Scouting Values In the Scriptures – Joseph of Egypt

This is the latest installment of the “Scouting Values in Scriptures” weekly series. We are in the Old Testament and will continue with other scriptures of the Standard Works.

Every single value in the Scout Law was already ancient by the time it was formalized in 1911.

They didn’t originate with Scouting. They didn’t originate with the Restoration. They didn’t even originate with the New Testament. These are the oldest virtues in scripture – thousands of years before anyone wrote them in a Scout handbook.

The Old Testament is full of people shaped by their attempts to follow these values. That’s what Scouting does for young people too.

Let’s look at another story about where they meet.

A Scout Is Trustworthy: Joseph of Egypt

Joseph’s life reads like one long trust test.

Thrown into a pit by his brothers. Sold into slavery. Taken to Egypt. Falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. Imprisoned for years. Forgotten by the one person he helped who could have gotten him out.

At every point where Joseph had reason to abandon his integrity, he didn’t.

When Potiphar’s wife pressured him daily, he fled rather than compromise. “How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9) When he was in prison, he didn’t become bitter. He served the other prisoners faithfully. He interpreted the butler’s dream and asked only to be remembered – a small request that went unanswered for 2 more years.

He kept his word. He told the truth. He served faithfully even when no one was watching, and no one was rewarding him.

A Scout is Trustworthy: “He tells the truth. He keeps his promises. People can depend on him.”

What makes Joseph special isn’t that he was never tested. It’s that he was tested by exactly the kind of situations that reveal whether integrity is real – the slow, grinding kind of test that happens not in one dramatic moment but across years of obscurity, where no one is watching, where cutting corners would cost nothing, and nobody would EVER know.

Joseph’s trustworthiness was eventually rewarded – dramatically, in ways that made up for everything he had endured. But here’s the thing: he didn’t know that was coming when he made each daily choice to keep his integrity. He kept it because it was who he was, not because he knew what it would eventually be rewarded.

That’s the definition of trustworthy. It holds when there’s no visible reward. Every Scout leader who keeps their word when it would be easier to backpedal, every young Scout who tells the truth when lying would protect them – they’re walking in Joseph’s tradition. And that tradition is thousands of years old.

Join us here next week for the next installment of “Scouting Values in the Scriptures”