“'Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.'”
FYI: I'm writing this post months following my original analysis of the verses which it's linked to (prompted by questions arising from reading about Cain's curse in Genesis 4:11-12).
Curses: How Far?
All Christians - so far as I know - accept the notion that God's original curse upon Adam & Eve (and the serpent) were hereditary and as such, affect us all to this day (a pre-supposition I subconsciously worked from in my analysis of those verses here and here).
Reading about Cain's curse prompted me to backtrack and investigate why it is we make this assumption: Dissecting the verses, we see that God directly curses Adam/Eve/Serpent (i.e. no implication that they are to be hereditary). Is it simply because today's reality affirms it (snakes still slither, women still hurt during childbirth etc)? If so, that's a rather backwards - and potentially dangerous - method of analysis: interpreting the Bible via our reality rather than interpreting our reality via the Bible.
To further make a case against assumptions, a few short verses later, we are told of God's second-ever documented curse (Genesis 4:11-12). Here God curses Cain, again, directly and without implication of heredity, to be "a vagrant and a wanderer" for the murder of his brother, Abel. And yet, a few verses (Genesis 4:17) and a mere generation later, we're told that he builds the city of Enoch for his eponymous son (presumably to settle down in)!
So, how are we to interpret the length of God's curses? Genesis 12:3 records God declaring to Abraham: "And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse." So does that mean that if one of my ancestors a couple centuries back happened to curse the Jews that I, via bloodlines, am also somehow cursed because of him/her? Or did the curse die with them? Or their children?
How then do Christians objectively justify the permanency of the original curse? More generally, how are we expected to interpret the length and scope of any curse handed down by God?
(back to Genesis 4)
Monday, November 24, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
GENESIS 4:7 - The Need to Master Sin
“If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
The Need to Master Sin
All too often I find myself subconsciously treating sin like it's simply an inevitable byproduct of being a fallen creature rather than a conspiring entity "crouching at the door" that I must constantly battle.
This trickles downwards and manifests itself in the idea that so long as I'm sincere in my remorseful request for forgiveness, then the matter is resolved and I can move onto more active and important Christian duties - that God probably cares more about anyways - like Bible study, prayer, apologetics etc. On the contrary however, this verse is unmistakably clear when it comes to what God wants us to do: master it!
Short-Sightedness
It's easy to see the affects of murder but much harder to wrap our temporal minds around the harm of say, an impure thought, unless we consider it in the larger scope of its slippery degenerative effects, as the thought-provoking article What Sin Is & What Sin Does states: "Each sin makes the next one a bit easier. Over time, the conduct will become entirely acceptable, and we will sin without a qualm. Sin is addictive like a drug. As the addiction becomes stronger, the ideal depreciates until it is completely gone." After reading this I realized the sad truth of this statement as I reflected on the profound difference between how seriously I used to treat some sins which I can now barely blink an eye over.
A Losing Battle
We're told to battle against sin, but are then told that it's a battle we're bound to lose, now and for the rest of our lives. Is it any wonder we end up with blasé attitudes towards prevention and instead concentrate instead on forgiveness? C.S. Lewis offers great insight and encouragement on this matter in Mere Christianity (using the example of chastity):
"[...] many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility. Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question. one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone. Not only in examinations but in war, in mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, even in fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it. It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.
We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."
(back to Genesis 4)
The Need to Master Sin
All too often I find myself subconsciously treating sin like it's simply an inevitable byproduct of being a fallen creature rather than a conspiring entity "crouching at the door" that I must constantly battle.
This trickles downwards and manifests itself in the idea that so long as I'm sincere in my remorseful request for forgiveness, then the matter is resolved and I can move onto more active and important Christian duties - that God probably cares more about anyways - like Bible study, prayer, apologetics etc. On the contrary however, this verse is unmistakably clear when it comes to what God wants us to do: master it!
