The Way of Cain in Contemporary Politics

All Scripture passages are NKJV, often copied from www.biblegateway.com

Back story: The first century Apostle Jude wrote a short letter to the church in the New Testament warning against false apostles and teachers in the emerging Christian movement. He wrote, 

"Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah," (Jude 11).

There’s a whole sermon right there about those 3 characters, which I will not bore you with at this time. There’s enough to say just about Cain, but briefly, the way of Cain could be described as envy and violence. The error of Balaam would include occultic/psychic cursing for profit, and Korah’s rebellion was just that…rebellion against legitimate authority.

Cain’s story is told in Chapter 4 of the book of Genesis. I will present a loose Midrashic synopsis here, but understand that I'm approaching the narrative as a metaphor. Adam and Eve are the first humans placed in a special garden by God. Tempted by a serpent entity with many human qualities like speech and cunning, they sin by eating forbidden fruit and gaining a new knowledge of good and evil, and are thus booted out of the Garden of Eden. Cain is their firstborn son, and was undoubtedly a cause for celebration and pride. The family had an abundance of good stuff to eat and wear because Cain grew up to be a farmer, while baby brother Abel tended a flock of sheep.

As the eldest son, it was a cultural given that when Papa Adam died, which would not happen for hundreds of years hence, Cain would be the new Patriarch. He would judge disputes, lead in rituals, pass on family blessings, approve marriages, support the clan financially, and boss everyone around, including his wife and younger brothers. This system is called Patriarchy, an Old Testament custom in which the adult male rules the family.

The family didn’t live in the time of the Mosaic Law, but the author of the narrative brought the sacrifices of his own day into the story to move it to its conclusion. It doesn’t matter that one lad offered sheep and the other the fruit of his orchard or farm. In Mosaic Law, both have a place. But God rejected Cain’s offering, and there is no reason to wonder why. We see a clue in the words of Jesus Christ in Matt. 5:23, 24:

"Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift."

Cain had a chronic attitude problem. The fly in Cain’s soup was always that his younger brother Abel got all the attention. Abel was cuter, happier, and played obnoxious jokes on Cain. Abel was always nice, and mom loved him best. (OK, I made that up, but it might be true.) Those were days when God spoke face to face with the family of Adam, so God gave Cain some fatherly counsel as to why his sacrifice wasn’t accepted.

“Why are you angry all the time? Why do you pout all day? If you do what is right, don’t you think your sacrifice will be accepted?” Next, there are two translations. One says (loosely), “If you don’t straighten up, sin lies at the door. It wants to completely engulf you, so you should get on top of it now.” The other says, “Your brother will be at your beck and call and you will rule over him.” Either way, God is telling Cain to “do what is right” in order to achieve what he desires in life.

Nevertheless, Cain hated Abel to the point of luring him into a field, killing him, and burying the body, so the sin that God warned against won the battle for Cain’s soul. The Lord confronted Cain in that field and gave him an opportunity to confess, but Cain’s response was, “Am I my brother’s keeper? How would I know where my brother is?” So God drops the boom:

"What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth."

And Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face; I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me.”

So the LORD lightens the sentence a bit. He puts some kind of mark on Cain to give him a pass when he journeys into unknown territory with unknown tribes who do not know Adam, Eve, or their deity. Please do not think, as they did in days of yore, that the “mark” was black skin. Black skin never kept anyone from being killed. God (?) also gave him a decree of vengeance, up to seven times. Whatever the sign was, and however that decree was transmitted, Cain traveled into the land of Nod and gave up farming to become a developer. He built a town, which he named after his own firstborn son.

Instead of becoming a homeless wanderer, Cain settled into a foreign city and became quite respectable. He had lots of kids, and the mayor of the town always tipped his hat when Cain walked by. He literally got away with murder and became a bigshot in a foreign locale. I would guess that Cain got well over the notion that you can hide your misdeeds from Yahweh. As his descendants filled the earth, the legend of the decree of vengeance persisted in the family lore. Finally, it became more than lore, it became policy. Several generations down the line from Cain, we have Lamech, a man with two wives.

"Then Lamech said to his wives: Adah and Zillah, listen to my speech! For I have killed a man for wounding me, even a young man for hurting me. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold," (vv. 23, 24). 

Lest you think that this passage is a glitch that we can pass over, note that Jesus seems to be referencing it in his statement about forgiveness:

"Then Peter came up to Him and said, 'Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven,'" (Matt. 18:21, 22).

I’m writing today to take the words of the text as presented in the Torah and plumb them for lessons that we can apply to today, and there are plenty of those. Let’s look at a few:

A]  Cain received the second commandment in the history of the human race… “Do what is right.” It’s the first post-Eden commandment to anyone and it sums up all the local law codes that already existed and all the religion in the Bible from Genesis 1 to the last verse of Revelation. It’s what God wants for all of us, but especially for leaders and influencers. The promise to Cain was, just do what is right and what you want will fall naturally into place. But if sin masters you rather than the other way around, your life will take an adverse turn.

