as he thinks he is. He sees you as the problem, not him. Every time he points a finger at you, as a person told me one time, there’s always three pointing right back at him. That arrogant person is so blind to his own self that he can’t see himself as he really is. So in your case, if you continue to be filled with vindictive behavior for the rest of your life, I’ll get even with him. If it’s the last thing I do, it’s wrong. Way out of line. God doesn’t authorize that as a believer. Without you confessing your sin to God, As per 1 John 1, 9, without you going to God and confessing your sin, you are quenching the Holy Spirit, you are grieving the Holy Spirit, and you are not living the effective Christian life. You are carnal. You’re out of fellowship. You’re going to be under divine discipline like you’ve never seen before because the Bible says those that he loves, he chastens and often scourges with a whip. That’s what’s coming down the pipe for you if you don’t confess a sin. If you don’t confess your sin, your bitterness, and your hatred, then you are in for a rough life, mainly because you will get into malice, which is desire to hurt another person, beat them up, sock them, hit them on the head, even worse. And you get into violence and abuse, and God won’t tolerate that. In 1 John 2, 9 through 11, here’s a perfect illustration. He that says he is in the light, that’s a Christian, but he hates his brother, he’s in darkness even until now. But he that loves his brother abides in the light, and there’s no occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because that darkness has blinded his eyes. If you’re in fellowship with God, you’re in the light. If you’re out of fellowship with God, you’re in the darkness. Imagine yourself walking through the woods at night with no light. no light whatsoever, trying to feel your way through the woods and running into the briars, running into the trees, running into the bushes, tripping and falling and not being able to go anywhere. But if you just had a light, you could see what to step around. You could see what to dodge and what to avoid. Hatred turns off the light in your soul. Hatred blinds you to your own self and to the reality of who you are. That’s what hatred does to you. It blinds you. There’s nothing worse than you hating yourself for something you did. You being mad at yourself. Now listen, did you shock yourself? Have you done something that you didn’t think you were capable of doing and are you mad at yourself about that? Maybe you should be disappointed, but listen, God has a plan for your life. If you’re still alive, he’s not through with you. I would go to the Father, and I would confess my sin and admit it to him. I would get back in fellowship. I wouldn’t look back. I wouldn’t live in guilt. I wouldn’t think back about my failures. I would get in fellowship. I would take in the Word of God, and I would advance forward and try to grow spiritually and become a mature believer. Because there’s nothing worse than you hating yourself. So confess your sin to God, 1 John 1, 9, problem-solving advice number one. Forget about it and move on, or guilt will destroy your soul. Satan’s very good at getting you to get into a guilt trip. Go sit in the corner, feel sorry for yourself. Look what you did. You’re such a loser, he tells you. God didn’t throw you under the bus. He didn’t turn his back on you. You’re still here. He has a plan for you. In Psalm 37, eight, listen to a few verses here I want to give you before we wrap it up today. Refrain from anger. Forsake wrath. Fret not yourself because it only leads to evil. James 1, 19 and 20. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to listen but slow to speak, slow to wrath, for the wrath of man is malice and hatred and bitterness and vindictiveness. The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Listen to Proverbs 14, 29. A person of great wisdom is patient, but a short-tempered person is the height of stupidity. Is that you? What kind of temper do you have? Do you fly off the handle? The Bible says you’re stupid for doing that. Romans 12, 19, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, nor give place unto wrath, because it’s written, vengeance is mine. God said, I’m the one that will do the repaying, not you. Romans 12, 19. In Proverbs 25, 28, like a city that is broken into without walls, so is the one who has no self-control over his spirit. And that’s what it boils down to. If you learn God’s problem-solving devices, you can have self-control. You can get rid of the bitterness and the hatred and the vilification and the implacability in your life by being filled with the Holy Spirit, putting on the mind of Christ, and living life to the fullest. You know, our Lord Jesus Christ didn’t come off the cross and kill everybody. He stayed up there for a reason, to take the punishment for us. There’s a song that says he could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free, but he died alone for you and me. He didn’t send you and me to straighten people out. He sent us to reflect his love and grace. And that means forgiving, forgiveness. You must forgive your enemies. You must forgive the ones you hate. You must turn it over to the Supreme Court of Heaven and let the Lord handle the situation. Nobody’s getting away with anything. I assure you, God’s in control. I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re paying attention, and I hope you’re learning because I’ll be back next week, same time, same place. Until then, I’m your host, Rick Hughes. Thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
