the    sides

The story of Cain and Abel disturbs me on many levels.

The idea that sin is out to ambush Cain…on purpose…with no remorse…to destroy him…that’s disturbing enough. That’s reality though, a reality I’m afraid that so few of us take seriously. Sin’s end aim for humanity is to kill and destroy. I learned in the Army that ambushes weren’t designed to have survivors and the best way to deal with ambushes was to avoid them all together. It’s hard at times to see my sin in this light…but it is whether I believe to be true or not.

But God’s words to Cain that he MUST, he CAN master it are equally disturbing. I’m pretty sure Cain didn’t feel that way. I’m pretty sure I don’t feel that way at times. It doesn’t FEEL like we can MASTER it but it is MASTERING us. God’s formula of mastering it – ‘do what is right’ – sounds both so ridiculously simple and difficult. Just do it. Don’t do what you feel, do what you know is right.

There’s the not-so-secret formula for avoiding ambushes and spiritual transformation in general – do what is right in spite of how you feel. That was Cain’s downfall – and mine at times – he let his emotions win, not his mind. He felt downcast and rejected because his offering wasn’t accepted by God. It wasn’t accepted because he did not do what he knew was right. God gave him the chance to fix it. When Cain didn’t, Sin pounced. The pattern is there in my own life — the feelings trump the facts, God doesn’t get the last word and when God doesn’t get the last word, sin does and sin always kills something innocent.

The 7 hands (can you find them all?) depict the 7 deadly sins (can you name them all?). I like the idea of the hands. It’s our hands that carry out the directive…we put ‘hands’ to the thought. I think there is something deeper at work here as well – that is there are no faces. A face would make the sin more deadly and therefore harder to dismiss and rationalize. Without the face, we can blame others, diminish the seriousness, ignore the victims, fall into a false sense of security that maybe the deadly sins aren’t really deadly. They aren’t. It’s just easier to justify living with them without faces.

What is Cain looking at? His past? His future? Why is he even given the opportunity to look in the first place? Why did God spare his life? Was allowing him to live but outside the presence of God really ’sparing’ him? Sure Cain got to live but not really live – a wanderer, constant fighting with the land, the mark a constant reminder of his failure, not able to reconnect with the lover of his soul. It’s another layer of disturbing – God doesn’t avenge Abel. Grace wins again? Yet Cain’s banishment is the definition of hell – living outside the presence of God.