Christian Living
Chapter 1: Outside the Garden - Cain and his anger.
If an artist were able to capture on canvas the sense of wonder inspired by the spectacle of God's freshly created world, I believe the work would have to be entitled "Speechless". No words could adequately describe the awesome beauty of God's new - born universe. Still more incredible was His reaction after his masterpiece had gone and hauled that most destructive of all elements into the picture - sin
Before sin was introduced, everything was perfect. Right down to the most intricate detail of life, everything was set to correspond in harmony. Even between the man and his wife there was perfect understanding. Then Adam blew the whole thing out of the water! Thankyou Adam!
With the introduction of sin came separation; with the separation came isolation and disharmony. The two became the pattern for relationships between men, and man then had to learn to live outside the garden. Away from the holy presence that was life to him. Away from the one relationship, the One Person who could give him absolute security.
Well it was a very difficult thing to get used to. Living in permanent exile and learning to cope with the consequences of the presence of sin.
During the 1980's and 1990's there have been several large scale scares at a national level in the British food industry. Eggs, beef and many livelihoods were destroyed. People had to learn to live in the consequences of these national disasters and adapt accordingly. Often during these crisis, the nation watched television interviews of desparate farmers who had lost everything. Learning to live with the aftermath of a disaster can be worse than the disaster itself, as Cain was about to find out....
Like father, like son.
Adam and Eve were obedient at least in one thing. They went ahead and multiplied; they had two boys so they got off to a good start.
Charles Dickens was a great master of the English language. One of the characteristics of his novels is the telling names he chose for his characters. For example Mr. M'Choakumchild from Hard Times was an austere school teacher, and his colleague was the headmaster, Thomas Gradgrind. We can easily imagine from these names the kind of people they represented. With a minimal employment of the imagination we can see the headmaster gradually grinding the children into dust and the former choking some unfortunate pupil who ventured a wrong answer.
In the Bible culture too, names are very significant. In Cain's case his mother seems to have had the idea that she had in some way scored a victory. There was a hint of bitterness in the choosing of this name. Cain's destiny was to be bitter too. Abel on the other had a name which suggests frailty. So Mr. Strong and Mr. Frail grew up together and as so often happens when people are opposites in character, they went in different directions. Abel became a shepherd and big brother chose to work the land like his dad.
To accept or not to accept?
It seems that the idea of sacrifice was readily understood by the brothers. There was no explicit command recorded in the first three chapters of Genesis and we don't know if the Lord made an audible request for sacrifices to be offered. What we can say with certainty is that they were left to choose what they sacrificed.
So here we get a glimpse into the first act of public worship after the Fall. God requires man to acknowledge His greatness and sovreignty. Neither Cain nor Abel were in any doubt as to who their Creator was. Their parents would have naturally told them their own life story and the wonder of the perfections that their children would never experience. The Lord was automatically a part of their life and there was no need to convince them of his existence.
The other side of the coin is that God created man with a built-in desire to have communion with Himself. Life outside the garden served to heighten the isolation and could have resulted in an intense longing to experience that irreplaceable fellowship between Creator and created. This actually happened at the end of Genesis 4. "At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord. Tragically, sin usually takes hold of a man's life and diverts the heart in every conceivable direction except towards the true font of life.
In Cain's and Abel's case the obvious thing to do was to render homage to the Almighty. But as with many first experiences, there is the possibility of making a mistake due to a lack of experience. This first offering was to be a time of learning for the brothers.
In Abel's case it was a good learning experience. He got it right first time. Thinking about it, it couldn't have been too difficult. Here was the Eternal God, the Omnipotent Creator and Abel had to give him an offering. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that at least the best thing he had would stand a chance of being acceptable. With possibly some divine inspiration, he chose the best of the flock. Nothing less precious, nothing less serious than a sacrifice would suffice for the Lord God. "Nice one Abe! That's the way to go!"
