As one discovers while traversing the decades of life, so much of it is not what we anticipated. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. A great paradox of life is the more we know, the more we realize we really don’t know. The innocence of our childhood long ago drifted away like a seeding dandelion on a windy day. Life waits for no one and we are often swept up into events in which we feel as though we have little power. Others are making decisions which significantly impact our lives and we have little or no say in the matter. As children we are given explanations and projections about life which came gift wrapped in neat and tidy formulas. The religious world is particularly inclined to offer its adherents life on a menu with God personally serving up your custom order. The dilemma so many face, is most often God sends someone else to deliver it. Making matters worse, what is brought is often not what we ordered! Life it seems is a great deal about adaptability and learning to deal with what is vs. what we want it to be. There are moments when it actually feels like it’s going in reverse or backwards.

SAY IT AIN’T SO JOE

Life is filled with unexpected outcomes resulting in unintended consequences. It is in these poignant moments we viscerally feel the violent collision between our expectations and reality. It can be utterly brutal as creation never backs up. It has no reverse gear. It is in these rather vulnerable moments of confusion, disillusionment and disappoint wisdom is born. It is here, when we have lost our bearings and are disoriented in the fog of chaos we learn about the gentle voice of God and his ways. He does not appear in the sensational thunder on the mountain nor the pillar of light by night which many have been conditioned to look for in a religious context.  One learns over time that He comes in a calm and soft voice.  A voice one can only hear after coming to the realization they actually don’t know.  It seems that until we are rendered speechless and opinion less, we aren’t very good at listening.

One of the reasons I have been captivated by the story of the biblical Joseph was the path he walked was not altogether different from the lives of many others I have worked with over the years. Though the story may be thousands of years old, and the cultural context different, the dynamics in play are timeless. Joseph, as a young man had no idea what he didn’t know and assumed too much of what he thought he did know. Like so many generations before, he sat there at his graduation ceremony being told the world was now his for the taking. The world was waiting for someone “special” like him to make a difference. He just knew he was that guy!  He had no understanding at the time God’s path is seldom in a straight line nor on time according to our expectations. In fact, it rarely ever follows the sanitized institutional religious instruction manual handed out at church. This is confusing. When seemingly bad things happen to good people, people have no idea how to deal with it.

After being betrayed and sold out by his own brothers, Joseph would find himself at a critical moment in his life. The young guy with so much potential had suffered the humiliation of being purchased at a slave market by the Egyptian King’s Chief Steward. How was he going to deal with this unexpected outcome? Much to his surprise, he didn’t get the $65,000/yr. management job he was expecting straight out of college. The very real temptation would have been to pout and pull out the victim card. He could have uttered the age old complaint “it’s not fair!!!” For the spoiled overprotected kid from Canaan, whose life at that moment seemed to be going backward, he was faced with two choices. Would he retreat into self-pity or pull it together and prove to everyone he was no slave!

SLIP SLIDING AWAY

As a lifelong Green Bay Packer fan, I am well acquainted with the story of the team’s current All Pro Quarterback Aaron Rogers. As a young man he was an impressive college prospect with a strong and accurate throwing arm.  As the 2005 NFL Draft got underway Rodgers was convinced the San Francisco 49ers, who held the #1 pick were going to draft him. After all, he had grown up just down the road in Chico, CA and played his college ball for the University of California Berkeley Golden Bears. Of course, it was so obvious to him how the whole situation was going to unfold.  It was a textbook match made in heaven and he was prepared to accept his divine destiny.

He was flown to New York, where the draft was to take place. As is the custom, he was seated with all the other top prospects from around the country in the Green Room. The cameras were rolling and as the festivities unfolded Rogers was convinced his stay in the Green Room was going to be extremely short as his name was to be the first called out that night. As the NFL Commissioner sauntered to the podium to read the much anticipated 49ers pick, Rodgers started edging out of his seat only to be stunned when he heard another name called out. What!!!

What happened next only added to his humiliation. Team after team passed on him and player after player walked out of that room to flashing cameras and cheering fans. Rogers sat there confused and dejected. His world had come crashing down around him and his dreams evaporated right in front of his eyes. This was not the script he had been told was his nor the one he had written for his own life. Finally, with the 24th pick the Green Bay Packers selected Aaron Rogers. With the air let out of his ego, he summoned up his best game face and walked out on stage to hold up the Packer jersey for the cameras.

