The Providence of Pain: Joseph's Test, Part I

Introduction:

I love Joseph. Next to Daniel, he is arguably the noblest human being in the Bible. His intelligence, his integrity, and even his humility are second to none. Why is it, then, that he is so misunderstood? One blogger writes, "By all accounts, seventeen-year-old Joseph was a spoiled brat. He sounded like a pretentious upstart with a big mouth." Another blogger says, "Joseph was likely spoiled and coddled his entire life, until that fateful day where he was forced to leave his father’s favor and blessings. His brothers’ jealousy built up and eventually overcame them so much that one day they threw Joseph into a pit and eventually sold him into slavery. Talk about the end of a spoiled childhood!  Once Joseph belonged to foreign people who paid to own him, his days of being favored and coddled were over." He adds, "Joseph had to learn to work because daddy was no longer around to let him off the hook." He credits famous Bible preacher Charles Swindoll with the interpretation that Joseph's coat of many colors exempted him from work.

Wow. Isn't that a bit harsh? And they got all that right out of the Bible, right? So, let's put this all together: Joseph was spoiled, entitled, lazy, a crybaby, arrogant, delusional, and a tattletale. Okay. No wonder Jacob loved him so much! But, not to worry. He turned out all right in the end. But there's the riddle. If, as William Wordsworth said, "The child is the father of the man," wouldn't Joseph's boyhood foreshadow the man he would become? It's not that Joseph turned out all right in the end. He seems to have transformed overnight! Or, maybe, just maybe, he was all right all along! Let's apply a little logic test to these rather bilious assumptions.  

The "Spoiled" Test:

First, let's agree on a definition of "spoiled." Taken to be more than just a little extra TLC and special attention, "spoiled" actually means to damage severely, to harm the excellence or value of something, to affect detrimentally, to harm the character of someone by unwise treatment or excessive indulgence, such as "to spoil a child by pampering him." It doesn't sound like "spoiling" is a reversible process! Once it's done, it's done. It seems like it would take a very long time to recover from a spoiled childhood, if you ever do. Don't spoiled children become narcissists? And I thought narcissism was incurable!

Those who call Joseph "spoiled" assume that favoritism leads to pampering and that Joseph's coat of many colors was proof of both. But if Joseph were indeed "spoiled" during childhood up to age 17, nearly a generation, we should expect to see immediate evidence of it the first time he doesn't get his own way: blaming others for his misfortune; bitterness at reversal when he dreamed of success instead; laziness as a slave; and self-will and sin when faced with temptation. But we have no hint of "spoiled" attitudes or behavior under captivity. Instead, we have God's triple endorsement--"The Lord was with Joseph" (Genesis 39:2-3, 21, 23), stated three times in the text.

The Lord's endorsement of Joseph was obvious by both internal and external evidence. It was Joseph's beautiful and noble spirit of wisdom, humility, and poise that immediately set him apart as an outstanding leader who could be trusted. He immediately met with success because he turned slavery into servanthood and confusion into confidence. A spoiled young man would expect the easy way out in order to see the fulfillment of his dreams, but Joseph took a nightmare and turned it into a dream. How a pampered brat could achieve this overnight is a complete mystery. The truth is, if Joseph was anything less than exemplary even as a boy, we have no proof other than our own warped assumptions. In a book of beginnings that is objective and candid about the patriarch's failings, we hear none of Joseph's. Had we only silence, we should still tread softly before we indulge such deliciously negative criticism against the young man who blows the curve. But we have, it would seem obvious, many negations of the validity of such charges.

Not only do we have the negations in Egypt, we have negations in Canaan while Joseph is still a mere boy. The first proof against his being spoiled is his genuine love for his father, which Jacob sorely needed after Rachel's death amid the repeated misbehaving of his sons. This bond was God-given, for Joseph was a motherless boy and Jacob had never known closeness with his father. Jacob, having adored his own mother, must now be both father and mother to his son. We can be sure that always in his mind and in his limp was his quest to transfer the Abrahamic blessing to his son. The Scripture allows this inference if for no other reason than that Joseph was such a godly young man. Where did he learn this godliness, if not from his doting father? Rather than arguing that favor produces weakness, it should be argued that strength produces favor. I believe Jacob saw in Joseph his own strength to wrestle with hell's worst and to prevail.

