Not Letting Bitter Get the Best of Me

Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.
Genesis 39:1-4 (NIV)

You can be so disappointed that things didn’t turn out as you expected, regretting that you offered faith in God in the first place. You can become convinced that people are incapable of being loyal to anything or anybody other than themselves. You can become bitter.

Somewhere between the pit and the hard pilgrimage to Egypt, Joseph must have decided “I will not see myself like they see me. I have a dream, and you can strip my coat, but you can’t strip my purpose.” As Joseph’s brothers go on with life, it seems they think they have gotten away with murder, as between the end of chapters 37 and 39, we do not hear about Joseph.

But as things turned out, God was with Joseph, and things went very well with him.

Bitterness, from a theological perspective, is rebellion against optimism and a combatant to spiritual hope. But when you have a relationship with God, He gives you grace to live better than everything that would leave you bitter.

This text teaches us that you don’t have to let bitter get the best of you. You can live better than bitter. It has been said that bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting somebody else to die. Bitterness can’t change anything about your past, but if you don’t fight it, it can ruin everything about your future.

And it doesn’t start with God’s promise of a reversal of fortune. It doesn’t start with a guarantee of retribution. It doesn’t start with God telling you, “Don’t worry, I’m going to turn your enemies upside down.” It doesn’t start with a chance to witness the suffering of those who made you suffer.

In fact, it starts with a commitment to a hard spiritual discipline called self-compassion. Self-compassion is not letting what has happened to you make you treat yourself based on what has happened to you. Self-compassion to nurture spiritual hope in Jesus Christ is our antidote to bitterness.