Suffering: Story

Narrative matters.  We understand our own stories by situating them in a larger landscape that makes sense of them.  That larger landscape, of course, includes the Bible, the Christian’s holy book.  Christians believe the Bible tells a story that makes sense of ALL stories.

Still, we must beware of sentimentalizing the biblical story.  Most of the stories in the Bible tell tales of struggle and suffering, and they introduce us to a God who plays an ambiguous role, often making life harder rather than easier.

This is especially true of the Joseph story.  We can read it in half an hour, but Joseph lived it, and he had no idea how it would turn out.  This is no sweet and simple story, once you get inside it.

One small incident illustrates the point.  It hardly seems worthy of notice.  But Joseph certainly noticed it.  It would have been impossible not to.  If anything, it is just the kind of incident that could have broken Joseph, driving him into utter despair.

As the story goes, two men from the Pharaoh’s court, the butler and the baker, were imprisoned for some impropriety.  While in prison both had troubling and confusing dreams.  Joseph inquired about their distress and invited them to tell their dreams to him.  He predicted a favorable outcome in the case of the butler’s dream, an unfavorable one in the case of the baker’s dream.  Then he implored the butler to remember him before the Pharaoh when he was restored to his position of authority, which the butler promised to do.

But the butler forgot his promise, and Joseph remained in prison.

I try to get inside Joseph’s head.  I am sure that in his imagination he had stitched together a narrative that foresaw God arranging his release from prison through this chance encounter with the butler and the baker.  “Finally,” Joseph might have whispered to himself, “God proved he’s good.  Finally faith paid off.”

But God disappointed him, even betrayed him.  God dangled freedom in front of Joseph’s face, awakening hope and longing, and then yanked it away, as if he were a sadist.  Joseph had remained faithful to God, but God had not returned the favor.  Why trust God any more?  What would be gained by it?

Joseph knew nothing of the future, of course.  How could he?  He knew nothing of Egypt’s years of bounty and famine, of the Pharaoh’s disturbing dream, of his promotion to a high position in the court, of his supervision over collection and distribution of grain, of reconciliation with his brothers and reunion with his father.

At that point he knew only what was in his immediate experience—the butler’s forgetfulness and selfishness, more years in prison with no end in sight, suffering and darkness.

Here is the irony.  If Joseph had been released from prison when he had hoped and expected, the story would have turned out well for him, but only for him.  In all likelihood Joseph would have never seen his brothers and father again, never assumed a high position of responsibility in the court of Pharaoh, never rescued an entire nation from starvation.  Such would have been the result—the price, really—of a premature ending to the story.  It might have been good for Joseph, but not for anyone else.

What role did God play in this story?  The writer makes only one statement: “The Lord was with Joseph.”  What does that actually mean?  It might seem obvious to us because we see how the story turned out.  But was it obvious to Joseph?  Surely not.  Joseph was traveling blind.

I am not an apologist.  I have little interest in abstract questions about God’s sovereignty and human suffering.  Philosophers and theologians populate this field of inquiry.  Historians like myself like the nitty-gritty of people’s actual experience.  We like story; we relish detail.  We think in terms of past, present, and future.  So I will not bother to defend God, attack God, or explain God.  Others are far better at those endeavors than I am.

What does the story actually say?  Events unfold because actors in the story— Joseph’s brothers, Potiphar and his wife, the butler, the Pharaoh, and Joseph himself—make real decisions that have real consequences. Joseph says as much to his brothers.  “You meant it for evil.”  They were responsible for their actions.  They were in fact wrong, regardless of how the story ended.

But God also plays a role.  He, too, is an actor.  Again, Joseph says as much.  “But God meant it for good.”

God was in the story.  IN seems the right word to me, too.  God was in it, not erasing or overruling human agency but working in and through it, as if God were an ancient Siri redirecting the route when human actors kept making wrong turns.  His brothers betrayed him; Potiphar’s wife lied to him; the butler forgot his promise.  All played a role in the story.  But God was in the whole thing, working redemption.

Joseph believed that God was in it, too, though there was no way he could have known ahead of time how it would turn out, which is true of all of us in our own stories.  He had to live it out, wait and see, let the story unfold.  Joseph was in fact a real person living a real life.  He believed in a real God, who was—and is—more than an abstraction.  He experienced real suffering.  And in the end he witnessed real redemption.

All of this was true because Joseph chose to stay in the story as if it were God’s story, not simply his own.

That is our choice, too, especially in our suffering.  There is more going on than meets the eye.  We have to wait and see how it all turns out.

And waiting is so very hard.