As a kid in Sunday School I was given to believe (through reading and discussing the Bible stories) that Jacob was the better brother. After all, God talked with him. It's been a good lesson to me, looking at this again, that what Jacob did in tricking his brother wasn't a good thing. But the question of "who was the better brother" was not the issue of the story, and neither Jacob nor Esau, nor Rebekah nor Isaac, was the bad guy.
The bad guy was the lie of mortal, material existence, the false paradigm that put everyone under a pall. Here are some elements of the false paradigm:
• That there is a limited amount of good - of blessing, birthright, and love to be given.
• That if one person gets it, the other one loses out
• That this limited blessing is not something that is freely given, but something that would rise spontaneously from the satisfaction of, say, eating savory meat. And that, once given, this blessing, or lack thereof, would determine the relative prospering of the individuals involved.
As long as he was living in that paradigm, it was perfectly reasonable for Jacob to act as he did. In fact, it was virtuous, seeing as how he was winning out over others. It wouldn't make sense, within that paradigm, to give up the upper hand. That's why it was such a struggle for Jacob - he had to shift his paradigm. He had to realize that the God who supported him also loved others, and so beating others out was neither a requirement for success nor a way to follow God. This enabled him to have the precious reunion with his brother in which he saw, in his brother's face, the face of God, and felt that God was pleased with him.
Christianity doesn't make sense when applied to an old paradigm. Jesus' message has been greatly misunderstood by people saying that by telling them to be meek, and to turn the other cheek, he is telling them to be doormats. And because people haven't known how to integrate his teachings into the old paradigm, they've just sort of squirmed with them, and tried to find a happy medium, or whatever.
As I understand it, the way to follow all of Jesus' teachings is to have a paradigm shift. The reason we can bless our enemies is that we dwell in the all-power of infinite goodness. It's not that we submit ourselves to their power to destroy us. It's that we see that since Love is the only power, no enemy has power over us. And it's natural for us, as the children of God, to help these poor deluded people to be free from the enslavement of being an oppressor (or a criminal).
I volunteer at the local jail, doing Christian Science services once a month and visiting people who ask us to come in to talk with them. From my exposure to this, I've come to see that, as a society, we pay a great price for our desire to be punitive. Besides the monetary costs, we pay by having a hole in the fabric of our society that people can fall out of. Because it's there, we all are more tense, because any one of us (or any one of our loved ones) could fall out of that hole. Or, if we say it wouldn't be possible for any one we loved to fall out, then we carry that self-righteousness around, which takes great bites out of our capacity to love. Lately it's become very clear to me that God is not punitive - that a punitive model is used only by someone with limited power. If I have a punitive model, I am saying: I want you to do what I want you to do. If you don't, I will punish you. The All-power doesn't need to manipulate anyone, for the All-power is the only will. The All-power doesn't need to punish anyone, because no one can even be present except that God is thinking them.
Is this too absolute for adaptation to present society? I don't think so. I don't think we can ever say anything we learn from Jesus, or anything we learn in Christian Science, is too absolute to be relevant. It is, after all, the absolute that we dwell in, and it is the absolute that heals.
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