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“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” (From Genesis 5:20, English Standard Version)
Growing up as a child of a Christian pastor, I heard others recite this Bible verse frequently. More often, whenever people quoted these words—uttered by the biblical character Joseph—their goal was to encourage forgiveness.
But first, let me back up, because all readers may not be familiar with Joseph, including how he came to speak his famous line about bad circumstances being transformed into something good. For the purposes of this post, it’s necessary to understand that Joseph’s life was filled with traumatic experiences:
- His own brothers, initially plotting to murder him, instead sold him away as a slave (Genesis 37:18-36).
- While working as a servant, Joseph was falsely accused of sexual assault by his master’s wife after he rejected her advances. As a result, he was thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit (Gensis 39:1-20).
- While in prison, he accurately interpreted the dream of a fellow inmate, who was Pharaoh’s cupbearer. Among other things, Joseph predicted that the cupbearer would be restored to his position. Joseph asked him to put in a good word on his behalf when he was freed from jail, but the cupbearer forgot about Joseph once he was released (Genesis 40:9-23).
Fast forward to our opening quote, and the story that accompanies it. Joseph is now in a position of incredible power in the land of Egypt, in charge of selling and distributing food to neighboring lands during a time of widespread famine. Joseph’s brothers make their way to Egypt from their homeland to bring back food, and, as God orchestrated it, eventually come face to face with their brother, Joseph. When they find out that the powerful person in front of them is the brother they schemed to kill and then sold to merchants, the brothers are beyond terrified (Genesis 50: 19-22).
And that’s when Joseph graciously delivers his famous line quoted above.
Now, do you see why this verse is read to encourage forgiveness of others who have wronged you? The rationale goes something like this: Do you feel like you deserve to hold onto a grudge? Think about Joseph, who had every right to retaliate against his brothers, but instead chose to forgive.
That’s a fine lesson from Joseph’s story, I guess. My focus in this post, though, is not about forgiveness. Instead, I would like to highlight meaning making.
As a child, I digested Bible stories as if they were chronological and comprehensive. From that vantage point, it was easy to assume an oversimplified, unrealistic narrative for Joseph: namely, that his rapid ascension to power served as the quick and perfect antidote to his trauma-filled life. This is essentially a cookie-cutter perspective on pain and healing, one that offers a superficially packaged solution—trust in God, and all your problems will go away—to the problem of unpredictable rumblings and turns of life.
I no longer believe the simplified narrative to be an accurate depiction of what might have actually occurred in Joseph’s life. Instead, I imagine that there are many “in-betweens” not covered in the Bible story I learned as a child. For instance, it’s reasonable to assume that Joseph did not arrive at this gracious posture toward his murder-plotting brothers quickly or easily. From what we know of psychology, it seems more likely that he wrestled with the extraordinarily difficult life circumstances that he was thrown into. Perhaps he even questioned God along the way.
What Joseph likely did for a portion of his life, I am guessing, is meaning-making.
Meaning-making can take on many forms, but the basic idea is that people are motivated to make sense of their world whenever something disturbing or stressful happens to them. Crystal Park (2010) writes that meaning-making occurs whenever the gap between the global meaning internalized by a person (e.g., a belief that the world is a just place) and the meaning associated with a particular stressor (e.g., witnessing the unjust suffering of a moral person) becomes increasingly apparent, and the person is forced to grapple with such a dissonance. As a result of this meaning-making process, they might ultimately see their troubling situation(s) in a new light, or alternatively, their global perspective regarding how this world, life, and God operate might shift (for more on meaning-making and a comprehensive model describing its antecedents and outcomes, see Park, 2010).
Let’s return to Joseph as an example: With each traumatic experience in his life, it seems plausible that his foundational belief in a good God became increasingly at odds with the circumstantial or situational meaning that each incident carried. Furthermore, judging from his confident declaration to his brothers, it appears as though he was ultimately able to restructure his thinking regarding the traumatic events and what they meant in his life and beyond. Research shows that much of meaning-making is a psychologically active process, with a reliance on tools spanning intrapersonal (e.g., cognitive) and interpersonal dimensions (again, see Park, 2010). Joseph’s confession to his brothers was not a miraculous overnight phenomenon. Rather, I believe it was the authentic statement of someone who clearly and immensely suffered and likely questioned so many aspects of his life, including a god who allowed such pain.
In a previous post, I wrote about my family’s struggle to cope with a serious medical condition—permanent vegetative state—that is threatening to take my mother’s life. It’s been 9 months and a few days since my mother lost consciousness. And, I would add, it’s been 9 months and counting that my father, sister, and I have embarked on this meaning-making journey filled with excruciating moments. We have asked all kinds of rhetorical, impassioned questions—some asked defiantly out loud, and others articulated privately. We have heard others around us attribute a range of meaning to what we are experiencing, some of which we appreciated (“We don’t know what God’s purpose is, but don’t give up seeking it"), and others we did not (“God has a clear reason for doing this”).
And what has been the outcome of our meaning-making endeavors? Well, I know this for certain: Our family is nowhere near the confident confession of Joseph that his trials had been redeemed for good; perhaps we are not supposed to get to that point with our particular stressor. But I can honestly say that we have made advancements in our meaning-making—snail-like movements, but still inching toward glimpses of meaning in the midst of a traumatic occurrence: Re-establishing interpersonal contact, albeit awkwardly and briefly, with estranged family members. More intentional check-ins with one another using creative methods (yay, technology!). These are some of the ways in which we are slowly moving forward in our meaning-making.
Are you currently experiencing something incredibly challenging, a situation that you cannot make sense of? Are you praying for a miraculous illumination to hit you with full force, so that you can all of a sudden be fully enlightened about the divine purpose behind your pain and suffering? Are you praying to God for a radical restructuring of your psychological perception of the world, so that you can proclaim, as Joseph did, that what was once X is now Y?
Perhaps that kind of miracle in meaning-making is possible. But I also encourage you to actively seek out those cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal processes that will help you take baby steps in your meaning-making. And I pray that one day, you might be able to confidently declare, in Joseph-like fashion, that you can see the meaning underlying the troubles you have endured.
References
Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 257–301. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018301
