07/06/2020
Antecedant of Abel and Cain (Genesis 4: 1- 16)
-By Themreingam Pheirei
OFA Team Member.
Cain and Abel were brothers. And they didn't like each other. Hypothetically the first two real human beings because Adam and Eve were created by God. Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain was a tiller of the ground. Cain being the elder among the two had privilege but was not favoured by God. Abel is a good person by all appearance and God smiles on him, fate smiles and everything he does seems to work out well.
And according to the Bible, Abel made sacrifices that were rewarded by God which is a very crucial credential because starting from Adam and Eve, by the time it gets to Abel and Cain, human beings have discovered in this dramatic manner that if they make sacrifices in the present, then theoretically the future can be better. This serves to be one of the major disclosure because it shows that for a creature, for an animal being like us, if we give up something that we want right now we can sort of bargain with fate, as it were, to get something better in the future. And that's what we all do when we work. We start to believe that making the appropriate sacrifices propitiates God, let's say metaphorically, and therefore Abel’s sacrifices worked out for him.
Everything he touched turned to sheep, or anything good, and he had everything he wanted, and everyone liked him, and everybody thought of him to be a good guy. But Cain, on the other hand, wasn't doing so well. And nothing he sacrificed appears to have the proper effect. There is some idea in the story that maybe the sacrifices Cain made were a little bit half-hearted. And for which, God wasn't thrilled at those sacrifices. And that's really what we can be thinking about again for about 50 years because it is possible that if we are making sacrifices and they are not working out that well, then it's not so much that God hates us, but it can be because our sacrifices could be of a somewhat higher attribute.
One day Cain had enough of this, and in a psychological response, he decides to have a chat with God instead of straightening himself out. And it somehow goes like this- an arrogant chat. And basically, Cain challenges God. I assume he says, "Look God, I don't know what sort of world you think you put together here, but we've got Abel, and we've got me, and everything is just working out for him. He is perfectly delightful and everyone likes him, whatever he touches like King Midas turns to gold. And then there's me. I'm breaking myself in half here, offering up my sacrifices, and you turn your nose up at my sacrifices, and nothing works out for me.”
Implying, by the way, that it is God's fault or we can say, stating quite forthrightly that it is God's fault. As we can see, Cain was not happy, rather he was angry, frustrated, depressed and in a hostile, resenting state of mind, which at a certain degree of arrogance we can assume, and which is also worth thinking about for it is possible that, if things are going well for someone we know, and not going so well for us (which happens because there’s an arbitrary element to life) it can actually be the consequence of the quality of our sacrifices.
The reason that things aren't turning out well for us is that our sacrifices just don't have enough blood in them. We're not putting ourselves wholehearted into it, and as a consequence, we are not reaping the crop that we might otherwise get so. And that's a harsh thing to think, but I think that is what God tells Cain, which is quite interesting. I think what God said to Cain was, "Look buddy, before you dare to criticize the creator of the world or reality itself for that matter, you might give some thought to your actions. Here is how I look at it as God: You're in a house, and there is a doorway. There’s a predator cat in heat and it is after you. You have voluntarily invited it in and you let it have its way with you.” Something is produced as a consequence of that, which we can say is unholy. It is the sin that crouches out the door and it indicates that we’ve missed the mark- meaning that we had made an error. It is something we have invited into our life. But it isn't just that Cain invited it in and it stands with Cain but that Cain invited it in this malevolent way of being and he enters into a creative union with this malignant that symbolized in this particular story, using a sexual metaphor.
It is the combination of Cain’s perverseness and this capacity for cruelty and malevolence that meld together into something that's uniquely pathological. Because God knew that Cain was doing something wrong, and that Cain knew it to be wrong and yet was doing it creatively and with intent. So I think that's basically what God tells Cain, “That's what you have done, and that is why your life is not working out as well as your brother's. You are the one who have played a creative role in producing that situation so I am taking zero responsibility for rejecting your sacrifice. So why don't you get the hell out of my sight and think about that for a while?”
Cain leaves, not happy about it at all! This is understandable because when one is having a wretched time, and his brother is doing well, then that's like rubbing salt in one's wound. Hence he had decided to go and have it out with God, and God had simply said, "It’s all your fault. It’s something that you've done voluntarily and now you're lying about it, and complaining about the structure of reality." which was unbearable for Cain. If Cain had any sense(which he hasn't, he had gone too far), he could have gone, sat in a cave for about a decade, eat locust and honey and think about all the terrible things he did and then come out and apologize to Abel and to the people he didn't do well for. And then, with a little humility, he could had start again, and maybe have a different way of life.
But that isn't what happened. What happened was that he decides to take revenge and he did it terribly. He kills Abel. And when God asked Cain about it, Cain replied, "Am I my brother’s keeper?” But God had figured it out for He said, “What hast thou done? The voice of your brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.” God could have struck Cain dead but in my understanding, that didn’t seem to have been a sufficient punishment. So the punishment ordained was for Cain to live with what he did. And to prevent other people from killing him, God put a curse on Cain and to which Cain cried, "My punishment is more than I can bear!" It may have been because God had banished him but at the same time, maybe his punishment was more than he could bear because there's a problem when he kills his ideal, Abel.
As he was not doing well, separated from the transcendent and from society, he’s bitterly resentful and he goes out and kill the very thing he most wants to be. So he destroys and demolishes his own ideal. Like Cain, when we kill our ideal, we've destroyed idyll, and then what do we have? We've got nothing because we all need a Shangri-La to live for, and if we destroy our ideal then we've got nothing. And maybe that's what Cain meant when he says, “My punishment is more than I can bear!” Maybe that is because life without that ideal is more than what can be borne. I think the real reason that Cain did what he did was to shake his fist in anger at the structure of reality itself, the unfairness of being. And then, that's metaphorically represented as the proclivity to take revenge on God’s ideal. So the story of Cain and Abel can be even darker than just homicide.
N.B. - We all have moments where our minds drift to another sphere and starts contemplating on the “What ifs”, the “Hows” and the “Whys”. Likewise, I would like to clarify that this is only an excerpt of my thoughts and I do not mean to raise any controversies by this write up. Thank you for reading.
