Cain and His Brother Abel: Reflections on Why We Kill the Innocent
Whenever my sister and I would make a ruckus, my grandmother would say the same thing: Stop raising Cain!
Having heard that exclamation innumerable times, I knew Cain as someone or something which would get me in trouble. It never fit with the category of being a good little boy.
So, when contemplating in recent years the nature of sin, where it comes from and how it comes to be, I naturally started with Cain.
As does Pope Saint John Paul II in his landmark encyclical letter, Evangelium vitae, written almost thirty years ago as a reflection on our contemporary struggles between the Gospel of Life and the culture of death.
What I would propose to do this morning, then, is to reflect not so much on how many abortions are being performed (although it’s interesting that the number has increased following the nullification of Roe v. Wade), or the number of new euthanasia laws or the central role of life issues in State, Federal and international politics.
Rather, I would like to reflect on is the deeper question of “where does the impulse to take a human life come from”? How could someone possibly shoot another person? How could someone assist an old person in committing suicide? How could someone possibly take the life of an own unborn baby?
And if you are one of those people who suggest that those who foster the culture of death with their decisions to neglect, abort to kill are all monsters, this talk is not for you.
For I begin with the presupposition that sin is not usually committed only by monsters, but by very fragile souls. Like the old cartoon Pogo, so presciently says: I have met the enemy, and he is us.
From the time of the old Testament, we are told that sin begins in the human heart. The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us that sin is a result of a sort of infection of the heart.
It’s like at the time of the great flood, from which Noah and all those two-by-two animals were saved in the ark. Genesis tells us that
When the LORD saw how great the wickedness of human beings was on earth, and how every desire that their heart conceived was always nothing but evil, the LORD regretted making human beings on the earth, and his heart was grieved.”
Notice there are two hearts here. First, the heart of man, which fosters every evil desire, and then the heart of God, which was sad at man’s sinfulness. For the heart is made to love, and when it is used to sin, it saddens God.
Perhaps the prophet Jeremiah says it best:
More tortuous than anything is the human heart,
beyond remedy; who can understand it?
I, the LORD, explore the mind
and test the heart…
Jesus tells us as much, when he reminds us that evil things do not originate with what we do with our mouths or our hands or our bodies. No, evil always starts in the heart: evil ideas, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. It is all born in the heart. Listen elsewhere to Jesus:
…“the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil….” (Luke 6:45).
So back to Cain. Let’s do a forensic analysis of his heart.
Genesis 4
Eve…gave birth to Cain, saying, “I have produced a male child with the help of the LORD.” Next she gave birth to his brother Abel.
So, two brothers. The first brothers. This reality is emphasized throughout the account in Genesis as the word “brother” is used seven times.
And like all brothers, there was a sibling rivalry. As it was in the beginning…
SMOTHERS BROTHERS
And they had two different jobs.
Abel became a herder of flocks, and Cain a tiller of the ground. (verse 2)
In the course of time Cain brought an offering to the LORD from the fruit of the ground, while Abel, for his part, brought the fatty portion of the firstlings of his flock. (verse 3)
The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. (verse 4)
So Cain was very angry and dejected. Then the LORD said to Cain: Why are you angry? Why are you dejected? (verses 5-6)
That question is at the heart of our enterprise today. What was bugging Cain?
Clearly, it is envy for the approval his brother got from God. He’s not really very different from Tommy Smothers. For, as the Book of Wisdom tells us: “through the devil's envy death entered the world, (Wisdom 2: 23).
It’s no wonder that the devil uses envy to tempt Cain, according to the early Church Fathers Origin, Clement and other, it was the cause of the devil’s own downfall.
They suggested, relying on various scriptural accounts that Lucifer was one of the highest of the Angels. As one commentator writes, he “was the chief of all the angels, of the greatest natural capacity, strength and wisdom, and highest in honor and dignity, the brightest of all those stars.”5
Yet, this commentator suggests, when God told the angels that, in the fullness of time, his Son, the one through whom all things were made and the King of the Universe would become man, Lucifer and his followers became jealous. What would Jesus take the form of a mere man and not an Angel?
And so, out of envy, Lucifer and his minions became Satan and his demons. Out of envy sin is born, here in the heart of an Angel.
Which is why Satan uses envy (the oldest diabolical trick in the book) to tempt Eve and her gullible husband.
As the Book of Genesis tells us, the seductive voice of the devil tempts them. Lying to them that if they would just eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would be like God.
Envy and the Ten Commandments
That’s why the longest of the ten commandments is all about envy:
You shall not covet…anything that is your neighbors…You shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his man, servant, or his maid servant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.
So, while number nine forbids stealing, the tenth commandment goes one step further and forbids lusting after what our neighbor has. We are to banish our desires to have what someone else has. The old Roman Catechism made a great observation in this regard about our human nature: Our thirst for one another’s goods is immense, infinite, never quenched.” Which is why the Book of Sirach observes that "he who loves money, never has money enough.”
Just think of the little kid who sees his sister’s toy and wants it for himself…
Which brings us back to Cain.
Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out in the field.” When they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. (verse 8)
The first murder, then, was committed out of envy.
But there’s something else going on here, for which Martin Buber, an Austrian Jewish philosopher, may be of some assistance. Precisely 100 years ago, published an essay entitled Ich und Du, usually translated as I and Thou.
