Joseph

One of the greatest and most painful of mysteries is the problem of suffering and the broader problem of evil in the world. I was meditating with my Sunday School parents this past weekend on the Old Testament Patriarch Joseph. That story is rich with lessons about family struggles, envy, jealousy, pride, mercy and forgiveness. But the story also has a lot to say about suffering and the way that God can use it to bring blessings.

Lets take a moment and consider the problem of suffering and see what Joseph’s life has to teach us. But first we ought to begin with some background.

I. Prequel – God had set forth a vision for us; let’s call it “Plan A” also known as paradise. But of course that plan came at the “price” of a an intimate relationship with God the Father. Man would  not be at the center; God would be.

God also asked Adam and Eve to trust him in an important matter. And that matter was both symbolized and focused on a tree called “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

The word “knowledge”  is key here. In scripture,  to “know” almost never means simple intellectual knowing. Rather, it means to know something by experience. In effect, the title of the tree teaches that God did not want Adam and Eve to know what was good and evil by experience. Rather, he wished them simply to trust Him to be their teacher, to be their Father who would guide them in these matters.

But as we know, Adam and Eve gave way to the temptation of the devil yielded to pride. They insisted on “knowing” good, and, more problematically, evil by experience. In effect, their decision amounted to saying,

“I will not be told what to do. I will decide what I want to do and  I will decide whether it is right or wrong. I will conduct experiments in this way for myself because I do not trust God to act in my interest, or to teach me accurately.”

The Catechism says Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness. (# 397)

Thus, they would not trust God to teach them what was good and not. They insisted on knowing and deciding for themselves. Adam and Eve wanted a “better deal” than paradise. So welcome to the better deal.

We live now in Paradise Lost, a world where the imperial autonomous self creates a kind of hellish existence often marked with great suffering and, ultimately, death. In wanting to know, that is experience, evil we sadly got what we wanted: sin  and evil, sorrow and death as our daily fare.  And this is the first Biblical explanation of the problem of evil.

But why was the tree there in the first place? Simply put, it had to be. Without choice, there can be no freedom, and without freedom, there can be no love.   God wants his human children to be lovers, not slaves or instinct-driven animals but rather, children who can freely choose to love God or not. God is very serious about our freedom. Our “yes” is of no real meaning if our capacity to say “no” is not also very real.

Read rest