But God Intended It for Good

In less than two months, regardless of the quality of our eyesight, we’ll all be seeing 2020 – on our calendars. In one respect, I can’t wait to see what the new year holds. However, if the crazy current year is any indication, maybe waiting wouldn’t be a bad idea. Lately, however, I’ve been thinking about a different kind of 20:20. Not the kind revealed by an eye chart, but the perfect vision afforded to us through the benefits of hindsight.

Have you ever experienced a time of extreme disappointment, when at that moment it seemed as if all of your hopes and dreams were crashing down? Then, days or weeks or months, or even years later, you realized that setback wasn’t so bad after all? 

One man who attested to that was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who courageously exposed many of the evils of Communism under Joseph Stalin. For his efforts, he was sentenced to years of imprisonment in a Soviet gulag in the 1950s. Deprivation he experienced in the “corrective labor camp” provided unique insights into human suffering and the meaning of life. Most important, it became an integral part of his spiritual journey, leading him to conclude, “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!”

Bless prison? How could anyone regard cruel confinement as a “blessing”? And yet, that was how Solzhenitsyn came to regard it as he wrote a series of books called The Gulag Archipelago.I know of other individuals who could look back on their time in prison as a spiritual turning point. Among them was the late Charles Colson, a former chief aide to President Richard Nixon, whose own prison experience led him to start the Prison Fellowship ministry that continues to touch many thousands of inmates nationwide.

For individuals like this, flawless hindsight revealed to them God could use a devastating experience as part of His process for shaping them into the people He intended for them to become.

Thankfully, I’ve not experienced anything remotely close to that. But numerous times, circumstances caused me to wonder, “Where did I go wrong?” or, “What in the world’s going on?” Only later did I learn how God had allowed the distressing circumstances to take place so that He could guide me to something much better than I could have imagined.

The Scriptures provide numerous examples of individuals whose lives seemed to reach a dead end, only to realize God was preparing them for future use. One who comes to mind is Joseph, the young man whose own brothers sold him into slavery out of resentment for his father’s favoritism. Taking that lemon and turning it into lemonade, Joseph became a valued servant in the household of Potiphar, a prominent Egyptian official. 

But that was hardly the end of his story. Joseph’s faithful service was unjustly “rewarded” by Potiphar’s wife when he spurned her lustful advances. “No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” Joseph protested (Genesis 39:9). Rather than admiring his virtue, the scorned wife falsely accused him of sexual assault and Potiphar had him imprisoned. 

“What did I do?!” might have been Joseph’s lament. Sitting in prison, he had ample opportunity to wonder about being wronged for doing right. Ultimately, it became evident God wasn’t at all surprised by the turn of events. The Lord used them to place Joseph into a strategic role as the chief assistant to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. This set the stage for fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham when He said, “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and as the sand on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17). 

Many years later Joseph’s brothers unknowingly came to him looking for help in the face of a growing famine. Rather than seeking vengeance for their betrayal, he embraced them and was able to declare, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

A familiar New Testament verse relates to this. Romans 8:28 states, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Unfortunately, it’s sometimes dispensed as a simplistic platitude to comfort people going through times of serious struggle. Nevertheless, as Joseph learned in Egypt – and as many of us have discovered through our own adversities – it's true.

Do some of your hopes and dreams seem shipwrecked? Have dark times descended that defy explanation? When we encounter such moments in life, we can take heart in knowing the Lord is indeed in control. As He said through the prophet Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you…plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

For all of us who love God and are called according to His purpose, we can trust that even our hard experiences are intended for good. Sometimes we just need 20:20 hindsight to see how.

The Kind of Inventiveness We Don’t Need

Have you ever marveled at the creativity and inventiveness of the human mind? I remember as a boy learning about Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, Eli Whitney the cotton gin, and Guglielmo Marconi the telegraph.

Considered America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison introduced incandescent lightbulbs, the phonograph and many other devices that changed our lives and paved the way for other wonderful innovations. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but Mr. Edison might have been its father.

We benefit from human inventiveness in many
ways - but not always. It also has a dark side.

We could name many other notables, ranging from Henry Ford to George Washington Carver to the Wright brothers. Thanks to Elisha Otis, every time we get on elevators, they don’t plummet to the bottom level. Perhaps more than anyone else, his career had its ups and downs.

Unfortunately, inventions that serve the common good can also be utilized to accomplish all manner of nefarious deeds. Spending time around little kids, we can witness how inventive they can be for getting into mischief. Toddlers sleep a lot, and I think they dream primarily about what they can do to annoy mom and dad.

Inventiveness for the sake of wrongdoing doesn’t disappear with the passage of years. Adults also have an endless capacity for imagining ways to do bad, even with good things. Take the internet, for example. It’s essentially neutral. A means for disseminating information; enabling people to communicate quickly and efficiently with one another; and shrinking the world so we can reach out electronically and touch someone many thousands of miles and multiple time zones away.

Unfortunately, clever – and malevolent – minds have figured out many ways to do bad stuff with this essentially wonderful resource we used to call the “worldwide web”: Scams – have you gotten an email from a Nigerian prince lately? Viruses to infect the computers we now rely on so much. Computer pornography to addict the minds of viewers who believe they can indulge in mental garbage without causing harm to anyone – except for cherished relationships, work productivity, and their perceptions of the real world. Hateful expressions on social media range from simple ridicule to shameless, menacing bullying of vulnerable, sensitive people.

Technology may have changed dramatically through the centuries; the propensity for distorting our inventive capacities for harmful, destructive intentions has not.

Paul the apostle wrote about this in the opening chapter of his letter to believers in the early church in Rome, commenting on the state of those who consciously rebelled against God: “…they invent ways of doing evil” (Romans 1:30).

What was the purpose of this evil inventiveness? Paul explained earlier in the chapter, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Romans 1:21-23).

A few verses later, the apostle gets more specific: “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful…” (Romans 1:29-31).

This entire chapter was a powerful indictment of society nearly 2,000 years ago, but even a casual glance at our world shows things haven’t changed much since then.

Years ago, a popular paraphrase of the Bible was called Good News for Modern Man. The early chapters of the book of Romans, however, sound more like “bad news about modern man.”

Thankfully, even when it appears humanity at its worst is on the rise, we have the assurance God hasn’t lost His capability to turn bad into good, making wrong into right. As Joseph said, after being reunited in Egypt with his jealous, vindictive brothers who had sold him into slavery years before, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

Even at the worst of times we can trust in the assurance Paul offered later in his letter to those in Rome, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

No matter how inventive humanity tries to be for conjuring up evil in new forms, God’s still in control – and can still use bad things to achieve His good purposes.