Cain, on the other hand had more difficulty in recognising what was right in the Lord's sight.
It is impossible to know what went on in Cain's head, how he decided what to bring as an offering. But one would imagine that he didn't lose a lot of time thinking about it. His choice appears to have been whatever was the closest thing on hand at the time.
When he came to present his offering, Abel was there too. "Typical! You are always exaggerating when it comes to giving. Look here. This will do fine." Cain, as the firstborn, felt somewhat superior to his younger brother, and didn't like it when things worked out better for Abel. So when the Lord accepted Abel's sacrifice, the 4th of July happened inside Cain's head.
But instead of an immediate explosion, Cain was true to form. As the original boiler, he said nothing, but inside a devastating implosion had taken place. He had learned this from his Dad. When, at the most crucial point in history, Adam was supposed to say something, he chose to be silent. In so doing he set the reaction pattern for billions of his male descendents.
The Bible holds Adam responsible for sin entering the world, even though it was Eve who first took the fruit and ate it. While Eve was conversing with the serpent Adam wasn't watering the plants. He was right there beside her. He really ought to have confronted the serpent himself and
told him to go away in no uncertain manner, but he chose to allow his wife to be deceived and his family ever after him to suffer under sin.
I'm sure he didn't think his passivity would have such far-reaching effects, just as men today don't think their wives and children suffer when they don't take the lead. The silence option is appealing only because it delays the pain of eventually having to face the truth.
I too come from the boiler ilk. As I was growing up I learnt from the adults closest to me that the way to handle something that you didn't agree with or that impinged on your freedom was to ignore it. Rationalise it away. Don't say anything. Don't upset the apple-cart. I have learnt however that this is an unhelpful way to react, and more than unhelpful, it's unChristlike.
But let's get back to old Cain for a moment. The Scriptures say,"So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast."(NIV) When things blow up and they spread out and fall out at greater or lesser distances, there is said to be an explosion. On the other hand, an implosion happens when there is an "internal explosion" - the same thing happening in the opposite way. The source of Cain's anger seems to be two-fold.
First of all, Cain was angry because Abel's offering was accepted and his wasn't. We call that jealousy. It's very possible that there had been a history of this between Cain and his brother. Jealousy is the kind of thing that not only distances us from others and ruins relationships. It also has a terrible habit of causing havoc with our spiritual lives and rearing it's head in an angry manner.
The root of jealousy is insecurity, a feeling threatened by others. But Cain's relationship was wrong with his brother because his relationship was also wrong with God. Roots are always a system and as such there is always more than one. Cain felt himself to be at least equal to, if not better than his younger brother. This feeling of superiority comes from another part of sin's root system - pride.
Pride is a great enemy of spiritual life and relationships. Indeed the Bible says that God resists the proud. That sounds like He almost pushes them away in disdain. The proud man finds it almost impossible to apologise and ask for forgiveness and thus he isolates himself into his own little world where he is right and everybody else is wrong - even the Lord.
So here we find our primal ancestor, Uncle Cain, struggling with sin in his life and angry with both God and his brother. Does that sound familiar? Contrary to common opinion, man is not evolving. He continues to struggle with exactly the same things as his forefathers and he still refuses to accept the truth. That his biggest problem is sin, in all it's forms, and that the only solution is the one provided by God Himself - Jesus Christ.
Cain's countenance took a turn for the worse when all this happened. His face took a nosedive when he started to contemplate these possibilities. "How come Abel's somehow become God's favourite? How dare He accept Abel's offering and not mine. It's not fair!"
At this point the Lord counselled him. The Lord immediately saw the danger and began to provide a solution. After all, he had to learn. All he had to to do was bring the first-fruits the next time and the lesson was learned. The Lord did not condemn him at this point. He tried to show him where he was going wrong and avoid the pitfalls of his choice. Poor old Cain had fallen into depression. What a spiral. From jealousy and pride to anger; from anger to depression. This man was on his way down - fast!
