A Tale of Two Pits

You may know the story of Joseph from your flannel graph in Sunday school. He was his father's favorite son, and his dad showed him that special love by giving him the multi-colored dream coat. His brothers absolutely hated him as a result of this unbalanced love. Also, there were the dreams. He dreamt that his brothers' sheaves were bowing down to his in the field; and the sun, moon, and stars revolved around him in praise and adoration. Then, for some reason outside my comprehension he felt it would be a good idea to fill his brothers in on this humble dreams.
"Today I dreamt that I ruled...you guys...notsamuch." I think if I were one of the brothers, I would have had a bitter taste in my mouth as well.
One day Jacob sends Joseph to go check on his brothers while they are working in the fields. Genesis 37:18 picks up with their conversation about the approaching Joseph.

"But they say him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. 'Here's comes that dreamer' they said to each other. 'Come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him.' When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. 'Let's not take his life,' he said. 'Don't shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the desert, but don't lay a hand on him.' Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father."

This is where I see so many of my Christian brothers and sisters in the Church today. Do you see the first few steps of this process? First, they attack Joseph's identity--his God given identity. "Here comes that dreamer." Joseph was a master of dreams, and he would go on years later to use this gift for God's glory. However, the brothers saw it as something worth criticizing. Secondly, they had a lessened view of Joseph and who he was. Therefore, they saw his life as having less worth than their own, and it was this attitude which led to a murder attempt. Third, we see Reuben choosing life for his brother while the rest chose death, showing us that acting out our hatred is a conscious decision, not something uncontrollable.

"So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe--the richly ornamented robe he was wearing--and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it."

So far they have criticized his identity, lessened the value of his life, and made the conscious decision against him, but now--now--they have allowed their attitude to manifest itself as an outward expression now visible to Joseph.

Those around us who we just can't take--whose gifts we are jealous of, who are more successful than we, whose personalities clash with ours, who have put us in unfair positions on purpose or accidentally--will feel our attitude express through our gossip, stabbing remarks, or fleeting glances. How often I have stripped someone of all they are worth, their self respect and their confidence all without raising a single finger but rather by merely using words.

We call insults "put downs," because that is exactly what we are doing. Just as the brothers, motivated out of selfish arrogance, lower Joseph into his own confined pit, we are constantly fighting for a few extra inches above one another. When was the last time you buried someone deep into the pit of your cynicism, pride, and bitterness all the while elevating yourself higher?

Jesus tells a story of another kind of pit:

He says in the last days, he's going to come back and separate the sheep from the goats (I'm not totally sure why they've been in one heard to begin with), and He'll turn to the sheep on his right and say, "Well done! Come on into the Kingdom, for I was sick, hungry, needy, naked, and in prison; and you met all my needs."

Then He'll turn to the goats and say, "I don't even know you, for I was sick, hungry, needy, naked, and in prison; but you met none of my needs."

The goats will ask, "When did we see you in these situations, Lord?"

And Jesus will reply, "Whatever you did for the least of these you did for me."

Then the goats will be condemned to a pit of agony and punishment.

I think the reason the goats got away with being with the sheep for so long, is that they more or less blended in with the herd. They simply got to reap all the benefits of living with the sheep, but they were never, ever sheep no matter how long they were in their midst. Jesus knew, though, and He could not, would not be fooled.

Also, I wonder why Jesus did not ask, "How was your quiet time, tithing, minutes in prayer, or how cutting edge was your ministry?" He simply asked, "How well did you love?"

I think some of us truly think we are sheep, because we've been traveling with them so long, but we still gossip, slander, and get into our own selfish lives. Jesus will know the difference, and if we have no answer for how we loved, the punishment is severe.

If we spend our lives evaluating others as having less worth than ourselves, confining others into their own pits of "worthlessness," and not lifting people out of their dungeons, we will find ourselves in our own pits of punishment and destruction in the last days.