Short-Sightedness
It's easy to see the affects of murder but much harder to wrap our temporal minds around the harm of say, an impure thought, unless we consider it in the larger scope of its slippery degenerative effects, as the thought-provoking article What Sin Is & What Sin Does states: "Each sin makes the next one a bit easier. Over time, the conduct will become entirely acceptable, and we will sin without a qualm. Sin is addictive like a drug. As the addiction becomes stronger, the ideal depreciates until it is completely gone." After reading this I realized the sad truth of this statement as I reflected on the profound difference between how seriously I used to treat some sins which I can now barely blink an eye over.
A Losing Battle
We're told to battle against sin, but are then told that it's a battle we're bound to lose, now and for the rest of our lives. Is it any wonder we end up with blasé attitudes towards prevention and instead concentrate instead on forgiveness? C.S. Lewis offers great insight and encouragement on this matter in Mere Christianity (using the example of chastity):
"[...] many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility. Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question. one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone. Not only in examinations but in war, in mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, even in fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it. It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.
We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."
(back to Genesis 4)
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
GENESIS 4:3-6 - Why did God Reject Cain's Offering?
So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? ”
Why did God Reject Cain's Offering?
Given how sparse the story is with details, the question seems unavoidable. There's no explicit mention in the verse as to exactly what it was that Cain did wrong. So assuming God is fair and righteous it seems we're only left with two possibilities: 1) there was something physically wrong with Cain's offering or the manner in which he presented it, and/or 2) there was something wrong with Cain's heart.
If you think about the doctrine of atonement, it shifts the focus squarely on the former: regardless of his efforts or sincerity of heart, Cain's offering of fruits would remain hopelessly insufficient due to the fact that atonement can only be achieved via death and sacrifice - hence Christ's need to die for us.
Did Cain Know?
Did Cain know about this prerequisite of atonement? If so, it's a cut-and-dry case of Cain being consciously disobedient, but if not, well, it seems rather unfair to judge Cain for simply being ignorant or dimmer than Abel, or simply having the misfortune of being the farmer. To complicate things, there's definitely no prior-recorded mention in Genesis about the ins-and-outs of atonement to make it clear that God isn't just playing favourites.
Bloody Illustrations, Historical Context
I had spent a lot of time reading various disappointingly unsatisfactory explanations and was ready to mark this one as unresolved when I spoke to Pastor Dan who presented me with two very compelling explanations:
Consider Genesis 3:21 a few short verses earlier: "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them." Looking up the word used for "skin" makes it clear that it refers not to fur or wool but to actual animal hide. And how do we get animal hide? By killing animals. So here we have Adam & Eve who have never seen anything die, and have no concept of death whatsoever. God brings them over to these cute little sheep - which Adam named - and... slaughters them before their very eyes, skins them, and drapes the bloody hides on their backs. Do you think that from that point onwards they ever forgot (or forgot to tell their children) that visceral illustration of the effects of sin and sacrifice?
Secondly, there is the historical aspect; Genesis was written by Moses, many generations after the fact, for people whom blood sacrifice was - and had been for centuries - an integral and ingrained part of culture (think Abraham and Isaac). It would have been a given to everyone during Moses' time that Cain's behaviour was foolish and disrespectful regardless of its sincerity, so much so that documenting the 'why' would seem completely unnecessary, in the same way that a sports writer would feel no need to justify calling a hockey playing stupid for picking up the puck with their hands and chucking it into the net - which might likewise bewilder a reader thousands of years in the future if hockey is no longer played (God forbid!).
(This take on the garments is very different from the positive spin I put on it in my previous entry on Genesis 3:21,23-24 - God's Hidden Compassion)
(back to Genesis 4)
Why did God Reject Cain's Offering?
Given how sparse the story is with details, the question seems unavoidable. There's no explicit mention in the verse as to exactly what it was that Cain did wrong. So assuming God is fair and righteous it seems we're only left with two possibilities: 1) there was something physically wrong with Cain's offering or the manner in which he presented it, and/or 2) there was something wrong with Cain's heart.
