Not so happy families
Yesterday when I was writing about what the apple might represent I did have sexual attraction ( is that lust?) running through my head. I wonder what the apple symbolises in your mind? For how many of us it is sex? In traditional Catholic teaching, I believe it did represent sex.
Curiously not shortly after finishing writing the story, I was checking my junk email folder in which were a number of emails with titles like, ‘ Adult dating’ ‘Italian babe’ suddenly I found myself amongst the forbidden fruit. Out of all the functions of the internet stay clear of the sex sites. Yet some serpent is at work who finds their way into your email and present something that arouses the curiosity of the mind. Perhaps it is the state I find myself but like my fifteen-year-old self, I clicked on one. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, “Women in your area would like sex, put in your details now.” Alongside which was a clothed and then unclothed ‘neighbourhood’ woman.
As I am looking at this I am thinking about the story I had written only half an hour earlier. “So there are you g writing about how much we place on appearance and that we are deluding ourselves and here you are captured by a bit of nudity.” I couldn’t argue with myself. So I concluded when I think that Eve and Adam fell quickly to temptation I too would fall so quickly. The good book says as much, “ For all have ‘eaten the apple when put to the test’ and fallen short of what God intended for us.”
My own words burned in me when I recalled what I wrote about what we do for the taste of an apple that lasts no longer than 5 minutes. “Jackson you as human as the next one don’t ever believe anything other!” It is easy to write much more difficult to live.
Once my guilt subsided and I bargained with myself that I would confess to you my mind moved on. It considered the many stories in Genesis that illustrate the difficulties within families. We have Cain killing Abel over sibling rivalry, Noah cursing one of his sons for getting him drunk and making a fool out of him and Jacob stealing Esau’s birthright. My favourite is the story of Joseph. I believe in these stories Genesis is perhaps more forthright than us about the discontent that exists between family members.
The story of Joseph shows families at their worst but also ends with the power of forgiveness and reconciliation. Joseph is a bit of a boaster in that he believes in his own dreams to the irritation of his older brothers. At an opportune moment, they decide to kill him though one brother persuades the others to sell him as a slave. He finds himself in Egypt and a slave to Potiphar. If for a moment we believed that only men can be sexual lustful creatures out pops Potiphar’s wife who makes a move on Joseph. Joseph being the better man than me flees from the scene and then the wife accuses Joseph. He ends up in prison until someone remembers that he is good at interpreting dreams. Pharoah summons him to his court and is duly impressed with him so much so that he appoints him Prime Minister.
Now a famine comes upon the lands and only Egypt has storehouses of food. Joseph’s brothers find their way to Egypt and at the feet of their brother begging for food. They don’t know it is him but he knows it is they. Now he has to decide will he forgive his brothers and help them or turf them into prison. What would you or I do?
Joseph finds it in him to forgive his brothers and his family is restored. Indeed the whole supposed misadventure becomes a key turning point in the history of Israel and a successful musical!
There is a great line in the story, “ What man purposed for evil God purposed for good.” If you ever needed hope to believe that the difficult situation in which you find yourself can work its way out to good read the story of Joseph.
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