“I am God, the God of your father,” he said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there.” – Genesis 46:3

“I am God, the God of your father,” he said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there.” – Genesis 46:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 1, 2015): Genesis 46

Sir Tim Hunt, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for physiology for his work on regulators of the cell cycle, recently got in trouble for a comment that he made at, of all places, a women’s conference. The comment boiled down to this – women are a nuisance at work. Apparently, according to Hunt, women are distracting. They provoke emotion, but maybe what is even worse, they express emotion – and emotion is something that gets in the way of the rational pursuits of science.

Hunt admits that he should never have made the comment in front of the media, but he stands by his words. Women’s groups are asking for the science behind the words. Of course, we all know the answer. There is no hard science behind Hunt’s comment, just personal observation. And observation is one of the hardest things in science to refute. So, if you are a scientist with child-bearing potential, you might want to find another lab to work in. Even if you have a chance to work with Dr. Hunt, you most likely won’t be very happy.

There is never any excuse for prejudice, no matter on what the prejudice may be based. Sometimes I wonder if we, as Christian’s, might be some of the most prejudicial people on the planet. There are a number of Christians who would agree with Hunt’s analysis on women. But we don’t stop there. We continue to make assumptions and tear down people according to almost any dividing line we can devise. And we do while celebrating a belief system that tells us to love each other and which attempts to erase all of the lines that separate us.

Yet, there is another side to prejudice that we sometimes do not clearly understand. We understand from this text that Jacob was apparently scared to go to Egypt. There are several very good reasons for his fear. He would be leaving the land of promise, he would have to submit himself and his family under a foreign king, his grandfather Abraham had gone to Egypt and it had been counted as sin and as proof that Abraham had not yet placed all of his trust in God and, maybe most disturbing of all, Egypt was a highly prejudicial society. Jacob and his family would be essentially honored outcasts. No one eat with them or make friends with them. They would be segregated from society and without rights (a condition which would eventually result in their being enslaved.) Of all of the places on the earth, this was not the most inviting culture into which Jacob could consider moving.

Yet God seems to tell him that everything that would happen in this strange place would be according to his will. The reality was that because of the culture – and the prejudice – of Egypt, God would be able to mold them into a nation. They would be made strong by being passed through the fire of the culture. They would be purified. And when it was all over, they would emerge as a force which would shape the known world. Everything that Jacob saw as being negative, God saw as something that he could use to strengthen the children of Israel.

Let me make this very clear, there is no excuse for prejudice. But if you are experiencing it, maybe God is at work making you into something more. Maybe he is forging you and molding you into a power that even you can’t imagine. The truth is that our strength usually comes from having to deal with the negatives of life – not with the positives. Without negative forces, we would be weak and compliant – something that we were never intended to be.

So, I am waiting. The next news story I want to hear is how the women in the labs around Dr. Hunt have been strengthened to become some of the best scientists I the world – and hear the story of how they found strength and unity on the other side of prejudice.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis 47

To my Canadian friends, happy Canada Day. It is time once again to celebrate the strength of the wonderful country from which we hail – a strength that was forged in some of the most negative circumstances on the earth – from World Wars to internal strife. Today we simply celebrate Canada – strong and free.