If you think about the doctrine of atonement, it shifts the focus squarely on the former: regardless of his efforts or sincerity of heart, Cain's offering of fruits would remain hopelessly insufficient due to the fact that atonement can only be achieved via death and sacrifice - hence Christ's need to die for us.
Did Cain Know?
Did Cain know about this prerequisite of atonement? If so, it's a cut-and-dry case of Cain being consciously disobedient, but if not, well, it seems rather unfair to judge Cain for simply being ignorant or dimmer than Abel, or simply having the misfortune of being the farmer. To complicate things, there's definitely no prior-recorded mention in Genesis about the ins-and-outs of atonement to make it clear that God isn't just playing favourites.
Bloody Illustrations, Historical Context
I had spent a lot of time reading various disappointingly unsatisfactory explanations and was ready to mark this one as unresolved when I spoke to Pastor Dan who presented me with two very compelling explanations:
Consider Genesis 3:21 a few short verses earlier: "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them." Looking up the word used for "skin" makes it clear that it refers not to fur or wool but to actual animal hide. And how do we get animal hide? By killing animals. So here we have Adam & Eve who have never seen anything die, and have no concept of death whatsoever. God brings them over to these cute little sheep - which Adam named - and... slaughters them before their very eyes, skins them, and drapes the bloody hides on their backs. Do you think that from that point onwards they ever forgot (or forgot to tell their children) that visceral illustration of the effects of sin and sacrifice?
Secondly, there is the historical aspect; Genesis was written by Moses, many generations after the fact, for people whom blood sacrifice was - and had been for centuries - an integral and ingrained part of culture (think Abraham and Isaac). It would have been a given to everyone during Moses' time that Cain's behaviour was foolish and disrespectful regardless of its sincerity, so much so that documenting the 'why' would seem completely unnecessary, in the same way that a sports writer would feel no need to justify calling a hockey playing stupid for picking up the puck with their hands and chucking it into the net - which might likewise bewilder a reader thousands of years in the future if hockey is no longer played (God forbid!).
(This take on the garments is very different from the positive spin I put on it in my previous entry on Genesis 3:21,23-24 - God's Hidden Compassion)
(back to Genesis 4)
Thursday, July 3, 2008
GENESIS 4:8 - The Tragedy of Pride's Competitiveness
...And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.
The Tragedy of Pride's Competitiveness
Reading the story of Cain & Abel this time around, I was struck by how particularly tragic and wasteful Abel's death, which is to really just say that I was reminded of the tragedy of the inherent competitiveness of pride.
"Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity - it is enmity. [...] Pride is essentially competitive — is competitive by its very nature — while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident." (Mere Christianity - The Great Sin)
Cain could have examined himself, questioned his offering and the heart behind it, or at least turned his anger against his direct antagonist, God, but instead he chose the easiest, most convenient, and most innocent of targets, his brother, who's only sin was that he loved God and as such wanted to give Him the best of what he had.
The story was a cold reminder of how even the noblest of ambitions can sometimes - ironically - increase your chances of being hated by others. How messed up is that? Then again, that thought is moderated by the fact that this is something we're all guilty of to some extent and the story of Cain & Abel is a solid cautionary reminder of that.
(back to Genesis 4)
The Tragedy of Pride's Competitiveness
Reading the story of Cain & Abel this time around, I was struck by how particularly tragic and wasteful Abel's death, which is to really just say that I was reminded of the tragedy of the inherent competitiveness of pride.
"Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity - it is enmity. [...] Pride is essentially competitive — is competitive by its very nature — while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident." (Mere Christianity - The Great Sin)
Cain could have examined himself, questioned his offering and the heart behind it, or at least turned his anger against his direct antagonist, God, but instead he chose the easiest, most convenient, and most innocent of targets, his brother, who's only sin was that he loved God and as such wanted to give Him the best of what he had.
