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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The story of Joseph is a story of how members of the family of God become secularists. Charles\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\r\n
Amazon.com\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
Taylor, in A Secular Age,<\/em> defines secularism as a culture where belief in God is no longer the default setting. Let Egypt stand for our modern secular culture, and Joseph stand for the people who have left church to become secular. Can we get back to where we belong? This is our question. The theme: There is no undoing of the secular, but can we learn how not to live secular lives.
With each passing day, faith seems to recede in America. Either it goes down the rabbit hole of an austere fundamentalism screaming at the top of its lungs about \u201cliteralism,\u201d or it embarks on a spiritualization that denies the bodily, fleshly nature of Christian faith, or it retreats into the wasteland of secular, \u201cexclusive humanism.\u201d Genesis 12 \u2013 50 chronicles how faith disappears across generations.
The disappearance of faith
As we work our way through Genesis, from Abraham to Joseph, we see a fading faith. Abraham was the father of our faith, by the time of Jacob, he had become a scoundrel and a thief and then Joseph a member of the Egyptian court. Features of faith that were so obvious in Abraham disappear as Joseph embraces Egyptian secularism.
And it takes a considerable amount of time for this erosion to happen. Faith never dies easily. That means there are always opportunities for a \u201creturn\u201d.
More than that, Joseph is the secular man. By the time Jospeh ends up in Egypt \u2013 he has become totally secular. I am convinced that this is the current trajectory of American faith \u2013 secularism. And much of it happens unconsciously.
Joseph assimilates into Egyptian culture, Egyptian thought, Egyptian politics, and with each compromise, each decision, each step, Joseph moves away from the faith of his ancestors. Joseph dresses like an Egyptian, talks like an Egyptian (those funny accents heh?), thinks like an Egyptian. He\u2019s eating Egyptian food, drinking Egyptian wine, and hanging out in Egyptian night clubs.
He gets an Egyptian name \u2013 Zaphenath-Paneah; an Egyptian wife, Asenath. Asenath has two sons, but Joseph doesn\u2019t give them Egyptian names. He names them Manasseh and Ephraim. A pair of Hebrew names offer the first glimmer of hope. Maybe secularization can be reversed in a family.
And if there is any remaining doubt about Joseph being Egyptian, Genesis closes with these words: \u201cAnd Joseph died, being one hundred and ten years old; he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.\u201d An Egyptian funeral, presided over by an Egyptian priest, and buried in a coffin in Egypt.\u201d
A later tradent of Genesis inserts another narrative suggesting that Joseph left instructions for \u201chis bones\u201d to be dug up and carried out of Egypt. This attempt to cover Joseph\u2019s totally secular commitments seems a bit weak. Walter Brueggeman tags Joseph as a \u201cfourth-generation sellout.\u201d He notes that the Jewish mantra of faith became \u201cThe God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.\u201d Why doesn\u2019t anyone ever add \u201cand Joseph\u201d? Joseph, Brueggeman argues, has to be dropped because he became so Egyptian, in my term, so secular.
When Our Story Becomes Secular
When we die will we be placed in a coffin in Egypt (the land of the secular)? Will a Christian pastor preside over our funeral? Probably yes for the rest of this generation. The remnants of the church that still cling to even the most secular of us are \u201cbaptize, marry, and bury.\u201d But what about the fifth, sixth, and seventh generations? Will the later members of our families receive an Egyptian funeral, presided over by a Egyptian priest, a secular guru, a positive thinking con artist? Is there any hope left for us?
What about our developing secularization? Philosopher James Smith says, \u201cWe\u2019re all secular now.\u201d The secular touches and tarnishes everything it touches. We are all living in a globalized Gotham now. The Joker is everywhere, and the joke may be on us.
There\u2019s a disturbing verse at the end of Hebrews 11 \u2013 the faith chapter of the Bible. After praising generations of the faithful, the preacher of Hebrews leaves us with this sobering thought: \u201cApart from us, all the generations of the faithful, will not be made perfect.\u201d
So, if you are lying around the apartment on a Sunday morning you should know that the entirety of your family, all the way back to the first one, is depending on you to keep the faith. No matter how far you may drift from the church, you have been elected to represent your family \u2013 all of the long generations. I, of course, know that this will not suddenly drive young people back to the church; I just want them to feel guilty for not doing so. Such guilt will be a sign of hope.
Joseph, the secular man, operates in a political sphere that has no morals, no ethics. Brueggemann suggests, \u201cJoseph understood so little and valued so thinly the God of the promise that he served greedy interests that victimized his own people.\u201d
A Name. A Family. A Reconciliation<\/p>\r\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1937\/2023\/08\/Joseph-and-his-Brothers-300x150.jpg\")
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