To charge that Joseph was the one who was spoiled when he was the only one whose work habits his father could fully trust is not logical. And as for coddling and pampering this son, such a view shows no understanding at all of Jacob's own character. If Jacob worked his head off for little more than nothing his entire life, would he want his beloved son to be a sissy? Jacob certainly wasn't. Would any of these self-righteously smug critics work seven years for a woman they loved--seven years that seemed like only a few days? They would have given up in a couple of months. They couldn't even work hard enough sitting down to dig into God's Word to see what it was really saying. Jacob never had a sense of instant gratification, and I refuse to believe he allowed his son to experience an easy life, either. Anyway, why would God allow Joseph's childhood to be the opposite of what his adulthood would require?

Clearly, although Jacob favored Joseph, he put on him more responsibility, not less, than all his brothers combined. For that matter, if favor creates weakness, Joseph's brothers should have been superior! But Jacob saw in Joseph the same genius of administration that becomes astoundingly evident the instant Joseph sets foot on Egyptian sand. He was a leader at home, and he was a leader in captivity. And to this point, Scripture itself provides a clue. Far from being exempt, Joseph worked with the herds among his brothers, with which fact Scripture begins his story (Genesis 37:2). How else did he know what they were doing or even what they should be doing? For that matter, why would his brothers even think anyone would buy a slave who didn't know how to work? We can argue all day long whether Jacob should have favored Joseph, and it wouldn't prove a thing. One thing, however, is clear. Jacob played an enormous role in Joseph's life, and if that is the only thing he did right in his entire life, that is enough to earn him a crown.

The Snitch Test:

This one should be easy. The assumption goes that Joseph was a "snitch" because he was spoiled. He enjoyed getting his brothers in trouble as his insurance policy in remaining his father's favorite. Here again, we see no evidence of this character trait in Joseph, certainly not when Potiphar's wife accuses Joseph of molesting her. But, as we did for "spoiled," we need to define a "snitch." Call it "snitch" or call it "tattletale," this term invites all the dishonor of most taboos combined because, above all things, it implies hypocrisy and evil intent. It implies the participant turned informant to get himself off the hook. It also implies that no one was really doing anything wrong; the story is not only grossly exaggerated, no one even needed to know. We were just having a little fun.

Such a term applied to Joseph becomes immediately ridiculous. First, if we understand Joseph as having the heart of a shepherd, and if we understand his deep love and reverence for his father--arguably the love which grounded him for the next 22 years of his life, amid extreme loneliness and emotional pain--we will understand that his "evil report" had nothing to do with proving himself superior to his brothers but everything to do with preserving his father's best interests. How can we argue morally that Joseph should not have told whatever evil his brothers were doing, especially if they were fooling around instead of guarding his father's livelihood? We are commanded in Scripture to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather to expose them (Ephesians 5:11). Are we really making a case for keeping the lid on evil and for looking the other way? What chapter and verse is that?

But neither can we assume that Joseph's sweet big brothers, Reuben at least 24 by now, were doing absolutely nothing wrong. They weren't motherless boys; they were mothered men acting like boys. In fact, they were wicked. Some of them should have been in jail. Reuben's incest, Simeon and Levi's mass murder, Judah's later debauchery, and all the rest of them sloths? It does not stretch our imagination one bit that an "evil report" was exactly that--a report of evil and not an evil deed in reporting. Those who suppose that Joseph was stretching the truth should look no further than the evil his brothers did to him and to their father for the next 22 years, making Jacob think his beloved son was dead. It would be difficult by anyone's imagination to find hearts harder than theirs, and yet we are supposed to believe that they could not help themselves, the little darlings, and could stand Joseph's snitching no longer? In fact, the Scripture does not say they said, "Here comes this little snitch," but "Here comes this dreamer" (Genesis 37:19-27). And, if we doubt Joseph's estimation of his brothers' character, we can always look at what Jacob knew about them as dished out on his deathbed blessings.

