Victim or Victor?
How much of your life do you actually control? Even from the most optimistic perspective, we control very little about our lives. Think about it. We can’t control major world events even though they impact our lives. We can’t control the culture and worldview of the time into which we were born. We can’t control the time and place of our birth. We can’t control the opinions and actions of others. And although we can control some aspects of our lives, in the strictest sense we can’t control the circumstances around us.
Since you are not in control, are you a victim? Many people go through life feeling victimized or at least through seasons of life in this way. Others seem to have a victorious attitude. Some of the difference may be simple optimism but I’m not delving into the exigencies of personality traits today. Is it possible for a person, independent of personality, to move from seeing themselves as a victim to a victor? Does the Bible give us an hope for this?
In Genesis 48:15 we read the patriarch Jacob reflecting on his life in his final moments. He tells his long-lost son Joseph, with whom he had only just recently been reunited, that even though his life did not consist on an endless series of victories, he could see the hand of God at work: "The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Issac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day.” At this moment Jacob’s death loomed large before him. If he had been fixated on his circumstances, he most certainly wouldn’t have uttered such an affirmation of God’s care over every step of his life. Jacob chose to look up. He chose to focus on the goodness of God. That made all the difference for him.
Don’t get the idea that Jacob was perfect In fact, Jacob may not have discovered this lesson until the very final moments of his life. Prior to his testimony of God’s shepherding in Genesis 48, Jacob expressed more of the attitude of a victim when Pharaoh asked him about his life in Genesis 47:9: “And Jacob said to Pharaoh, ’The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.” Jacob presented his life as an all too brief series of tragedies. This is the same man and the same life. What changed?
How did Jacob move from lamenting the evil of his life to celebrating God’s goodness? Perspective. After seeing Joseph alive, and seeing God’s hand operating in Joseph's life, Jacob began to realize how God’s hand had operated in his own. Frequently, the providence of God only reveals itself in hindsight. In spite of tragic events that had befallen him, and even still befalling him (being forced to flee your home in your old age because of a major famine does not seem to be something to celebrate) God still was at work in this life. Jacob shifted his gaze from his circumstances to the character of God.
You can’t be both a victor and a victim. All of us experience trials and tribulations, even tragedies of one nature or another. Yet, we are not victims. Through Christ, we are victors. But we have to look to Him. God is always at work even when we can’t see it. Psalm 77:19 says: “Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.”