The two brothers, Cain and Abel, are the first two sons of Adam and Eve. It’s an episode which appears very early on in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. In Genesis chapter 1 we have the first creation account, in chapter 2 the second creation account, in chapter 3 the whole ‘eating of the forbidden fruit’ incident, the first sin, and the couple’s subsequent expulsion from the garden of Eden. And then in chapter 4 is the story of Cain and Abel. The story goes like this: Once Adam and Eve had been expelled and were living outside of the garden of Eden, Eve bore Cain, and then she bore Abel. As far as the mythological account is concerned, Cain and Abel are therefore the first two people to be born of natural means. We’re told that Abel grew up to become a keeper of sheep, and Cain grew up to become a tiller of the ground. But for reasons we’ll get into, their relationship went sour. They became adversarial, and ultimately Cain murdered Abel.

As far as I’m concerned, this is not a historical account, it’s not a record of events - it’s a story, a myth, but that actually makes it more important, not less. Let me explain why. If someone was to write a short story or article today, they could immediately publish it online. Whether anyone would actually read it would depend on where online it was published, how easy it was for random people to stumble across it. If it was just on a personal blog, it would depend upon how much regular readership that blog had amassed, if it was a blog worth returning to or not. Today, there are more words published online, every hour, than a single person could ever possibly hope to read in an entire lifetime. And the amount of content produced each hour is becoming larger and larger with each passing year. In the 20th century, Charlie Chaplin coined that famous expression, “Words are cheap.” And the truth is that today, words are cheaper than ever. Out of that vast array of hourly content, how much of it would actually be worth anyone’s attention? 1%? 0.1%? Probably a lot less than that. Consequently, anything worth our attention, worth reading, has become more difficult to find, especially if you’re a good non-conformist and therefore departing from traditional sources.

Once upon a time, if something appeared before our eyes in typeface, it had an inherent authority about it, an inherent believability. Those days are long gone. Imagine if we were to go back to Victorian times. Unlike today, the masses did not have a voice, they could not be heard even if they wanted to be. To have anything published at all required you to get your work past the most scrupulous of publishers, publishers who of course (with few exceptions) only countenanced proposals from the most upright of white British men. If we go back even further, into medieval times, the role of monastic orders was invaluable in preserving written works. There’s obviously no internet indefinitely preserving information, and there are not even publishing houses. The longevity of texts relied upon a monk taking a special interest in a particular work.

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And so, how does one go about that? How does one examine and implement new ways of being in this world? Well, it is done at some cost. If it’s not costly to us in some sense, then it’s probably not bringing about new ways of being. And this is where the idea of sacrifice comes into play. A couple of years ago, the Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson, who I have a not uncritical appreciation of, did a series of Bible lectures. And in one of these he discussed some of the psychological principles we can extrapolate out from the Cain and Abel story, namely that sacrifice now, whether that’s doing or enduring what we don’t want now, often has a long-term payoff.

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So, in the case of Cain, he reaches a crossroads in his life. His offerings to God are unsatisfactory, and so he could either take the difficult path, the path of self-examination, sacrifice, and engage in that long process of discovering new ways of being, because something is obviously going wrong, or he can take the path of resentment and anger, which is what he does do. And then God comes and speaks to Cain and says, “Cain, Why are you angry? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.” So, this is interesting, because not only is Cain at this crossroads in his life, with a good way that leads to paradise, and a bad way that leads to destruction, but God himself even comes to warn him, to tell him that this is the case.

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(Philippians 4:8) …”whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.” Allow such things to dwell within you, for this way, such things will become who we are.

Amen.