The story was a cold reminder of how even the noblest of ambitions can sometimes - ironically - increase your chances of being hated by others. How messed up is that? Then again, that thought is moderated by the fact that this is something we're all guilty of to some extent and the story of Cain & Abel is a solid cautionary reminder of that.
(back to Genesis 4)
Friday, June 13, 2008
Meekness as Pride
In studying the topic of pride as it relates to Christianity, I’ve found that all the material I’ve encountered has pretty much followed the same progression: i) teach people how pride is truly the worst of sins, ii) tell them to be humble (and that it’s only possible with Jesus’ help), iii) caution them not to fall prey to false humility which can be equally destructive.
Last week however, while attending Ottawa Christian Counsellings "Relationship Intelligence" seminar with Krystle, I heard a rather enlightening twist on this matter. The speaker followed the previously stated progression but ended off bringing things around full circle by stating that one of the essential components of true humility is a solid foundation of self-worth! Wow, that’s usually the one thing they try and steer way clear of.
To illustrate this, she used the example of a man who aspires to be a great writer but is scared to make any serious attempts at writing, and even when he’s encouraged by his friends he shies away from the prospect, usually with “humble” excuses like “oh, well, I’m not really talented”. On the surface, this man appears to be as far from prideful as can be, but he is very prideful indeed. His problem in fact is that he thinks too highly of himself. He knows that any attempt he makes brings with it the possibility of failure, and he can’t stand the thought of failing and looking like a fool to his friends and/or to himself. In other words, he thinks so highly of himself that he can’t stand the thought of showing any weakness and risk being ridiculed or embarrassed so he doesn’t try at all.
Undoubtedly, this point spoke to me so powerfully because I count myself among these pridefully shy people. As a society we’re accustomed to castigating openly prideful people, and even the unapologetic show-offs themselves are usually willing to admit that they shouldn’t be the way they are. On the other hand, pridefully shy people – such as myself – are left relatively alone. Sure, our friends might try and poke us out of shells for our own good but in general they’re willing to accept our shyness as an innate character trait that isn’t hurting anyone, but a sin is a sin, whether it’s a sin of commission (e.g. open pridefuleness) or omission (i.e. meek pride).
James 4:17 - Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.
Last week however, while attending Ottawa Christian Counsellings "Relationship Intelligence" seminar with Krystle, I heard a rather enlightening twist on this matter. The speaker followed the previously stated progression but ended off bringing things around full circle by stating that one of the essential components of true humility is a solid foundation of self-worth! Wow, that’s usually the one thing they try and steer way clear of.
To illustrate this, she used the example of a man who aspires to be a great writer but is scared to make any serious attempts at writing, and even when he’s encouraged by his friends he shies away from the prospect, usually with “humble” excuses like “oh, well, I’m not really talented”. On the surface, this man appears to be as far from prideful as can be, but he is very prideful indeed. His problem in fact is that he thinks too highly of himself. He knows that any attempt he makes brings with it the possibility of failure, and he can’t stand the thought of failing and looking like a fool to his friends and/or to himself. In other words, he thinks so highly of himself that he can’t stand the thought of showing any weakness and risk being ridiculed or embarrassed so he doesn’t try at all.
Undoubtedly, this point spoke to me so powerfully because I count myself among these pridefully shy people. As a society we’re accustomed to castigating openly prideful people, and even the unapologetic show-offs themselves are usually willing to admit that they shouldn’t be the way they are. On the other hand, pridefully shy people – such as myself – are left relatively alone. Sure, our friends might try and poke us out of shells for our own good but in general they’re willing to accept our shyness as an innate character trait that isn’t hurting anyone, but a sin is a sin, whether it’s a sin of commission (e.g. open pridefuleness) or omission (i.e. meek pride).
James 4:17 - Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.
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