Absence of Attitudes

I just read the three chapters of Genesis that I'm going to cover in my lesson on Sunday, and while I read about what happened and what people did, it struck me that the Bible doesn't really say how anybody felt about any of it. Moses didn't write how Joseph felt about being sold to Potiphar and working for him. Moses didn't say how Potiphar felt about being (falsely) told that Joseph tried to sleep with his wife. We don't know for sure how Joseph felt about being in prison. We don't know how the butler and the baker reacted to having their dreams interpreted. We don't know how the butler felt about forgetting about Joseph for two years and only remember him when the Pharaoh had a dream. We know that Pharaoh was "troubled" by the dream, but we don't know how troubled. And we don't know how Joseph felt about being released from prison and being charged with the affairs of all of Egypt instead.

Of course, we have pretty good guesses for many of those attitudes, most of which are revealed in their actions. Joseph worked diligently for Potiphar. Potiphar sent Joseph to jail. Joseph worked well in prison as well. We don't get much of a reaction from the butler or baker until the butler described forgetting Joseph as one of his "faults." Pharaoh was troubled enough by the dream to drag Joseph out of prison to interpret it, but that might have been no big deal to Pharaoh. And though Joseph worked diligently for Pharaoh as well, he gave his sons some interesting and meaningful names that might give us a clue as to how he was feeling.

And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.

And the name of the second called he Ephraim: For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.

Genesis 41: 51-52

Forgetting all one's toil sounds like a good thing, and forgetting his father's house could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how homesick he was (which , again, we don't know). God causing Joseph to be fruitful is definitely good, but describing Egypt as "the land of [his] affliction" probably isn't a good sign. It could, theoretically, be neutral, but it sounds pretty bad.

So, how did Joseph feel about this experience overall? It's impossible for us to say for sure. Maybe he only worked so hard because he was afraid of being punished or to help him keep his mind off of how bad his situation was. Or maybe he greeted these challenges with vigorous enthusiasm, or at least faith that God had a plan. He could have been angry, resigned, accepting, peaceful, or even happy. Almost anything is possible here.

So when my Primary kids and I cover this lesson, I'll try to make sure we don't color Joseph's experience with assumptions about people's attitudes. We don't even know whether Potiphar was livid at Joseph's apparent betrayal and vindictively threw the book at him or whether he was reluctant to lose his best and most trustworthy servant just to appease his lecherous wife and let Joseph off as lightly as he could, given the circumstances. The latter seems more likely, since he didn't have Joseph tortured to death, but none of us really have any idea how angry or how sorry Potiphar was, and without further evidence, we shouldn't even venture to guess.

What we can do is ask ourselves how we might have felt if we were in their shoes, and how we know we ought to react to unfortunate circumstances. It's possible that Joseph was submissive to the will of the Lord, as many renditions of this story depict him, but we certainly should be. That's my main takeaway from tonight's study session: As far as we need to be concerned, their attitudes don't really matter. If they did, they probably would have been recorded. But our attitudes do matter, so perhaps we shouldn't worry so much about their attitudes when the attitudes we really should be keeping tabs on are ours.