by CCW | 17 October 2018 04:00
“What have you done?” God asks Cain, “Your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” There is darkness at the heart of our humanity. It is one of the important take-away points from the infamous story of Cain and Abel. It is part of the fall-out from the Fall. We tend to read this story moralistically and as such largely misread it. It is really about the primordial and mythological state of our humanity outside the Garden of Eden. It is what our humanity looks like withoutmorality,withoutlaw and order. As such it points us to the absolute need for a moral order, for justice and truth.
We forget that Cain is actually the first farmer, the first to found a city, the first to inaugurate sacrifices – an attempt from our side to negotiate between ourselves and God, however understood – and that in Cain’s lineage are the originators of the arts and technology. Jubal and Tubal-Cain arise out of the seventh generation of Cain. And yet the point is that at the heart of our humanity, at the heart of civilisation, there is darkness, the darkness of the human heart.
What we are given to see are the primordial emotions of revenge, of fear, and of anger. What we are given to see are the forms of pride and self-regard that negate and deny our common humanity. It is, to be sure, about fratricide and it begets, if you will, the long, sad and sorry tale of all of the ‘cides’ of human history: patricide, matricide, regicide, homicide, genocide, and the much later (1648) modern Latin word, suicide. There is no word interestingly for the killing of sisters – sororicide? just doesn’t work. It comes under fratricide.
We know and in many ways celebrate various kinds of rivalries especially in the sports world. We hope that the morality of good sportsmanship will be dominant and not the ugliness of violence and bloodshed. Here is a story about the most primordial form of rivalry, sibling rivalry. In a way, the whole Book of Genesis is about sibling rivalry, mostly brothers against brothers but also including some sisters: Cain and Abel, Abram and Lot, Isaac and Ishmael, Leah and Rachel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers.
Many of you have siblings, brothers and/or sisters. And I suppose that it is not too much of an exaggeration on my part to say that perhaps, just perhaps, you have thought or said to your brother or sister things like‘I hate you’, and ‘I’ll kill you.’ If looks could kill, I am sure we would all be dead. If words could kill, we would all be dead. But even worse, from an ethical standpoint, we would all be murderers! How are we to be awakened to a moral order, to truth and justice? Only through education. It is the point made in both the Jewish Scriptures and by the Greek philosophers.
Plato argues in The Republic that politics begins with the division of labour because none of us is self-sufficient. That division of labour is initially about satisfying our basic appetites but leads, as Plato knew only too well, to conflict and war and so to the need for a warrior class and then to the Guardian class out of which arises the Philosopher/King because without justice none of our needs can possibly be met. Aristotle drawing upon Plato’s insight observes in his Politics that the purpose of the polis, the city-state or human community, is not just to live but to live well. That presupposes a strong commitment to reason and intellect. And while humans are, for both Jew and Greek alike, creatures with logos, thought-speaking beings, both know how reason can be turned against itself.
Here we see the folly of our humanity. Eve thinks that she has conceived a man much like God made man. The phrase “with the help of the Lord” is a bit of a pious gloss. Cain’s name refers to the idea of possession, the one who possesses. This suggests a whole approach to the world which leads to manipulation and domination through possession. Abel’s name is more uncertain; it might refer to a breath that passes away, hinting at his death at the hand of his brother. Cain inaugurates the idea of sacrifice. Not God. It seems that this initial idea of sacrifice has all the hallmarks of manipulation and control and, like Eve, the idea of a kind of equality between God and man.
It is not by accident that Cain is “a tiller of the ground,” the first farmer, and Abel, “a keeper of sheep.” There is just the hint that the shepherd has a stronger sense of dependence upon God’s providence. There is always the danger of farmers thinking that the harvest is largely due to themselves and not to a recognition of the goodness of the created order that is prior to their activity. It is the problem of the pride of accomplishment like the story of the farmer and a visitor. The visitor compliments the farmer on the beauty of his farm saying, “look what you and the Good Lord have done” to which the farmer replies, “Yup, you should have seen when just He had it.”
Cain gets angry at God not because his sacrifice has been rejected – it just hasn’t been accepted yet as God’s response makes clear. The response suggests that what is important has very much to do with something inward, something in us in relation to God. If you do well, God says, you will be accepted and then adds, if not “sin is couching at the door and you must master it.” Instead, Cain is mastered by his sin of anger and rage which he directs towards his brother. The whole problem of sibling rivalry lies in the fact that you are not the sole apple of your parents’ eyes. There is another whose source of being is the same as yours.
In a misuse of reason and speech, Cain conspires to go with Abel into the field where he kills him, essentially denying his very existence. “Where is your brother?” God asks, not because he doesn’t know but to convict Cain. “I don’t know,” Cain says lyingly, and, then, adds the famous and convicting statement, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” It is a kind of admission. It leads God to ask, again in order to convict conscience as he had done with Eve earlier, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” It is a powerful moment, a question that seeks to convict conscience and as such presupposes that we have a conscience.
That is the power of this story. The darkness of the human heart confronts its darkness and sets us on a journey for the need for law and order. The story of Abram is a part of that order in the idea of the covenant established by God for the good of our humanity. We are not to be left to “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” That is darkness.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/10/17/kes-chapel-reflection-week-of-17-october/
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