Cain, Abel, and Us

Passage: 1 John 3:11-15

In his ongoing discourse on love, John brings up the old story of Cain and Abel.  It’s the story of the first siblings.  It’s also the story of the first murder.

In the story, Abel the shepherd offers God the gift of his best sheep.  God is delighted.  Cain sees God’s delight and, thinking he’d like some too, goes to his garden.  He picks some of the fruit of his own labors, and brings it to God.  He stands back, waiting to bask in the praise he has coming.  It doesn’t come.  Cain’s surprise is replaced with disappointment, then rage.  Abel becomes a constant reminder of the prize Cain wasn’t given.  Cain has to erase the reminder. 

John says that God rejected Cain’s offering because Cain “belonged to the evil one.”  Cain in turn murdered his brother because “his deeds were evil.”  It’s too simple an explanation.  Could it be that murder comes not from a wicked heart, but a broken heart?

What are the places in our own hearts that give birth to murder?  The desire to see a celebrated sibling fall from grace?  Or a successful colleague slip?  Where does that instinct to verbally dress down a neighbor or friend or fellow churchgoer come from, if not the same place in our hearts that harbors our own deep senses of inadequacy and failure?  And what good can come of actions that are driven by a sense of inadequacy? 

Cain’s offering came up short not because Cain didn’t produce good fruit.  But because Cain used it to try to pull himself up in God’s eyes.  Cain never got the truth Abel believed out of hand: God loves his children equally.  God’s love comes to us not as a condition of a contract, our half of which is hard work and stellar performance.  God just loves us.  And no amount of performance can improve upon it.  Cain used his offering to get something that was already his.  His fatal error was failing to believe it in the first place – doubting that which God offered freely. 

God gives us his best.  And this is what enables us to be our best.  Ironically, when we’re convinced of the truth of God’s love, we don’t need to be better than we really are.  We certainly don’t need to be better than our siblings.  We can love – wholeheartedly and unreservedly – because we’ve been filled to overflowing with the love of God the Father.