Prophetic Joseph

I have had the actions of Joseph as Governor of Egypt as described in Genesis on my mind as I've watched the unfolding of this whole-world financial crisis. If you're not familiar with the story, here's a quick recap:

Joseph was in prison, accused of attempted rape on the Captain of the Guard's wife, when he was brought before Pharaoh as a last resort to interpret dreams that had been plaguing him for several nights; Joseph deciphers with precision that seven years of abundance would come, followed by seven years of drought, and recommended he appoint someone to oversee the stockpiling of food resources over the years of abundance to avoid the ruin that would face Egypt if they didn't; Pharoah appoints Joseph, who taxes the farming nation a fifth of their production and oversees its safekeeping; when the seven years of drought hit, he sells the food (yes, sells) to the people whom he taxed as well as people from other nations who didn't have the foresight to prepare, and keeps selling until they are deprived of all their money (47:14), all their working animals, their privately-owned land, and then to top it all off, if they wanted food they had to give themselves as slaves to the service of the throne.

So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh's, and Joseph reduced the people to servitude, from one end of Egypt to the other. Gen 47:20-21

Up until the last few months, I had glossed over this, presuming that because the implication was that Joseph did a good thing, that he did a good thing. But it seems to me now that this was actually quite a violation of the values that we hold these days as far as politics and laws go. Essentially, the natural occurrence of a famine was used to bring an entire nation of free, land-owning people into ownership by their unelected king. The text is clear that he "reduced the people", and it is suddenly shocking!

Now, I understand certain things about Genesis, whereby there are very many prophetic stories that may cause us to raise an eyebrow at their happening as historical events, but may do more to tell us about what's going to happen in the future. The sacrifice of Isaac is another such story, which is graphic and unthinkable, but which also prophesies the actions of the Son (so that we can recognize him and understand the redemption plan), and tells the story of the Father's love. This story of Joseph prophesies the work of Christ at the end, possibly enabling the servitude of all mankind to one head so that he could most easily swoop in and assume the throne created.

It seems the whole mortgage and banking collapse is much the same as this story of Joseph. It makes me uneasy that governments are providing bailout packages to the big banks and are actually purchasing billions of dollars worth of shares in them. They are purchasing large sections of the banks, which have put the vast majority of people into meaningless jobs, doing nothing more than a servant's tasks in order to keep living. To make it make even less sense, the government is using the money they've collected from the indebted people as a percentage of the wage they earn at their job - jobs these people keep in order to pay their debt - to give to and invest in the companies that have indebted them. And to take it one more step, these bailed-out banks have created the money they lent to "debt consumers" virtually out of thin air (ie. there is not enough currency printed to even come close to the amount of debt is payable out there), by legislation that allows them to use and lend out 90% of bank deposits. They charge usury on absolutely nothing, no paper linked to a piece of gold. The government is bailing them out?

The harsh reality is that the vast majority of Westerners have been sold the idea of slavery to debt as, very probably, the only way to survive. So we buy homes, and it is just so convenient that they are only affordable for the average worker if the amortization period is round about the length of time it takes us to reach retirement age. I saw somebody's Facebook status today, which read: "I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go", and it saddened me to think that this is reality for a great majority of people who work not because they enjoy it, but because they either owe enormous sums of money to the banks, or because they've bought into the "dream" that success is owing that much, or even less forunately, they work because they just can't keep up or get ahead.

Why this obsession with productivity? Why must life be centered around work? For the life of me, I've never been able to understand this. If we are the animals they say we are, why aren't we playing as much as animals are, socializing as much, getting as much rest as we need, and for heaven's sake, working just enough to meet our needs? Unfortunately, as "animals", the survival instinct kicks in and dictates the gathering of wealth to weather nature's storms and provide longevity for ourselves and our offspring.

Not much makes sense in this godless system of servitude when you really think about it.