His essay had enormous influence on many twentieth century figures, including Dr. Martin Luther King, who cites I and Thou in his letter Letter from Birmingham Jail. King write:
“Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an ‘I it’ relationship for an ‘I thou’ relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.”
In other words, before Cain can kill his brother, he needs to turn him into a thing. He needs to refuse to recognize his dignity as one created equally in the image of God for him to love, and turn him into an object to be used or disposed of whenever he becomes an inconvenience to his desires.
Such a narcissistic view, in fact gradually makes everyone into things, play things for my amusement, rather than human beings to be treasured, honored and loved.
God created us in love. He created everything in love, for he is love. He created us in his image to be full of love and to live a life of perfect happiness in him.
And then something happened. “As a result of the devil’s envy,” death entered into the world, and the culture of life was polluted by the shadow of a culture of death.”
So now we come to the heart of our struggle. Each aborted child, abandoned child or euthanized sick person is the result of the dark urge deep within every human heart to have all the toys at any cost and to turn anyone who stands in my way into a disposable object.
Pope Saint John Paul II applies this dynamic notably to abortion and euthanasia, but to our malignant neglect of the immigrant, the stranger and all who become an obstacle to our lust for money, power and domination. Allow me to quote:
…How can we fail to consider the violence against life done to millions of human beings, especially children, who are forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social classes? And what of the violence inherent not only in wars as such but in the scandalous arms trade, which spawns the many armed conflicts which stain our world with blood? What of the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering with the world's ecological balance, by the criminal spread of drugs, or by the promotion of certain kinds of sexual activity which, besides being morally unacceptable, also involve grave risks to life? It is impossible to catalogue completely the vast array of threats to human life, so many are the forms, whether explicit or hidden, in which they appear today!
Finally, I would suggest, that the proliferation of envy in its myriad forms weaves a tapestry of neglect, objectification and resentment, which erodes the very fabric of a society.
Why does our nation seem over-run by a malignant cynicism where everyone is always selling you something or hitting you over the head for your beliefs?
Because we have forgotten how to love, and especially to love those whom we have perceived as our enemies.
Did you ever notice that we in the Prolife movement spend most of of time looking at life issues from a public policy or legal standpoint? What my brief remarks on the origins of sin this morning suggests that there is another important forum for addressing human life: the pastoral one.
But it’s a lot harder to deal with than laws, protests and politicians, because it’s about the mother who sits next to you at the morning Mass, who will never told you her daughter is facing an “unintended pregnancy.” It’s about the girl who used to be an altar server who is home for Christmas and why she’s scared to go to church when she comes home for Christmas. And it’s about the single mother you so admire for working so hard for her kids who you never seem to see any more.
According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute in 2004, the vats majority of women seeking abortions do so for three reasons:
First, they want to care for the children they already have, and fear they will not have the resources to do so adequately.
“I have three other kids, can’t afford daycare and he told me he would help, but then when I got pregnant he moved out and he keeps avoiding my calls.” What does she envy? The ability to take feed, clothe and bring up the kids she already has. She’s alone, and afraid of the future. And so she turns her baby into a fetus, which the doctor told her could be “taken care of.”
And the second motivation is work or education.
“I just started College last year, and I thought he loved me. If I have a baby I’m going to have to drop out and move back home, but my father has this problem and my mom just screams all the time. I want to be a doctor some day and I promise I’ll work had to do it. And he’s the first person I ever thought really loved me, and he’s a junior…but now he things I should just get rid of it and everything will be all right and we can go back to making believe everything will be alright. I’m scared.”
And as she sits in biology I she looks over at her classmate who always tries to sit near her boyfriend, and all she wants is to be her. Without this problem, so that everything will go back to being the way it was before. So, she’s going to take care of it and hope she will live happily ever after.
The mother of an unplanned child cannot be blamed for her fear of the impact this baby will have on her life. And so the Father of lies whispers that it is only an inconvenience, easily dispensed of.
These folks are not unlike the son of an aging mother, demented and hostile in a facility that makes him nauseous, cannot be blamed for the revulsion or exhaustion he feels, the desire just to have it all over. And so the Father of lies whispers that just a little more morphine can help this problem to resolve itself. And its for her own good, as well.
And even you and me. Just think of the politician you most desperately disagree with these days, whom you see as a threat to everything you stand for. How often do you find yourself wishing they would just go away, or suffer a humiliating defeat, because the evil you perceive in them has turned them into a commodity to be disposed of rather than a person to be loved.
Do I love my enemies? Do I pray for my persecutors? Or do I see them as obstacles to what I want and work for their ignominious disposal?
We all suffer from the same disease, I am afraid. The abortionist, the crusader for euthanasia, the enemy of the poor and the immigrant. We are all smudged with the mark of Cain, whose life was driven by an envy which watered the ground with his brother’s blood.
Seeking to get ahead of the other guy and seeing him or her as a thing to be overcome, rather than a real person to love.
What a mess we make of things. We’re true sons of our first parents I am afraid, driven by envy and letting nothing get in our way to satisfy it. We’re hopeless. Except for the hope we know in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
For our redemption takes place only by the Blood of Christ, flowing from the wounded side of the one who called us brother, and sons of his Heavenly Father.
It is the Blood which washes away every sin, breaks the chains of envy and gives us the power to see him in all who are weak, frail, misunderstood, hungry or alone.
Lord, by the Blood of the Lamb, set us free!
