Half Measures

The Old Testament reading today is the plot of Joseph's brothers to kill him.  The eldest, Reuben, is against the violence.  So he convinces his brothers to just leave Joseph in a position to die.  He convinces them -- not to forego murder -- but not to sully their hands.  And he plans to sneak back and rescue his brother when no one is watching.

It goes topside when the brothers -- having been invited to think of less murderous plans -- come up with the even less murderous but definitely less convenient to back down from plan to sell him into slavery.

And I can't help thinking about politics.  And the idea that a virtue in politics is being able to trick and find back door deals and otherwise ease people into doing the right thing or the wrong thing.  Sneaky politics.  Sneaky good deeds.

It's hard to actually condemn Reuben.  He probably thought if he pushed back too hard against his brothers they would just exclude him from the plan.  Maybe he even feared for his own life.  Maybe he didn't want to kill Joseph but also didn't want to die fighting off the brothers he liked better most days of the week anyway.

He didn't stand directly up for his brother Joseph.  He didn't stand up directly to challenge and correct his very lost other brothers.  He didn't pull them back from the brink.  He didn't save them from what, even if they repented, would never change: that they had committed murder.

He was thinking in terms of actual damage rather than motive and spiritual health for all the family.  He found a clever way around a messy, violent direct confrontation.  But his plan also would have only delayed the violence.  He would have shown them up and made them feel even smaller and more inadequate.

It didn't address the root problem.  And so it was doomed to fail.

It can be so easy to think that we can find some clever little trick.  I find them in teaching all the time, but that means that I haven't really taught my students how to arrive at the right answer on their own.  I haven't really trained a stage manager, for example.  Or if I give a list of Do's and Don'ts to my Comm App folks, I haven't really taught them to judge and evaluate speeches when they don't have a checklist handy.

Morality is too important.  All the people the New York state politicians had to cajole and pork barrel-bribe and back into a corner to get the gay marriage bill approved -- they did so much good for so many couples, but did we really solve the underlying problem?  I'm not saying that legal recognition should wait for the end of bigotry.  I'm just saying any such victory is hollow.  Unless we change hearts and minds, any victory is hollow.

As hollow as Reuben and Joseph would have both felt as he helped his brother out of the cistern.  As hollow as their bellies would have been when the famine came without Joseph there to interpret pharoah's dream.