Several years ago I did technical work on the use of the word “witness” (martys) in the Greek language, and looked at some of the secular Greek authors in that study. One I read carefully was Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher who was once a slave but who lived out the greater portion of his life as a freed man in Rome during the reign of Nero. He wrote of the privilege of bearing a good witness for God and chided those who failed to do so: “What kind of witness do you bear for God? ‘I am in sore straights, O Lord, and in misfortune; no one regards me, no one gives me anything, all blame me and speak ill of me.’ Is this the witness that you are going to bear, and is this the way in which you are going to disgrace the summons which he gave you?”’1
When I first read that characterization of the complaining witness by Epictetus I laughed, because it is such an apt description. It is one we have all probably heard hundreds of times: “No one regards me, no one gives me anything, all blame me and speak ill of me.”
It is how we also often think when we are feeling sorry for ourselves. Jacob was feeling sorry for himself when his sons returned from Egypt reporting that they had been challenged by Egypt’s prime minister. The prime minister was Joseph, of course. But the brothers did not know this and did not suspect his motives when he accused them of having come to Egypt to spy out the land. He put Simeon in prison and demanded that next time they return with their youngest brother Benjamin to prove that they were honest men. When Judah, Reuben and the others told their father they could not go back to Egypt unless Benjamin came with them, Jacob complained about this adverse turn of circumstances: “You have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is against me!” (Gen. 42:36). I suppose that if he had known our little song for children, “Jesus loves me,” he might have twisted it to sing:
No one loves me, this I know.
My misfortunes tell me so.
The chapter concludes by Jacob’s holding out against what was to become a necessity.
I think that we are often like Jacob when we complain that everything is against us. And we are just as laughable! Circumstances fail to treat us right, someone says something less than complimentary, we are faced by a difficult decision—and suddenly we feel that nothing has ever gone right for us in our entire lives, and we pout about it. Is that the kind of witness we are going to bear for God? Is this the way we are going to disgrace the summons He gave us? It should be perfectly evident as we treat this brief parenthesis in the story of God’s working upon the hardened consciences of Joseph’s brothers that I am going to hold up Jacob as a negative example. I am going to say, “Don’t be like him!” But before I do that I want to show that although he was wrong when he said, “Everything is against me,” he was nevertheless not entirely wrong in recognizing that in a sinful world such as ours at least some things are against God’s people. True, they are usually not what you and I think of when we are despondent. We feel that things are not working out for us, and we should know that “things” really are, since “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Rom. 8:28). But although “things” (circumstances) are controlled by God and are used by Him for our benefit, we nevertheless do have enemies who seek our downfall.
Traditionally the church has spoken of three of these: the world, the flesh and the devil. The world is not for us. The flesh attacks us from within. The devil would drag us down to hell, if he were able. These three opponents are not everything, but they are formidable and it is good to keep in mind that they are.
1Epictetus, Discourses, Bk. I, xxix, 48-49. The Loeb Classical Library, trans. W. A. Oldfather (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 1:199.