Life Isn't Fair

I love Thanksgiving, one of my very favorite holidays. This year we had a great time, breakfast at Jono and Reba's, Turkey bowl flag football, dinner at our cousin Robin's, second dessert and games back at Jono and Reba's again... good times. There is one thing missing, however, one monstrous injustice. Pumpkin pie. Now we had great, homemade pies at Robin's house, and we snacked on some wonderful pies at Jono and Reba's, but you have to understand how Thanksgiving works at the Mackintosh house. Pies must number in the double digits, minimally, and other pies are okay, but most need to be Libby's pumpkin pies. Pieces of pumpkin pie will then be consumed for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and in between, late at night, etc... I opened my fridge the day after Thanksgiving and, first because we didn't host, we had no Thanksgiving leftovers, which means no turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce sandwiches. And worst of all, terrible injustice, simply not right, we had no pumpkin pie.

Happy Thanksgiving all, I hope you are all enjoying all the pie you can eat.

On a more serious note, I bring you a tale of intrigue, of seduction, of heroic character, and monstrous injustice.

God's chosen can be victims of monstrous injustice

Joseph's Story

Follow along in Genesis 39. Genesis 39ewives of the Nile:

Potiphar's Wife - Temptation

She liked to think of herself as a young woman, younger than Potiphar at least, and Pharaoh didn't keep doddering old men as his Captain of the Bodyguard. And beautiful, of course, she had attracted the eye of Potiphar, who had the power and wealth to attract an Egyptian hottie, like herself. Young, beautiful... and lonely. She was always "Potiphar's wife" as if she didn't even have a name, an attachment, a decoration, left to lounge at home while he did... whatever Pharaoh's bodyguard does... Boring.

She didn't even get to run the household, Potiphar gave that duty over to his wonder boy, that Hebrew boy, Joseph. It was time, she decided, to pick up a hobby. A love affair, perhaps. It had been a while since she'd had one, and most of her high-class Egyptian friends were in and out of affairs on a regular basis. It wasn't just that she was lonely, of course, that Joseph boy was looking mighty fine. Handsome, exotic, and they say he does everything well...

It is decided, then. Joseph will be her lover. So she went, found the slave, and gave him a very simple command. "Lie with me." A simple command, he was a slave, and she was a young beautiful Egyptian hotty. But Joseph refused! He gave some sanctimonious speech about how his master had put him in charge, given him responsibility, given him charge over everything but her, and how he had a duty; and then some ridiculous nonsense about great wickedness and a sin against God. Which one?

Ridiculous! But a challenge. A challenge she would win, she decided.

So the next day, she came to Joseph again. Perhaps a little sweeter this time. The next day, a little sexier. The next day, more commanding. Day after day, she found Joseph, she spoke to Joseph, she tempted Joseph. "Just... sleep next to me, all innocent." It was only a matter of time, she knew. Everyone knows that men cannot control their lusts. Everyone knows that the sex drive is powerful, unstoppable, unresistable. Joseph is single, alone, a man in his young twenties... given the opportunity, caught at just the right moment, Joseph would surely succumb.

But, day after day, the slave refused to listen. And day after day, she began to grow a little more insulted, a little angrier.

And one day, it was too much. She was his master's wife, and he would obey! He entered the house and all of the other men were gone. This would be the day! She grabbed his coat, and with velvet seduction and steely command, "Lie with me!"

And the insolent, insufferable, freakishly honorable slave ran out of the house and left her holding his coat.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. She snapped, she screamed. She would not be humiliated this way. Joseph was the freak. If his honor, if his holy character was so important to him, she would see it destroyed. Nothing more than he deserved. She stepped out from the house and played her trump card. "Rape, the Hebrew slave tried to rape me, and ran away when I screamed. He is mocking us all." Her husband came home, and she rehearsed her story to him, "Your Hebrew servant, that you brought here among us good Egyptians, tried to rape me... just to laugh at me. When I screamed he ran, and left his coat."

And that was the end of Joseph the insufferable, infuriating, sanctimonious, very handsome slave.

Joseph - Injustice

The story is over for Potiphar's wife. But imagine Joseph sitting in that cell, the prison, the place where the king's prisoner's were confined. The passage doesn't say a word about how he felt about he situation, but I think, again, we can easily imagine the details.

What went wrong? Joseph had done everything right. He proved himself with hard work and excellent results. His master prospered because of Joseph. He stayed righteous. He showed heroic character, really, in resisting sexual temptation, not just once, but day after day. He did the right thing, and he got burned. Thrown in prison. Stripped of every privilege and responsibility he had earned. The injustice of it! Is he rethinking his moral stand? Would I be here in prison if I had given in to Potiphar's wife. A little bit of sin and everyone's happy.

Joseph did everything right, and everything went so wrong. Unfair! Unjust! Joseph had to be asking, how is this right? What kind of world is this?