Here we can identify two things. The jealousy and the pride were the roots of Cain's problem, while his anger and depression were the results of his choices. In this way we can see the relationship between sin, man's freedom to choose, and the consequences of his decisions.
Let's put it another way. Cain's jealousy and pride were much deeper than just attitude problems. They were powerful enough to direct his emotions and influence his choices. At this point the Lord gave him the options.
"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:7)
This goes right to the heart of the issue. Cain had to choose if he was going to allow himself to be dominated by sin. In this case he would get down and climb into the sin with both feet, completely aware of his choice to disobey but bent on revenge. By hook or by crook, he would feel better, but he would have to bear the consequences of his sinfulness. The other possibility was to dominate the sin by obeying the Lord.
It doesn't take a man a long time to dig himself into a pit, especially if he feels justified in digging it. He will go at it with fervour and with keep repeating to himself as he does it, "I don't care what happens. I'm going to take this thing through to the end."
So Cain dug his pit, aware of, almost to the exclusion of all other things, his own hurt emotions and the thought that somebody, namely his brother, was going to pay for making him feel this way.
Taking it out on somebody else
Cain's sin reached new heights of dominion. Having decided in his heart to allow himself to be dominated by "the crouching lion", he then devised a deceitful scheme to do away with what he identified as his problem - his brother.
This is one of the craziest ideas that we as humans accept from the Deceiver, Satan. We are somehow convinced that we are in control of the situation when we decide to wilfully sin. The truth is that when we give in to sin we open the door to the lion who is only too ready to pounce and devour us. Peter talks about being self -controlled and alert because "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour"(1Peter 5:10) Here is the key to avoiding being eaten alive by the enemy.
When we are self-controlled we are in control of both our thoughts and our emotions. When we are alert we are aware of our own weaknesses and tendencies to sin, but not only so. We are also well aware of the devil's tactics. He is waiting for us to depend upon our own reasoning and our own strength. When we do that we are no longer looking to the Lord for help and we are vulnerable and easily deceived.
Without doubt, this thing was burning fiercely in Cain's heart. What he wanted to do more than anything was to feel better. This is a pretty typical thought pattern for those with Cain's sydrome. The most important focus is resolving my tension. The anger inside me makes me feel bad. I don't like feeling this way, so my main concern is that I don't suffer this way anymore. This is a natural, selfish reaction. It doesn't matter what the outcome is for those around us or how much pain I inflict on them. When we are at the centre of our world, our world is an extremely dangerous place to be. But this is the effect of sin. It twists our thinking until we are convinced that wrong is right, and the only thing that matters is our feeling good.
I have spoken to people who plead their case in these terms, justifying themselves for their actions: "You know I just told them what I thought and I felt so much better!" It really doesn't matter if I don't agree with their method or decision to destroy another person. For these people, they know they're right and they feel better so that's that!
"If it feels good, do it!" is a maxim which is widely accepted nowadays and has the approval of the influential Freudian school of thought among others. So hedonism, the idea that pleasure is "the real thing" and to be sought after, has taken hold of millions of people in the Western world. However, everyone without exception finds this to be a delusion.
My wife and I are friends with a couple who are quite well-off financially. Both husband and wife work and are well renumerated for their services. Cars, exotic holidays, houses and exquisite and rare furniture to adorn the houses are in abundance. There's just one thing missing. These lonely people do not know God. In fact they fervently deny His existence, thus cutting themselves off from any help that is to be found in their only hope. So they are bound to running after their insatiable thirst. Saddest of all is the fact that they are blind to the reality in which they live. So they keep running - away from God, and away from their deepest fears.
Cain releases his anger
Cain's invite to Abel must have been friendly enough. "Hey! Do you fancy going for a walk Abe? It's a nice evening and we could watch the sun setting up on the hill!" Abel didn't think twice about going for a walk with his brother to perhaps share some pleasant discourse before nightfall. Besides Cain always had something witty to say, or some story about his work. There was no reason to suspect that anything was wrong.
