When Joseph as ruler in Egypt revealed his true identity to his half-brothers (Gen. 45:3-15), they had every right to be afraid.
They expected retribution, revenge, and retaliation for selling Joseph into slavery in Egypt 13 years previously, when Joseph was 17 years old.
According to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking, payback for their evil deed against their younger brother would be the standard response coming from an all-powerful public official.
They would not normally expect anything else.
Under the now reversed circumstances, Joseph had complete power and control over their lives.
But Joseph recognized years before that he had been purposely sent into Egypt through the higher mission-plan of a God-composed life-script to help other people.
The self-sacrifice of being trained for leadership in Potiphar’s house and in Pharaoh’s prison, was in service to helping a large group of people to survive a famine.
Any alternative series of events and circumstances living back in Canaan could never have produced a scenario where Joseph could find himself in the position of second in command of all Egypt directly under Pharaoh.
Building upon an idea from Jordan Peterson and applying it to the story of Joseph in Egypt, the mission-plan for Joseph inserted into his life by the God of the Bible involved sacrificing the present time and himself, for the future and for other people.
Joseph’s high position, second to Pharaoh, was not about him or for him.
It was not about pride, ego, status, or climbing over other people to obtain power that had to be ruthlessly defended through force.
In Joseph’s life-script, God lifted Joseph’s moral character upward through events and circumstances in a joint-venture journey towards God’s higher character.
This process always in every case in the biblical narrative stories of faith…attends to the higher goal of helping other people while losing ourselves in the process.
Joseph as a foreigner in Potiphar’s house and in Pharaoh’s prison had learned how to lead with humility and with respect for others while in a foreign country.
The key point is that the mission-plans of the God of the Bible are at a higher level that actualize commendable self-sacrifice for the good of others.
Joseph was wearing the ring of authority that Pharaoh had given him to manage the famine.
His authority was unquestioned.
The word of Joseph was followed.
But the one goal set before Joseph by God Himself, set aside all other options and considerations as being secondary.
The worldly conventional normalcy and thinking of getting his revenge against his half-brothers was replaced within the mind and heart of Joseph by the much higher concern of managing the famine.
This is the direct opposite of the stereotypical approach in human history of the political strong-man who subjugates the people below them through authoritarian and dictatorial control.
Joseph was not therefore displaying weakness in forgiving his half-brothers.
Joseph was exhibiting a transcendent strength of character to do the one right thing in exclusion to all other options, including sacrificing the present and himself, for the future and for other people.
This was produced through an adventure of faith in which he placed trust in the God of the Bible to see ahead of the forward-looking curve in the road of future time, to produce a positive outcome, that Joseph along the way could not fully foresee.
Here I am quoting and paraphrasing Jordan Peterson in a discussion he had with John Lennox entitled “A Conversation About God” on You Tube.[1]
Jordan Peterson during this discussion asks the question of why is sacrifice important.
He starts his answer by saying that there exists a multiplicity of things in this world to pursue.
Every time we focus attention on one thing, we sacrifice all the other things…thus we are sacrificing.
We have to sacrifice other things to attend to a specific act.
If I am immature, there is only the present.
As I become more mature, there is only the present and there is only me.
As I continue to be more mature, there is the future at longer and longer durations, and there are other people.
So, what am I doing as I mature?
As I mature, I am sacrificing myself and the present, to the future and everyone else.
If I don’t do that then I stay dangerously immature, being self-centered and narcissistic.
I have to sacrifice to attend an act, and to mature.
Jordan Peterson then asks the central question of what is the sacrifice that is most pleasing to God.
The answer is to offer-up everything to what is transcendent.
This is what we see in the God-composed life-scripts patterned in the biblical narrative stories of faith.
This is what we see in this ancient life-script for Joseph in Egypt at the dawn of the first appearances of human intellectual and moral reasoning capacity.
This concept that the God of the Bible is writing life-scripts for people that can actualize the quality of the sacrifice of the present and of oneself to attend to a future, transcendent goal that helps others…is empirical fact-based evidence.
This idea is recorded in writing in the first book of Genesis in the Bible.
This cannot be lightly dismissed and swept-under-the-rug.
This concept of the God of the Bible composing transcendent life-scripts for people that actualize reaching for higher goals that entail along the way acquiring a higher moral character, cannot be the product of an ancient version of modern humanism.
This concept is too deep to be the product of ancient, mythological literary invention.
What better way for God to show that this universe is more than matter and energy than to compose journey of faith life-script missions for people that are intellectually and morally deep and probing?
What better way than to demonstrate purpose and meaning in action in human lives?
Every positive biblical character is immersed in conflict, struggle, issues, and challenges, without exception.
Not a single story of a positive character in the Bible is about the easy life…of a green carpet, greased existence according to some timeless version of an achievable American Dream.
No human literary genius either in the Old Testament or the New Testament could or would deviate from the standard humanism that be definition excludes participation in our lives by a real living God.
All of the God-composed journey of faith life-scripts in the Bible contain the element of an advance, upfront training regime that prepares each person for a mission-plan goal they could not dream-up in their wildest imagination.
That is the point.
The mission-plans and the advance preparations are coordinated, timely, and transcendent above worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
All of this is inexplicable arising out of an atheistic universe devoid of purpose and meaning.
This is empirical, fact-based evidence for the existence of an intelligent designer God, and disconfirming evidence for the worldview of naturalistic materialism.
This concept that God composes life-scripts for people that have end-goals that are transcendent above anything that could have been imagined by the people themselves in their time long ago or even today, entailing the incredibly deep element of sacrificing the present and ourselves…has to have some point of origin…some source for its existence.
We can ignore this fact-based evidence, but this does not make it go away.
[1] See “A Conversation About God/Dr. John Lennox/EP394” on You Tube in Jordan b Peterson, Nov. 6, 2023.
The Cross in the Christian Life 