B]  You’ve heard people say, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” Cain was religious, but not spiritual. Even when conversing with God face to face, he couldn’t wrap his mind around on what God really wanted, which is ethics, virtue, a caring attitude toward members of the family and the community. Cain probably saw that as a kind of milquetoast weakness. I think he wanted to be the tough guy, and it would follow that he wanted to milk the faith of others to the fullest extent possible.

C]  Cain was obsessed with his status as a ruler in the family. Jesus thwarted that tendency among his disciples by saying that the greatest of you will be servant of all (John 13:12–17), and “those desiring to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all,” Mark 9:35. We not only have a party here in America that is willing to overthrow all decency and even democracy to retain all power, we have millions of Christians wanting to help them do that. It's a bottomless abyss of lust for power, money, and influence. It will bring nothing but corruption and suffering.

D]  Notice that when God confronted Cain, he gave him one chance to fess up by asking him where his brother was, but Cain was dumb enough to think that God didn’t see what he had done to Abel. He was feeling no remorse at all. “Am I my brother’s keeper” is a living political question today. There is a whole party that says, “Nah, not really,” versus a party that insists that we are all keepers of one another and we all thrive when that is the policy.

E]  Busted, but never apologize. Even when God raised the temperature and honed in on Abel’s blood crying from the ground, Cain didn’t actually repent or apologize or acknowledge that he had sinned. He gave no thought to the grief of his parents wondering what had happened to their beloved son. Abel’s blood in the ground couldn’t even tickle Cain’s toes. He just listened to the sentence of the divine court and began to whine about how hard it would be for him. “My sentence is too harsh,” he cried. “Men from other tribes will see me and kill me.”

Today we have a whole party that commits crimes with impunity, lies with impunity, trashes our democracy with impunity. Some who have been caught have actually changed not just their minds, but their natures. Like Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney and fixer, they realize that what they did was wrong. They step us and say so. One of the January 6 rioters acted like a man who has been deprogrammed from a cult. After his testimony before the J6 Committee, he apologized to one of the Capitol Police who was injured in the attack on the capitol. We have a growing horde of Republican leaders and candidates who have learned the power of lies and false religious fervor. They think they can bury their deeds in the field and God won’t see.

F]  So Cain escaped the full wrath of the Court by pleading with the Judge. Rather than a vagabond, he became a VIP in one of the earliest towns, even earlier than cities of legend like Ur and Akkad. His descendants were intelligent, inventing many of the marks of civilized society like music, animal husbandry, and metallurgy. However, in naming his town after his son, Cain reminds me of the wealthy men described in Psalm 49:11, 12,

"Their inner thought is that their houses will last forever, their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man, though (being considered) in honor, does not remain (alive); he is like the beasts that perish."

G]  Not too bad for Cain, but there’s one thorn in this rosy picture. Cain goes into his new place of abode with a certificate of vengeance. Like a mob boss more than a man beloved of God, Cain would put the terror of retribution on anyone thinking that he doesn’t belong in their territory. We have a whole party that talks about God God God, but their attitude toward the ideological opponents is, “You are the enemy. We will bury you. Take no prisoners. Do not show weakness by cooperating. Winner takes all. You investigate us, by god, wait until we get the majority. Lock them up. Lock them up.” They are religious but not spiritual, because the Holy Spirit of God would give them compassion for the poor, and in our day, they have none.

H]  Cain’s line is delineated for six generations, and according to the literal story, Cain probably lived long enough to see all of them. However, the lack of full legal accountability and the legendary promise of vengeance against anyone harming Cain metastasized, becoming seventy times seven. There would be no mercy, no examination as to shared guilt or level of guilt, and no forgiveness...just the Fist of Power. Jesus shared a parable with us about an unforgiving servant who lost the forgiveness that he had earlier gained. It can be found in Matthew 18:21–25. He also gave us a prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” Matt. 6:9–13). It’s interesting that Cain’s line ends there, at least the description of it. After Lamech’s pronouncement to his wives, we hear no more of them. They became spiritually irrelevant.

If only the power people knew what was waiting for them on the other side. Psalm 49 warns them that when Death comes calling, there’s no amount of money they can pay to keep themselves alive. Here is the ultimate fate of those who walk in the Way of Cain versus those walking in the way of genuine, servant-oriented, self-sacrificing, cross-bearing, community-caring Christianity.

Like sheep, they are laid in the grave;
Death shall feed on them;
The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning;
And their beauty shall be consumed in the grave,
Far from their dwelling.
But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,
For He shall receive me. Psalm 49:14, 15

Receive me where? God will abandon the arrogant rich to the grave, but in the metaphorical morning, meaning in the after life, he will receive the upright into the eternal city, into the pearly gates, with VIP treatment, a red carpet welcome, the best table in the house, a penthouse at the top of the building, and an eternity with no regrets or “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” It isn’t wealth itself that causes the rich to turn in their yachts in for a wormy eternity. It’s living according to the Way of Cain.

Would you really want to spend eternity with those other guys?