Few things are more frustrating and faithful than family matters. The dysfunction we inherit is often deep, disturbing and debilitating. Meanwhile the pleasant memories we manufacture serve to mask whatever pain our families produce. Yes, the family ties bind, but they can also blind. Like July 4 fireworks our family systems are beautifully explosive; one moment thrilling and the next choking with dysfunctional smoke.Of course, few family dynamics matched Joseph’s. It was a powder keg of spite, bitterness, rage and pettiness. And in order to understand, you have to have some history.
The family “Israel” beats any daytime soap opera (Genesis 29-35). It’s a desperate household about all Jacob’s children. The story opens when Jacob falls madly in love with Rachel, the stunning daughter of his uncle Laban. He proposes marriage and Laban counters with a work-for-sire contract. Seven years later, Jacob finally gets his girl, only to be hijacked by a classic bait and switch (Laban secretly swaps older sister Leah for Jacob’s love). As the honeymoon hangover wears off and Jacob realizes the deception he’s ticked, to say the least. He had worked for the lovely Rachel, not the homely Leah. It does make you wonder how Jake could marry and even make love to a woman without recognizing her true identity? Maybe true love really is blind.
Laban plays political genius and permits Jacob to also marry Rachel under one provision: he works another seven years. It’s a solid solution for everyone but Leah. Jacob’s a one-woman man and he has no affection for older sister, leaving her only lonely. But Jacob has a bigger problem: Leah’s “fertile” and Rachel’s not. So Leah avenges Jacob’s lack of love by naming their kids “misery” (Reuben), “someone else hears” (Simeon), “maybe my husband will bond now” (Levi) and “I’ll just praise God anyway” (Judah). Leah definitely has tact.
Of course Rachel’s inability to produce kids causes an explosion of jealousy and anger. “Give me children or I’ll die!” she tells an exasperated Jacob and then provides her maid as a proxy (who quickly gets pregnant). Rachel names “her” surrogate kids “revenge” (Dan) and “I beat my sister” (Naphtali). Not to be outdone, Leah then supplies her personal servant to Jacob and names their offspring “good fortune” (Gad) and “I’m happy” (Asher). Are you still following this family folly? Leah then gets pregnant again and calls the boys “reward” (Issachar) and “honored” (Zebulon). Add a daughter (Dinah) and the line score looks like a baseball game: Leah 9, Rachel 2. Of course, Rachel’s runs are pinch hit homers. In truth, the lovely and loved Rachel is a shut out. Thankfully, in the bottom of the ninth, she manages two kids of her own: Joseph (“God has taken away my disgrace”) and later, dying in childbirth, Ben-Oni (“son of my trouble”). You can only imagine how the dinner table was a nightly nightmare. It was the Brady Bunch meets the Osbournes or Eight is Enough moves in with Desperate Housewives. You can’t make this type of drama up.
The Israel family was just getting started though. They built their business on fraud and deception against daddy Laban. Rachel then stole his household gods when they high-tailed it out of town to escape father's justice. Jacob and his own brother Esau aren’t exactly on speaking terms. Dinah and Dan murder a mess of Shechemites after she’s raped. The Family Israel was a mess. Two wives. Thirteen kids (4 by proxy). Rachel was loved. Leah was blessed. And then there’s Jacob. He’s got four women, two at each other’s throats. He can’t mention a kids name without getting a history lesson. The woman he loves is bitter. It’s no wonder he emotionally escapes and pours all his affection and attention on her two legitimate boys alone. He protects them. Showers them with gifts and fancy coats. Renames Ben-oni to Benjamin (“son of my right hand”). Makes the other boys work. It’s a recipe for trouble and that’s what we’ve learned throughout Joseph’s journey.
It also explains why Jacob is dead-set against Benjamin going to Egypt. He assumes Joseph is dead. He’s not going to let Ben out of his sight…ever. He doesn’t trust his other boys. He’s seen too much deception. Shoot, his whole life has been one big trick. You can’t play poker without losing a hand and Jacob isn’t about to call someone’s bluff. The stakes are too high.
But so are the hunger pains. The cupboard is bare again. The famine remains fierce. Jacob faces a difficult decision.
It’s in crisis that our family ties bind and blind. We can only close our eyes only so long to the truth. Most of us are dealt a “Leah” (ordinary) life, but long for “Rachel” (lovely) reality. When our choices create consequences that become our family history—good and bad—we mark the memories with “names” like misery or trouble. Our lives literally become tombstones and testaments, mile markers and monuments. In the desperate times we discover who we really are.
Like a July 4 firework, our families incinerate and implode, enthrall and explode. But these shells aren’t formed in vacuums. What others see is only the sparks and smoke of what we hide within our family casings. No family is perfect, but the secret to healing lies in getting out of the shell. Joseph’s family dynamic only birthed more dysfunction. Unknown to him, his Egyptian pit and prison experience would free him from a deeper emotional incarceration.
And so it is with us. The crises that cause our lives to cave also hold the key to escape. Our progeny proclaims our choice. Loud and clear.
NOTABLE QUOTABLES ON FAMILY:
If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion. (Ashleigh Brilliant)
The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. (Erma Bombeck)
When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. (George Bernard Shaw)
Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family. (Anthony Brandt)
Father, I thank You for my family. I may not always appreciate their finer qualities nor accept their notable eccentricities, but may I never lose sight of the tie that binds us together. I pray that You will help us to live free of the dysfunction that delay, detour and destroy our relationships. And, in the end, may my life always point my family to You. Amen.
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