Cain struck suddenly and fatally. It was all over in a few minutes. The first murder in the first family, and Cain, for a moment, felt that release of anger, and the satisfaction that he had finally got rid of his problem. And nobody had seen him. Or had they?
The Lord comes back to him immediately and gives him the opportunity to talk about it and confess his heinous crime. Cain decides to crawl deeper into the pit and deny all knowledge. The Lord does not discuss the issue with him. Instead He upholds Abel's righteousness and pronounces a further curse on Cain. Not only was the ground cursed but now Cain too was cursed and would no longer find the same pleasure or success in his work. Moreover he was to be banished from the Lord's presence.
By this time Cain had sunk so low into his sin that any thought of regret or repentence was far from his mind. Rather than feel the weight of his sin, he feels the burden of his condemnation and complains about it. Not only does he feel that his sin was justified, he goes as far as implying that the Lord's judgment was unjustifiable. The man who had gone beyond all the limits, went further.
It is amazing to note the Lord's grace and protection in this situation. In all His dealings with Cain, there is abundant grace. He is prepared to give him a life-long guarantee of protection, something Cain should have done for his younger brother. "Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.(Romans 5:20)
So we finish Cain's tragic story with his total isolation and restlessness, the result of a series of choices and passions, involving a whole spectrum of feelings. Can we learn anything from Cain's mistakes? Can we glean something from his mindless violence which might help to avert something similar happening to us?
Learning from Cain's life
"Temporary insanity" would be the plea. "Diminished responsability" would be the track along which a defense lawyer would drive his train of thought if he were to defend Cain nowadays. But it was unprovoked. There was no history of persecution, except possibly in the man's mind. We could think of a million ways to justify the man but the hard facts remain. He killed his younger brother in cold blood. He was driven by anger and jealousy. The frightening thing is that it could have been anyone of us. Now there is a thought to make us sit up and think and maybe do something about how we handle our emotions.
So where did it all go terribly wrong for Cain and how can we avoid taking the same, or similar, drastic measures in our relationships.
There are several things that Cain could have done. First of all...
Recognise his responsability for his brother.
Cain was a man with a lot of time to think. As he worked the land, he had time to work out his philosophy of life. He was only one generation away from the origins of human life. He was the first son, hence the first heir. Privilege and responsability, however, go hand in hand. He was the first man in the world to have a younger brother to look after. The problem is, his dad had already blown it. The chances of him leading a revival were slim. The man he had been watching and learning from all his life - like every man who has ever lived after him - wasn't exactly the perfect example to follow. However insufficient our examples and backgrounds have been, our own destinies have to necessarily decided by ourselves. Our parents may have furrowed the field but we drive the tractor.
One thing we must not ignore. The same Lord was present for Cain as well as Abel. The same opportunity to worship the Lord God was given to both men. What we must see however is the devastating effect that a complacent relationship with the Lord produces. Cain was essentially preoccupied with himself. This element - selfishness - is the essence of sin. Putting myself before all others, God included.
When I was growing up I had a great deal of exposure to the Bible's teachings and principles. I attended children's meetings every week at the mission hall situated at the top of our street. All the kids from the street went and we enthusiastically sang out the songs, learnt the memory verses and listened attentively to the stories. I had no idea that these hours of learning were instilling important principles of Scripture into my life and laying a solid foundation for the future. One of the songs we sang contained these words:-
J-O-Y surely shall be seen
With Jesus first
Yourself last
And others in between.
Much more than a simple acrostic, this is a strong principle and a solid truth. If we want to get it right in our own lives, we've got to be altruistic. Our "Abel" has got to be more important for us than our own interests.
