Karma and Stuff

Genesis 29:1-30:43: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2029:1-30:43&version=NIV1984

            Christians don’t believe in karma, not on a cosmic scale.  However, we know that we reap the benefits and consequences of our behavior, and it shouldn’t surprise us when the Lord lets us be ‘victimized’ in the same way that we have mistreated others.  (What better way to learn about the cost of our misdeeds?)  Anyway, there’s something almost karmic about the story of Jacob and Laban.

            Jacob is a trickster, a shyster, a deceiver.  He has famously cheated his brother (twice!) and tricked his father.  One of the consequences of that behavior is that he had to flee for refuge to his Uncle Laban.  Today we discover a second ‘consequence.’  Uncle Laban is cut from the same cloth Jacob is!  Laban tricks Jacob into 14 years of labor as the bride price for Rachel, and, as soon as he strikes a bargain to give Jacob flocks of his own, he pulls out all the sheep that could produce benefit for Jacob.  (Jacob finds a work-around with his trick with the poplar branches.  Probably we should understand that as ancient superstition that the Lord just happens to bless.  It’s the same thing with the mandrakes, which were thought to be a fertility treatment.)  The deceiver is deceived!

            All through the story of Abraham’s family we see this pattern.  Consider that Rebekah loved Jacob more than Esau and that Isaac loved Esau more.  Then, in today’s reading, Jacob loves Rachel more than Leah.  This favoritism leads to all sorts of bad feelings.  One would have hoped that Jacob would have learned from his own relationship with his father not to play favorites, but apparently he didn’t and the dysfunction in his family is apparent.  (It gets even worse in next week’s readings when Jacob’s favorite son is sold into slavery by his half-brothers.)

            I’ve become a bit of fan of systems theory, and it seems to me that systems theory makes about the same point:  people in the same webs of relationships tend to share each others’ dysfunctions.  Highly critical people tend to be surrounded by other critical people.  People who don’t keep their promises tend to be surrounded by others of similar temperament.  The systems theory answer to that tendency is to change yourself.  Cultivate a desire to find the best in others and either you will slowly change the system you are in or you will find the courage to leave that system.  Put that in more specifically Christian terms, and we’d say, “Cultivate the fruits of the Spirit and the disciplines of the Christian life and you’ll begin to influence others to do the same—whether in your family or in your church or in the larger world.”  (I have deleted a political comment I was going to make here:  suffice it to say that a more positive politics begins with individuals committed to that behavior in every area of life.)

            There’s more to comment on here, but I should get to that job thingy I go to every day . . .