Right or Good?
“Jest’ fore Christmas, I’m as good as I can be.”
“He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.”
Christmas can bring out the best—and the worst—in each of us. It has long provided parents with a fleeting moment of leverage in channeling the energies and self-interests of their children. This is quite evident in comparing two memorable verses, one heard almost daily in the many versions of the 1934 hit, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and the other from the late 1880s (printed at the bottom of this website), Eugene Field’s “Jest ‘fore Christmas.” For our children, as for any of us, being good for the sake of goodness is quite a lofty ambition, at this, or any time of the year. Being good with a candy or toy reward in mind is far more appealing. Yet the pure, idealistic sentiment of goodness may sometimes rise above our more self-serving motivations. And that is what we discover in one of the backstories of the biblical account of the birth of Jesus, too often missed in the tinsel and spectacle that engulfs us each December.
What backstory am I talking about? Lost in the flurry of angel wings on high, the blaring of heavenly trumpets, the wonder of shepherds abiding in their fields, and the adventure of magi trekking across starry desert sands, lies this simple yet revelatory remark:
“Now Joseph was a man who always did what was right.”
From the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, verse 19, written here in a version I favor because of its rendering of the Greek word, dikaois, often translated as “righteousness.” I wince at the contemporary moralistic connotation of this particular word, which neither does justice to the story or to the person whom it describes. In the context of this particular narrative, Joseph is more rightly seen as devout, innocent, and virtuous far more than as rigid, judgmental and vindictive—among the several definitions to be found for dikaois. In keeping with Joseph’s subsequent conduct, I favor its less strident interpretation to best understand his decision and his character.
Now Joseph, the named father of Jesus, was a man about whom we know very little. His name was included in Matthew’s genealogical list that links Jesus to two of the giants of Jewish history, Abraham and David. And Joseph makes a cameo appearance in Luke, when Jesus is brought to the Temple in observance of Jewish infancy rituals. But then he bows out of the story after the incident in Jerusalem when the adolescent Jesus is lost to his parents, much to their worry and dismay. Other than that, Joseph is never mentioned again outside of a few derogatory asides when Nazareth skeptics refer to the now grown-up Jesus as the son of a builder.* Joseph’s starring role remains the Matthean birth narrative wherein lies that oblique reference to him always doing the right thing. But in what sense did he actually do what was right?
Discovering that the woman with whom he had agreed to marry—probably through some arrangement between families—was, in fact, pregnant, put him in a most awkward situation. Since he wasn’t the father, he now had to face the difficult decision of how best to separate from this person who had embarrassed him and his family. Back then that could mean divorcing her, either quietly or with the notoriety of public scorn. And if he really wanted to press the matter with the authorities, he could have had her stoned to death. What is hard for us to fathom in our time and place is how either of these choices would have been the right thing for him to do. But that was the clear mandate of God to the people of Israel, preserved unequivocally in the scriptural Torah, making it the right thing for Joseph to do if he was intent on obeying the law.
There was something about this man, however—-this biblical figure who left the faintest of imprints on the Bible or in Christian lore---that compelled him to reinterpret what was right, ignoring what was his prerogative to claim and carry out. Instead, he decided to do, not the right thing, but the good thing. While we may sometimes take these as equivalent, even synonymous terms, they can be as different as night and day, and in the case of Mary and Joseph, life and death.
Whether the issue, then or now, is about paternity, truthfulness, or justice, the crux of the matter is what drives and governs our moral conduct: being right or being good. When being right is fueled by our desire to be correct in the eyes of the law or popular culture—changeable as these can be—-it invariably puts us on a collision course with others over what we believe we deserve. It almost always boils down to securing my interests, my just deserts, my rights and entitlements. By that measure, Joseph missed an opportunity to square the record, restore his name, and punish the woman who had violated the betrothal promise. But when being right is motivated by what is best for a relationship to continue, what is good for the other as much as good for self, then a doorway to reconciliation is opened. I believe that Joseph, reputed to always do what was right, tempered his righteousness with a resolve to be good—for goodness sake.
It should be noted that the text portrays Joseph making his decision after receiving divine prompting through a dream. While this may evoke a supernatural intervention that many find unbelievable, it may also suggest the depth of Joseph’s own Jewish faith. Long before the nativity story played out in the backwash of the Roman empire, one of the founders of Western philosophy, Plato, laid out what he believed to be the highest of our human conceptions of reality: the Form (or idea) of the Good. This absolute principle was so resonant with emerging notions of monotheism that two great philosophers, one Jewish (Philo) and one Christian (Augustine), adapted Plato to their theologies, seeing the Good as the very essence of God. When Joseph followed his heart in doing the good thing by honoring his commitment to his betrothed, he likely was acting in accord with what he believed to be the very will of the God whose spirit is the essence of goodness.
We don’t know what ever became of Joseph. Was he older and died in Jesus’ youth? Did he and Mary separate, she being the parent most remembered in the New Testament and most revered in ecclesiastical tradition? History’s silence about the man keeps us in the dark. But what we can recognize is the moral example that Joseph set for his son who, later in life, chose good over right in pardoning an adulterous woman, healing on the Sabbath, and forgiving those who abused and ultimately killed him. It is that goodness, that grace, that remains central to the faith of those who claim to serve and follow this Jesus, son of Joseph.
Santa Claus may see us when we are waking or sleeping, and he may be making a list of our good deeds, even checking it twice. But it is God, not the red-suited, Coca Cola drinking, sleigh rider, whose judgment of what we do and who we are matters most. And it is for His sake, for good-ness sake, that we find our most compelling reason to do the right thing—and not jest ‘fore Christmas.
*The biblical Greek term, tekton, that the Bible writer used to describe Jesus and his father is more accurately translated as builder, a trade which probably worked with stone far more than wood. Carpenter, which we more commonly use in describing Joseph and his son, better fits a European and American context more than a 1st-Century mid-Eastern one.