Today much counselling of individuals is based on the idea of helping them resolve their inner conflicts in order to help them deal with everyday situations. While this can be good and necessary, often the roots of the problems are neither emotional nor physical, but spiritual. Probably most people really appreciate help in resolving conflicts, whatever their nature. There are those however who prefer to talk endlessly about their preoccupations, their problems and their fears or fixations. It is very difficult to help these people because the basically enjoy the attention and draw on the energy of the listener. The majority of their conversation involves one person in particular - themselves. To this extent their basic problem is selfishness. This is spiritual in nature and has to be dealt with in a spiritual manner.
Herein lies the necessity of that great element which helps in some many situations, discernment. One cannot simply ride roughshod over the emotions of a person and thrash them with appropriate Scriptures. We can often do more damage in this way by creating confusion about God and his Word. On the other hand we cannot ignore the truth that they may be hiding behind a series of emotional defense mechanisms while the underlying problem may be well buried and woe betide who seeks to break through the barriers to discover the putrifying cause. Gentleness, patience and tactful probing will be useful tools, but above all, prayer will win the day. Allowing the Holy Spirit to work in the heart and mind of the wounded/wounding person is the key to unlock the Pandora's box.
The second thing Cain could have done to help himself would have been to...
Recognise the danger of uncontrolled anger
With himself, his rejection and his hurt all uppermost in his mind, Cain was wreckless in his resolution. He single-mindedly gave himself to resolving his inner conflicts and taking it out on the nearest person to him - his brother. He had learnt how to blame people from his father so it was easy for him to shift his own responsability for not not bringing the right sacrifice on to his brother. In Cain's mind, it was all Abel's fault for making him feel the way he did so Abel had to be punished. It was only right that Abel (or anybody else other than himself !) should pay the price for Cain's afflictions.
I remember an incident that I once observed on a Sicilian motorway. In Sicily, road lanes are relative and when there is a snarl-up, a two-lane motorway quickly widens to five lanes with whoever is the most aggressive having right of way. As I was sitting in the traffic I heard a lot of noise coming from my right. There was an irate driver pumping his horn with all his might in a bid to get the cars in front moving. But there was nowhere to go and the driver directly in front of him could only shrug his shoulders and wait. Mr. Angry was not about to accept this and in a rage stalled his car, bumping into the car in front.
At this point one might imagine that Mr. Angry would go and apologise to the person who had suffered the damage. Well he did get out of his car. In fact, he even went to the driver concerned. However, reconciliation was far from his mind. He immediately began to shout at the injured party, blaming him for causing the accident. Mr. Innocent attempted to open the door of his car, but Mr. Angry quickly shut it again. This spectacle repeated itself several times before the traffic jam slowly freed itself up, allowing Mr. Innocent to drive away, leaving Mr. Angry to his irrational musings.
If we justify ourselves in unleashing our anger on our nearest and dearest, or whoever happens to be in our path, so that we can walk away from the situation holding our heads high and saying, "I certainly gave them a piece of my mind!" we will always be a long way away from realising just how dangerous our method of abusing anger really is. Moreover, with each piece of mind given, we'll soon run out of grey matter!
Often people feel powerful when they vent their anger, thus giving them the idea that they are actually in control of the situation. Nothing could be further from the truth because when they "lose their temper," they lose control and allow themselves to be dominated by thier emotions.
If we recognised the power of anger to hurt people, and the lasting effect our angry words on those we love, we would be less quick to react in this manner.
The apostle James writes wisely about the tongue and explains just how powerful it can be, both to hurt and to heal, to destroy and to edify. He goes on to say that the uncontrolled tongue comes from a "wisdom" that:
"Does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unpiritual and of the devil." (James 3:15).
I'm sure Cain would have appreciated reading the preceding verse which talks about harbouring bitter envy and selfish ambition in our hearts and counsels us to neither boast about it - "I am justified in feeling the way I do" - nor to deny it, "What, me!? I'm not angry!" Or perhaps he would have just gone straight ahead and done his own thing anyway.
Who knows how the story might have ended had Cain been more open to the Lord, more willing to learn and more concerned with his brother's welfare than himself?
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