Sunday 22 July 2001

Pic of the day: "Not like Cain, who was of the Evil One, and killed his brother." (Screenshot from Daggerfall, I am happy to say.)

Sermon on Cain

I started to write a black entry today, but then I felt better. (Still kind of sad and angsty, but in a less personal way.) It is not like anybody has died, that I know of. I just did not feel so well, and then the prophet Amos kind of compounded it. Those prophets can be pretty harsh, I tell you. There's stuff there you won't hear anyone read in church in your lifetime. Unless you go to a very very unusual church. (Not likely, since I doubt most of you go to church at all.)

Speaking of which, yesterday (or was it the day before?) I searched for something else on the Web and found the strangest theory about Genesis and the stuff there. It's one thing that many christians today seem to take all of Genesis literally, even though it is rather clearly poetic and mythic in nature. It's kind of sad, but as long as they don't work in geology, biology or related sciences, it doesn't matter all that much. It is sad because clearly they believe in a God who delights in laying out false trails ... indeed, who carefully crafts his entire creation to look entirely at odds with his Word. Would you really worship such a Being, if you could avoid it and still not burn in Hell? I didn't think so.

Enough about that. Not only do people speculate on Genesis, but they have somehow come to believe that when the Serpent seduced Eve, he did have carnal relations with her. People, there are other meanings of "seduce" (or "beguile", as St Paul says). We're talking about a limbless reptile here, folks. I won't go into details on how reptiles reproduce unless you write and ask me, but this is the weirdest thing I've seen even in American religion. Presumably Cain was the offspring of the Devil, and his descendants somehow survived the Flood and continue their terror throughout history. So the Scribes who Jesus denounced as spawn of Satan were descendants of Cain and thus of the Serpent. Excuse me. I honestly wish the fall didn't go deeper than that, that the truly evil people did not descend from Adam at all. But you have to be very very superficial to not see that any one of us could go the way of Cain, if not for the grace of God. That's the point of the whole story, people! This is what happens when people read Genesis like a tech manual. They don't get it, and damage their own soul and those who follow them.

We are all children of Adam, that is: We are all genetically enabled to overrule our instincts, and take responsibility for our own actions. This means that we can gain impressive knowledge, and plan far into the future. But sadly it also means we are capable of horrible evil. Like other social animals, we have an instinct that keeps us from attacking a defenseless enemy. Just like wolves, who rarely kill each other and never in cold blood. But like Cain of legend, we are able to overrule this inhibition. And so we have all these sad news every day, from snipers to murderous rapists. They are children of Cain in spirit, not in flesh. They use Adam's freedom to choose evil over good. And if not for the grace of God, it could be me or you. Believe it or not. But if you don't believe it, you don't really need christianity. There are more fitting philosophies for people who think they are born better than others.

Having lived myself like the rich man in Jesus' parable, a life in luxury (compared to most of the world) I don't exactly look forward to judgement day. But if there's one thing which I will pride myself on, it is that I never doubted that I was capable of any evil known to man. That is not to say that they all come easy to me, but I know deep down that if things had been sufficiently different in my life, there is no limit to what I could have done wrong. Or done right, and this bothers me much more: The evil things I did not do are my own problem; the good things I did not do hurt others. Is this the beginning of the Way of Cain? By not bringing the sacrifice that I should have, I may already have killed my fellow man without even thinking about it. (And with no extra help from horny reptiles, thank you very much.) May God have mercy on us all. And may we all have mercy on each other. Amen.