Life isn't fair

When we hear someone crying out that something "isn't fair," what do we immediately respond? It's almost automatic: life isn't fair! The world isn't fair! The Bible is full of people getting bum deals, acting righteously and getting smote. At the very beginning, just after the fall, Abel brings heartfelt offering and sacrifice to God and gets killed for it. Ultimately, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, the Perfect One, the man who never Sinned, is shamed, mocked and executed.

And haven't we been there? Have you ever been in Joseph's jail cell? You did everything right, and now you are being punished for it, you are losing out, missing out, being passed over. You did all the work, she gets all the credit. He gets the promotion you deserve. You stood up, you stood out and did the right thing... and you lost your job, you lost those friends.

In large and small things, we can be victims of injustice. From an early age, kids have a sense of fairness, of justice, and it may be whacky, but the walls will shake when it is wronged. Arabelle is three, and she knows that if Logan gets a juice box, cookie, piece of candy, or anything else, she had better be getting the same thing too. And parents tiptoe around that sense of justice, because it's easier to make sure every treat comes in even numbers than to deal with the drama, the toddler rage!

But we feel that same anger, we know that same anger. We can't trivialize that or shrug it off, sometimes life is tragically, desperately, painfully unfair. Joseph sits in a jail cell because he did everything right.

God’s Chosen

Joseph is one of God's Chosen. At the beginning of the chapter it keeps saying, The Lord was with Joseph. Three times: the Lord was with Joseph. Joseph is one of God's chosen, and he is the victim of monstrous injustice. We are God's chosen, you are God's chosen one, and we can be the victim of injustice.

So the question is, where is God in this picture? How does this fit? We have an intuitive sense that life with God is supposed to be better than life without God. Righteous living is supposed to be worth something, count for something, gain us something. Where was God for Joseph?

When life is unfair, God is still there

The story does not talk about the anger or resentment that Joseph might feel as he sits in that cell, unfairly and unjustly convicted. Instead, the first part of verse 21 says, "But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love..." The story builds up to this moment. It tells us of temptation day after day, Joseph gives a thoughtful defense at first and eventually can only flee from temptation. We don't see people resisting temptation very often, in the Bible or in life. It is by far the exception, but Joseph shows admirable, remarkable heroic righteousness... and then three times we hear the temptresses lie, her false accusation, and Joseph the wonder-boy becomes Joseph the rapist felon.

"But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love."

I wonder if Joseph felt that right away. I wonder if he felt at peace, just knowing that somehow God was with him and working through this, and somehow things would turn out okay. That's possible, I have been there, on occasion. Everything is going wrong, but somehow you just know that God is doing something and things will be fine. We spent our first week in the hospital with Dylan, and it wasn't a tragedy or injustice on the scale of Joseph, but it was difficult and certainly not what we expected or imagined. But it was okay, we knew God was with us, a peace without understanding. Sometimes, when life is unfair, you just know that God is still there.

So maybe Joseph realized that God was there, but perhaps not. In the midst of tragedy, in the face of injustice, someone says "God is there" and you just want to smack them, because you don't see it, you don't feel it, and if God is here why hasn't he fixed this? How could this happen? Perhaps Joseph was just filled with anger and outrage over his situation. He may have been angry, bitter, we don't know, but regardless of what he thought or felt, we know this: "the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love." Maybe years later, Joseph looks back on that jail cell and realizes, God was with me. God showed me love in that place, God wasn't done with me.

God remains with His Chosen, even when they suffer for righteousness.

God remains with His Chosen, even when they suffer monstrous injustice.

When life is unfair, God is still there.

We have promises Joseph could only dream of. Deuteronomy 31:6 Romans 8:38-39s, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." No jail cell. No injustice. No unfairness. When life is unfair, God is always, always there, and showing us steadfast love. A love that persists, a love that continues. and ultimately a love that can heal and redeem injustice. He reverses injustice. The imprisoned set free, the dead resurrected, the lost found.

We don't always see that in the moment. Perhaps we don't even usually see that in the moment. Perhaps months or years later, we look back, and see the presence of God in that moment of suffering and darkness. Perhaps we still wait and wonder where God was, or where God is right now. But we can affirm, by faith if not yet by sight, that God is there, that He is showing us steadfast love."

I want you to think back on a moment when you suffered injustice. When you did everything right and everything went wrong, when life was just unfair. I would love it if you could write that moment down. And then, if you can see where God was in the midst of that, if you know that the LORD was with you, showing you steadfast love, write that down too. If you don't, perhaps you are still in the midst of that pain, you are still in a dark cell. Leave it blank, but keep the notecard. Leave it blank in faith that God is still there and showing you steadfast love. There will come a day when you can fill in the blank.

Because this is truth, this is fact:

God remains with His Chosen, even in the midst of injustice and suffering.