From the Pulpit...

I am jumping ahead a little bit because most of us are familiar with how this situation turned out. God allowed evil to bring good. This is an illustration that you could use for the 'greater good theodicy' that explains why God permits evil. On the face of things, there seems to be no good way to accomplish sending Joseph to Egypt for a future rescue operation. It seems that he would not leave his dad voluntarily. We might imaginatively figure out some circumstance that would bring Joseph to Egypt, but it seems unlikely he would have encountered the same people in similar ways to allow him to rise to power. And, after all that was done, we would not have the bold lesson of good coming out of evil that God wants us to learn from Joseph’s experience. Over the centuries of human existence, people have noticed other situations where God has arranged for some bad thing to happen that brought some good thing about. The highest example of this is the cross of Jesus Christ—the worst injustice ever perpetrated on a human being resulted in the salvation of millions of souls.