Alright, we're finally at the last 5 chapters of Genesis. Genesis is the 4th longest book of the Bible, so it seems like we're moving slower than we actually are. This is basically the lead-up to the events of the Exodus. It explains how the hell the Israelites ended up in Egypt in the first place. The age of the patriarchs is about to come to an end, and the people who are the subject of this book are the Israelites from here on out. The other peoples that can be considered Hebrews aren't gone, and we will meet them again, but the story will focus specifically on the descendents of Jacob. Other Semitic peoples (descendents of Shem), and other Hebrew peoples (descendents of Eber) will almost universally be considered enemies of the Israelites.
So apparently, the descendents of Jacob felt that God's promise to Abraham applied only to them. What about the other Hebrew and Semitic people, and the other descendents of Abraham? Why didn't they have their own books which vouched for superiority? Did the Israelites really have any special favor with God? Looking at the events in the Bible that we're all somewhat familiar with, we know that the answer seems to be, "hell no." So what's the dilly yo? Why did the descendents of Jacob establish this religion which asserted their superiority, insisting that the father of all gods favored them above all others, while the other people in this area did not? What made them different? Well we all know it's not because of any covenant with an invisible man in the sky. But the surprise is that it may not even be because they thought they had a covenant with an invisible man in the sky. Not originally. It should be no surprise that the events of Genesis and Exodus have no basis in historical fact whatsoever. But the story of the real origins of the Israelites is coming to light due to recent discoveries, and you might be knocked on your ass when you hear it.
But before we finish up Genesis, I need to tackle an important implication from Chapter 45 that I left you with.
Chapter 45 (continued)
So after Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, he basically forgives them for what they did. He says that it was God's will that he end up in Egypt. He was about to save their lives because he was responsible for the food surplus in Egypt, and he asked them to move there so that they would have plenty through him and survive the remaining five years of famine. It was all part of God's plan to preserve them. After all, he's got a promise to Abraham to fulfill.
Of course, God could have just not caused a famine.
It's perfectly ok, because it all happened for a reason. Forget the stuff that happened to Joseph. If he wants to think that getting sold up the river by his brothers is perfectly fine because he ended up pretty well off, then more power to him. It's the famine part of God's plan that bothers me. I guess Joseph would be justified in even thanking God for the famine that allowed him to become rich. Nevermind all the people around the world who died from the food shortage. Fuck them, God's gotta save his chosen desert tribe! Everything ended up better as a result! Or did it? Let's keep in mind that this is how the Israelites ended up in Egypt…from which their god had to allegedly deliver them…by massacring more people. And of course, God wants to be thanked for delivering them from bondage, when it was his fault that they were Egypt in the first fucking place. Wow. Just wow.
I wanna look at the bigger picture, too. At the idea that "everything happens for a reason." That's the basic moral of this part of the story. And I don't like it. I don't believe that everything happens for a reason. It endows the universe with some sort of goal or purpose, and even a casual look at reality will reveal that the universe is completely indifferent to us in every way.
It always irks me when I hear someone say that everything happens for a reason in response to something bad happening. I understand the need for comfort in bad times. When something horrible happens, you mind will start searching for explanations. Why did this happen to me? Just because a question can be asked with a grammatically correct sentence doesn't mean it actually has an answer. But that doesn't satisfy most minds. What we'll do is use subsequent events to make up an answer. You lose your job, and endure months of privation and lifestyle changes then finally find a job…a better one! Almost ANYONE, would start to think that they lost their job for a reason: so that they could land a better job, which God or the universe knew was waiting for you. This is the type of reasoning which sustains religious thinking, and it's a shame that we're all so susceptible to it. How do you know that you wouldn't have gotten a promotion to a position with a six-figure salary in a few years at your first job, making twice what you do at the new one? How do you know that God didn't actually make you lose your job to keep something even better from happening to you? How do you know that your new job won't be the cause of your death two years from now?
Worse yet, I think it can provide false comfort, and there's something uncomfortable about false comfort to me. Death is particularly singled out for false comfort. A woman who is a good friend of yours dies. She was a 19 year old college student. It's always particularly sad when a young person dies, and it's one of those situations where people are bound to say that "everything happens for a reason". Well in this particular case because she was abducted and killed. This prompted a new law to help law enforcement officials keep up with repeat offenders, and started a scholarship charity in her name. So it happened for a reason, right? And this would reinforce your belief that everything happens for a reason. Well let's add some details and change some others. What if there were no new law or scholarship foundation? Existing laws already cover what happened, and she wasn't even a student. She just worked at a minimum wage job, raising her daughter as a single mother. Does that change your mind about everything happening for a reason? Well maybe she injured him in the struggle for her life, and that left a trail of blood or other clues that allowed law enforcement to catch this serial killer early in his murderous career. Ok…you can still believe that she died for a reason. But what if her killer was never brought to justice? What if before dying she was sodomized, tortured, and died slowly over the course of nine days from traumatic injuries? What if he used a whip, a blowtorch, knives, electrodes and a car battery, a broom handle to sodomize her vaginally and anally, and strangled her to unconsciousness multiple times, then dismembered her while she was still alive and had sex with her corpse? What if her remains were never found, and she died alone (in a state of extreme terror and despair), in a place that would never be found, and her fate never to be known by anyone other than her killer?
Yes, that description was necessary. I needed to make you feel something. If you have a vivid imagination, you should feel very uneasy right now. What's worse than how uneasy you feel reading that is that we know that things like this have happened to people. And what's worse than that is that it will happen to others. Now I fucking DARE you to tell me that this happened for a reason. Who are YOU to say that about her fate because of your need to relieve your discomfort, and affirm your belief in the supernatural? How about in the middle of her last hellish days of existence you look at her and tell HER that this is happening for a reason and see if that makes HER feel any better? Of course not. Because the reason you say that everything happens for a reason is to make YOU feel better. Dead people can't feel better, and luckily for you, they can't speak. How would the murder victim feel about you brushing off her fate and comforting yourself by saying, "Oh, it happened for a reason"? If dead people could speak, the idea that everything happens for a reason would be quickly discarded.
If everyone on earth simultaneously realized that not everything that happens results in some kind of positive outcome in the universe, can you imagine how the course of human history would abruptly and positively change? (I can dream, can't I?)
Things happen. There doesn't have to be any meaning or good to come from them. Some things are just bad, and shouldn't have happened. Just because we can't go back and change those things doesn't mean that we have to rationalize them. We can't undo the fate of this imaginary woman, or of all the real people that things like this have happened to. But that doesn't give us the right to imply that it should have happened…or that it had to happen that way…or that because of something fortunate that happens later to someone who wasn't killed makes it alright. That's bullshit, and it's not fair to those who have died horrible, senseless deaths.
I have no false comfort. I have no imaginary friends to talk to. And yes, that does make life a little tougher to handle; a little darker; a lot less warm and fuzzy. There is an excess of human misery in the world, and I feel that very acutely when I think about it. When something terrible happens to a friend, it's harder for me to say something comforting because I don't believe in false comfort. While other people are saying, "You'll be in my prayers," or everything happens for a reason, I have to actually think of something to warm their spirit that comes from MY mind and not some useless statement that others can just trot out because they have nothing of substance to say. That's hard to do, but it makes me feel so much more when I have to try to say something meaningful rather than a cop-out appeal to a non-existent deity or a universe that doesn't care. I've decided to embrace reality, as horrible as it often is.
So that sums up my feeling about this part of Joseph's story. You're forgiven for what you did, my brothers, because God made it turn out right in the end. Everything turned out great for the Israelites; they survived. But who cries for those who died in the famine that their god caused? I do.
