Joseph

In Joseph: A Story of Resilience Meg Warner brings together her skills and knowledge of the Old Testament and of dealing with trauma. She explores the Joseph story with particular reference to the traumatic events in which he got caught up and, as she demonstrates, there is plenty to learn about resilience, and that is an important and much needed message today.

As she comments -  "Resilience allows a person to take stresses and strains in their stride and to continue on. This doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she doesn’t feel the cost or pain of a difficult or traumatic experience, or take some time out to come to terms with it, but just that the resilient person is able to pull themselves up afterwards and to continue on – perhaps noticing that the difficult experience has made them stronger, in some respect, than they had been before."

Joseph makes his way through a series of traumas, but ends up demonstrating the value and possibilities of resilience. Joseph, admittedly, does not always respond well. He can be manipulative, even cruel. Resilience is not all good, but it has its part to play.

Warner makes this point well - "I’ve come to the conclusion, I think, that resilience is morally neutral – rather like fire or stories. We need resilience if we are to live well, but it can be a bit lethal if allowed to get out of hand. It is important, even necessary, to learn resilience in order to get on in our stressful and traumatized modern world. Without it, we are unlikely to be in a position to bring the full force of our own particular contributions and gifts to the world. Christians, however, will want to consider resilience within a framework of Christian ethics of behaviour. For a Christian, one’s own resilience can and must never be foremost – the quest for resilience should not be allowed to trump Jesus’ injunction to love neighbour as oneself in any but situations of the greatest crisis."

We do really need a bit of resilience, but better still to live well, demonstrating Christ's light as we love our neighbour.