WHO STOLE MY CHEESE

It was a painful reality check moment. He had been picked by a team whose stadium was in a town with a population of only 100,000 people. It is at least a two-hour drive from any major metropolitan area. The weather is so cold in November and December the fans come to the games fully decked out in snowmobile or hunting gear. This was a far cry from the warm temperatures and wine and cheese environment which is on display at Candlestick Park in San Francisco where the 49ers played. The cheese in Green Bay is served with cold beer or worn on one’s head! If that wasn’t enough, the team already had a legend for a quarterback in future Hall of Famer Brett Favre. Rogers chances of playing were zero, zip, nada, it ain’t happening anytime soon son.

For three years he languished behind Favre seeing little action other than in practice. He was the scout team quarterback in practice which meant he played the other teams quarterback. What distinguished Rogers was observed by Packer veteran wide receiver Donald Driver who later commented that Rodgers took “every scout-team possession like it was the last possession of his life.” He had made a critical choice about how he was going to deal with an unexpected outcome. He decided to take it on as a challenge and prove everyone wrong about himself. In time Aaron would go on to lead his team to a Super Bowl Championship in 2010 and become the league’s MVP twice in 2011 & 2104. He had walked backward up the stairs to success.

The choice Aaron Rodgers made was the same choice Joseph was faced with while working for Potiphar. He too made the decision to prove his brothers wrong and excelled in his difficult circumstances. In the 39th Chapter of Genesis it is noted that during this confusing time he made Potiphar a wealthy man. While he might have reaped some minimal benefit due to his status as a slave, he would not have been able to accumulate personal wealth. That had to have been frustrating, given the financial windfall was due to his labor and skill sets. Watching others benefit, from your ideas while not being compensated is a test for any man’s soul. It is those moments one’s faith in Jesus’ teachings really gets tested. Do we really believe that God sees and will in time bring justice? Do we really believe that if we take a seat at the end of the table we will be invited to the front? (Luke 14:8-10) These moments test a man’s soul.

I find myself wondering about Joseph’s dark night of the soul. We have all been there at some point in our life where we have felt all alone and completely disoriented. God seemed miles away or that somehow we had fallen through the cracks in the universe and we are now off His divine radar. While the author of Hebrews writes that faith is about the unseen truth (Heb. 11:1) we still find ourselves looking at our circumstances as the proof God is with us. It is in these moments where often our gaze turns inward and we start looking at what we did wrong. Given our formula driven mindset, when we face an unexpected outcome, we often assume it was because we missed one of the steps. Back we go doing a post-mortem on where we screwed up. In the case of Joseph, I can only imagine two of the places he would have started were his arrogance and his ignorance.

His boasting of his special place and his over-inflated sense of self, had come crashing down with a humiliating thud. Standing on the auction block, while others continued to make decisions about his life was demeaning. He was property now devoid of any personal rights. He was a nobody, now owned by a somebody! In some regard, I can picture him coming to the painful realization that he was significantly responsible for creating the mess he was in. He had run his mouth off and in doing so made others angry because in lifting himself up he was putting others down.

Too often our desperate need for significance comes at the cost of others. It is rooted in our own fears and insecurities. We are like the panicked person who is drowning and will push others under in our desperate need to thrust our heads above the water of life. Being a little older and wiser these days, I recognize the forces at work immediately and stay back until either exhaustion sets in or they knock themselves out.

Where Joseph’s ignorance got him into trouble was in not recognizing what I call the “Influence Pie”. It’s a concept that I had to learn the hard way and still have the scars to show for it. In our circles of influence i.e. Family, Business, Church or other sub-cultures, depending on a number of factors, we have a certain amount of influence which is equivalent to a slice of pie. The pie’s size remains a constant circumference divided by the number of people who need nourishment from it. Where things get complicated is when one’s influence increases so does their slice of the pie. As we discussed in the last blog, for every action there is a reaction. In this case others slices become smaller and this either frightens them or angers them and there is a reaction. It is seldom pretty. It is here where conflict is birthed and relationships break down.

Joseph found out the hard way, like we most often do, what he thought was awesome others thought was atrocious. His need to expand his influence, was a guaranteed way to create a backlash. His youthfulness left him ignorant, without tact or the wisdom to handle the situation properly. In the end he found himself all alone.  When Jesus taught about a lifestyle which preferred others it wasn’t because it simply sounded noble. There was ancient wisdom behind his words. He understood human dynamics all too well. You see humility is a disarming force which peacemakers understand is actually quite powerful and brings people together. On the converse side, it was the 1st century writer James who warned “For where ever you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.” (James 3:16)

It is my conviction God has a desire for us and a plan with us. At the same time, He cares deeply about who we are and how we handle ourselves along the journey. Guard your heart, fashion yourself in humility and make a major acquisition of wisdom to your portfolio.