Joseph is a model of public leadership, says Andy Lie

We enter each new year living with the tension of hope for peace and stability in a troubled world, and the need to put our trust in God when it is difficult to do so.

The Russian-Ukrainian war and others continue relentlessly. Israel’s war on Gaza, and the humanitarian catastrophe alongside inadequate responses from the ‘international community’, indicates clearly how inhumanity has no limits.

The Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf said, ‘To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life.’ This common sense too often goes unheeded.

With Netanyahu’s invoking the destruction of Amalek as his war cry, would it not be salutary to learn a lesson from Joseph?

The Joseph story is beautiful yet poignant. The patriarch Jacob mourned the loss of his beloved son Joseph after his brothers sold him into slavery and covered it up by saying that he had been savaged by wild beasts (pictured). Jacob’s early trickery had been repeated by the next generation!…

Andy Lie is the Ecumenical & Inter-Faith Officer for Northern Synod

Image: Wikipedia Creative Commons

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This is an extract from an article published in the February 2024 edition of Reform

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