But as for participant turned informant, Joseph certainly was not participating in any sort of evil, and if we argue that he was, that amounts to saying there indeed was evil. Which is more logical to argue, that Joseph was tattling to take advantage of his favored position, or that he was reporting out of obligation to his leadership position? If the latter, wasn't he just doing his job? We forget this was a family business. The tattler or snitch turns whistleblower when evil has gone on long enough. And how are we to regard our Christian duty? Such a simplistic and grossly biased view of Joseph as to call him a snitch clouds our Christian response to error. It IS our duty to expose evil. We ARE to report wrongdoing, not to cover it up, for to cover it up is to enable it and to condone it, which makes us guilty as well. Is the snitch to be found guilty because he told, or is the closed mouth to be held guilty because he didn't tell? It is God Who judges in the end.

Either way, to apply these terms to Joseph is either to give the benefit of the doubt to wicked men that they were actually being perfectly nice and good, or it is to say that even if they were wicked, it's no big deal. It's worse to snitch, after all, than it even is to sin. But who could ever work in a toxic environment like that? If we know his brothers' character, Joseph's evil report is not difficult to believe. More difficult to believe is that he exaggerated it. But how could he? No wonder Jacob put Joseph in charge of these scoundrels when he was only a boy. And no wonder Jacob gave Joseph a coat of many colors as a uniform to command respect of these losers who seemed to show respect for no one--not their father's handmaid, not the Shechemites, not Joseph, certainly not their aged father, and not even themselves.

The Superior Test:

This test, to me, seems downright ironic. Joseph is blamed for sharing his dreams because this makes him sound superior. But if we didn't know his dreams, how would we or his brothers know that God had fulfilled them? And who is to say that he really even understood them himself? Wasn't it a cultural practice to share one's dreams? Why didn't his brothers have any dreams? Did they have any ambitions at all? And yet, wasn't it Joseph's brothers who tried to act superior? Reuben stealing his father's bed and, thereby, his father's tribal authority? Or Simeon and Levi correcting their father's rebuke to their merciless slaughter of the Shechemites? (Genesis 34:31).

The truth is, Joseph was superior. It doesn't mean he acted superior. Even when Jacob rebuked him for sharing his second dream (a rebuke, by the way, which he would not have received, had he been spoiled), we know Jacob must have been remembering some dreams of his own that had come true. No wonder these sons hated Joseph. But who is to say that these very dreams did not hold Joseph steady when his circumstances in Egypt were making him feel inferior? But the strangest thing of all is that those who judge Joseph and not his brothers for trying to act superior are actually holding Joseph to a higher standard than his brothers because he is superior! What do they think Joseph should have done differently? Rejected the coat? Pushed his father away? Borne up nobly without a mother? Stuffed it in when his brothers did evil?

The Suffering Test:

If any one of these assumptions of Joseph's boyhood character were true--that he was spoiled or a snitch or considered himself superior--the miracle is that no evidence of these lifetime character flaws shows up under tremendous suffering in Egypt. The truth is, Joseph's ability to hold his head high in the darkest night of the soul shows a habit of spiritual and moral self-discipline that we don't even see in most of the kings of Israel and certainly not in David. The only character in the Bible who comes close to such boyhood fidelity is Daniel. If Joseph was spoiled by his father's favoritism, God knew he would need the spoiling for all the suffering that lay ahead. For the "word of the Lord tried him" (Psalm 105:19). Take even one of Joseph's virtues, such as his moral purity, and lay it beside the average person today, and you will look the world over for a match. Jacob knew a white sheep when he had one, and Joseph appears to be the only one he had.