and the Midianites sold Joseph into
Egypt unto Potiphar an officer of
Pharaohs and captain of the guard and
Joseph was brought down to Egypt and
part of our an officer of Pharaoh
captain of the guard and Egyptian bought
him of the hands of the Ishmaelites
which had brought him down thither so
now he's a slave so now you'd think well
that would be this is a man who has a
lot of reason to be irritated at the
structure of reality right he's gone
from being the favorite to being
betrayed by all of his brothers that's
pretty rough and then he's being
transformed into a slave and now he's
being he's being sold to work as a slave
so you'd think that that would corrupt
his character because you know one of
the things I think this is the case
anyways I think people are always
looking for an excuse to have their
character corrupted because if your
character is corrupted then you get to
lie and you get to cheat you get to
steal and you get to betray and you get
to act resentfully and you get to do
nothing and that's all easy it's easier
to lie than to tell the truth it's
easier to do nothing than to do
something so there's always part of you
thinking well I need a justification for
being useless and horrible because
that'd be a lot less work and so then if
something terrible comes along you think
AHA that's just exactly the excuse that
I was waiting for and then out all that
comes you know Solzhenitsyn when he was
in the concentration camps in Russia
watching how people behaved you know he
said that there were people that were
put in the camps who immediately became
trustees or guards and they were even
more vicious than the people who had
been hired as guards and his idea was
that they had collected all that he
called it foul Ness if I remember
correctly around them in normal life but
they didn't have the opportunity to
express it but as soon as you gave them
the opportunity it was like there it was
right away and so so one of the messages
that seems to echo through these old
testament stories is that just because
something terrible happens to you
doesn't mean that you get to be that you
get to wander off the path and make
things worse and
maybe it doesn't matter how terrible it
is that what happens to you that's a
tough call you know because you see
people now and then in life who they've
really got it rough man like 50 bad
things are happening to them at the same
time and you think oh it's no wonder if
you were bitter and resentful and
hostile be like yeah no wonder but then
you meet people and socialness again
talked about this in the Gulag
Archipelago he said he met lots of
people in the north lords he met enough
people to impress him in the
concentration camp system who didn't
allow their misfortunes to corrupt them
and that's something because maybe the
only real misfortune is to become
corrupted that's a really useful thing
to think you know maybe the rest of it
maybe the rest of it is trivial in
comparison I know that's a rough thing
because you can be in very harsh
circumstances but I do think there's
something to that and the Lord was with
Joseph and he was a prosperous man and
he was in the house of his master the
Egyptian and his master saw that the
Lord was with him and that Lord made all
that he did to prosper in his hand so
that's an echo of the idea that we
encountered earlier about walking with
God right so Adam walked with God before
he ate the fruit with Eve and then he
wouldn't walk with God and then Noah
walked with God and Abraham walked with
God and so the idea is well that's that
alignment with the highest ideal I think
it's something like that and you know we
could think about that as a metaphysical
claim as well but I don't think it is I
mean I've got thousands of letters now
in the last year from people who have
told me that they were in a pit that's
exactly right and that they decided that
they were going to try to put their
lives together
and that it worked and so that's really
something you know and they write
surprised it's like well I decided that
I was going to work hard at what I was
doing and I wasn't going to lie any more
than absolutely necessary I thought I'd
give it a try for a few months you know
and all sorts of good things started to
happen to me it's like maybe that's how
the world works now obviously it doesn't
work like that all the time right
because you can get sliced off at the
knees I mean there's an arbitrary
element to existence that's that you
can't wish away but that
doesn't mean that there are it doesn't
mean that there aren't bad strategies
and good strategies and so I do think
that one of the most fundamental
existential questions is like if things
aren't going well for you and your life
is are you absolutely certain that
you're doing absolutely everything you
can to put things in order because if
you're not then you shouldn't complain
because you don't know to what degree
you're actually contributing or even
causing the circumstance now that's a
very annoying thing to think and I'm not
trying to blame the victim you know I
know that people end up with lung cancer
because they were exposed to asbestos
you know I'm not trying to although I
also know too that if you have lung
cancer because you've been exposed to
asbestos that can be a tragedy or it can
be hell and to some degree that depends
on how you conduct yourself