This Post Is Not About Sarah Palin

By Eric Von Salzen

The internet seems to have become an "All Sarah, all the time" channel, so I just wanted to let readers know, in advance, that this post isn’t about – well, you know who.

This post is about what Joseph said in Genesis 50:20: "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good . . . ."

You remember the story. Joseph was one of the sons of Jacob, and he was an obnoxious prig. For reasons that only a parent could understand, Jacob favored him over all his other sons. His brothers got so sick and tired of him that they sold him into slavery. Eventually Joseph ended up as the right-hand man of the Pharaoh of Egypt, and was put in charge of giving out food during a famine. The famine afflicted Canaan, too, and Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt in search of food. They discovered that their survival lay in the hands of the man that they had wronged many years before. They fell down before Joseph, who spoke kindly to them and, rather than punish them for the evil they had done him, gave them all a home in Egypt.

"Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today." When we talk about this passage in Education for Ministry we often ask ourselves whether God micromanages the world in the way this passage implies. Do we really think that God ordained that Joseph’s brothers do the wicked thing they did? If He did ordain it, if it really was part of His Plan, how could it be wicked? Generations later, when Pharaoh refused to allow the Israelites to return to Canaan, was it really because God had "hardened Pharaoh’s heart"?

But that’s not what I thought about when I heard this passage read in church this morning. I thought about how we know that God exists.

In earlier eras, wise men from Aristotle to Aquinas thought they could prove through logic or science that God exists, but in the modern era we don’t generally buy those arguments anymore. In fact, nowadays "scientific" atheists argue that if we can’t prove that God exists we must concede his non-existence.

But the atheists who say such things are bad scientists; there are lots of things that we believe not because we can prove them through logic or an experiment, but because they help us make sense of the world. Physicists think that atoms are made up of quarks, but no one has ever seen a quark (and no one ever will); physicists believe in quarks because they make the equations come out right. Biologists believe in evolution by natural selection, but no one has ever watched a species evolve naturally; biologists believe in evolution because it makes sense of the evidence, such as the distribution of finches on Pacific islands, and fossils of whales with legs.

Think about the situation facing Joseph. Because of the perfidy of his brothers, he had been torn away from a happy home and a loving father; he had been enslaved and carried against his will into a strange and foreign land; he had suffered physical and emotional torture and the threat of death. He was now the second most powerful person in the great empire of his time. And his brothers were in his power. He could have paid them back in spades. No one in the world could stop him.

What stopped Joseph from taking revenge on his brothers was his belief in God. He expressed that belief in terms that made sense to him, and that made sense to the Jews who heard and told this story over many centuries before it was ever written down. "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good . . . ." Perhaps modern people would express their belief in God differently, but it’s the result that matters.

Do you believe that Joseph lived a more satisfied and happier life as a result of his decision? I do. He passed his remaining days among his brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, in familial companionship. If he had taken vengeance on his brothers he would have lived out his days in anger and bitterness and regret. It was God who for Joseph made the difference between those two ways of living his life. To me, that’s what God "intended for good": Joseph’s life and the lives of his family. In that story I see as much proof of God as I will ever see proof of a quark.