okieinexile
Well-Known Member
The article below is an expansion of the sermon The East of Eden below. I would like any comments you might have with regard to it's organization or lack thereof.
The East of Eden
Or
Jealousy, guilt, and mercy as seen from the east of Eden
By Bobby Neal Winters
I like to revisit Genesis and do it frequently. In some sense, the rest of the Bible is spent elaborating issues raised in that first book in the Bible.
Visiting Genesis is pleasurable and rewarding, but it does carry with it a burden. It is a book that requires more interpretation than may first appear. There are portions where the stories convey actual historical events, but there are others I which are told for the purpose of conveying a particular truth in the most effective way. The problem arises because it is sometimes difficult to separate the accounts which are historical from those that are not.
Let us take the first part of the fourth chapter of Genesis as an example. It is the story of Cain killing Abel. If we look at this simply as a historical account like a police report, there are certain questions we can ask. For instance, where did Cain get his wife?
Folks—and many of them non Christians—can make a big deal out of this. They ask it with sort of an “Aha, I got you now attitude.” If you don’t give them an answer, they can skip church, cheat on their taxes, leave their lawns un-mown, and still be as good as you are because you can’t answer the question in the way they want you to.
To be fair, there are answers to this which would fit the historical interpretation and fit in with themes of the rest of Bible, but my best answer to those asking such a question is “That’s not the point of the story.”
There is another sort of reader who likes to read the Bible very closely—with a microscope in fact. They can look in the first two verses where it specifically mentions that Adam knew Eve and she conceived and bore Cain, but it doesn’t repeat that exact sequence about Abel so there must have been something about Abel’s birth that was different, and they focus there energies on that, while ignoring the main points of the story.
Whole religions have been established with ambiguities such as these for a basis. We might laugh at this, but it’s really not a laughing matter. I could point to examples—but I won’t—of sects which have taken nonstandard readings of a verse here and a verse there and have discarded thousands of years of the Judeo-Christian tradition while going off in their own idiosyncratic direction.
This is a risk of studying the Bible in isolation. One can take false turns from which it is hard to recover. We have a tendency to love our own ideas, and many a lone scholar has labored feverishly to light a candle while missing the bon fire right behind him. In there are some cases in which charismatic individuals have convinced others to ignore the bon fire too.
There are some to whom the Bible becomes an idol. It is something you can take, utter a few words, and magically come away with answers, the true answers, the only answers. What’s more is that there are those who set themselves up as a priest of the sacred mysteries. They are the sole interpreter and do their interpretation without listening to the knowledge of the scholars or the wisdom of the saints. If they are pastors, their “knowledge” can be used as a means of power over their flocks. This practice has become so ingrained in parts of the Christian culture that the people doing it don’t realize that’s what they are doing; or worse, they think it’s normal.
Before we go any farther, I need to share with you I am a United Methodist. It is my personal opinion that the Bible was inspired by God, but it was written by people—or a people, I should say. As a Methodist, I believe it must be interpreted using tradition, experience, and reason. Before finally exploring the text I mentioned, I will briefly expand on these three items as a lens for interpreting scripture.
Let me first mention tradition because it is some sense the most important. Tradition has gotten a lot of bad press, because in the eyes of some, former times should be thrown away and forgotten. But tradition is a mountain we can stand upon. We can see so much farther using the knowledge of those who came before than we could if we simply stood in the valley without that benefit. Using tradition as a tool for interpretation means we must only discard the opinions of previous ages if we are forced to. It is an anchor that keeps us from dashing ourselves to pieces against the rocks.
Next in line comes experience. Experience is, of course, the world’s best teacher, and one may argue it is our first teacher. Let me say that as an aid to interpreting scripture, there is nothing quite like having a share experience to put a fine point on one understands. Experience can bring meaning to a passage like nothing else.
Finally, let me address reason. The use of reason surprises some who believe that religion and reason have nothing to do with each other. I view the use of reason as simply taking advantage of the fact the stories in the Bible are reasonable. The writers of the Bible might have been primitive in some ways, but they were not irrational. They thought long, hard, and well.
So, after this overly long introduction, what do tradition, experience, and reason have to say about the story of Cain and Abel? What is it story about?
It is a story told with some powerful strokes. The first and most important of which is this. Cain was jealous of his brother and killed him.
That is worth repeating: Cain was jealous of his brother and killed him.
The power of jealousy is so strong it can overcome even the power of brotherly love. This is an insight into the darkness of the human spirit that we need to meditate upon, and some of us need to do it daily. In dealing with the world, when is my criticism of a brother, friend, or co-worker justified, and when is it just jealousy?
In reading this passage, how do I know jealousy was Cain’s? The word “jealous” is never mentioned in the chapter. I know it is jealousy because I have experienced jealousy. Cain was human, I am human, and we both can experience jealousy.
Jealousy is touched upon in a number of other places in the Bible. We can think of the relationship between Joseph and his brothers. Much later we can cite the feelings Saul had toward David. Finally, we might ask whether it was jealousy that caused Judas to betray Jesus.
Another of the main themes of this story is Cain’s reaction to his crime. Cain reacted just as his parents had when they ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He covered it up—and God found out about it any way.
Here we can compare and contrast Cain’s reaction to his sin and the way his parents reacted to theirs. God had told Adam and Eve beforehand not to eat of the fruit of the Tree, but he’d never issued an edict to Cain not to kill Abel. Regardless of this Cain hid his crime. We can reason, therefore, that even though God had never told Cain not to kill his brother, he still knew it was wrong.
Much later in Genesis the son’s of Jacob hide their selling of Joseph into slavery by faking his death, which is in turn blamed on a wild animal, and later still, in Second Samuel, King David hides his adultery with Bathsheba by having her husband Uriah the Hittite killed. In each of these cases, the sinner seeks to hide the sin.
The capstone to this story is God’s reaction. How did God react to this first murder? Did he issue the death penalty? Was there an electrocution? Was there a lethal injection?
No. He sentenced Cain to live. Indeed, he put a mark on him so that no one would kill him. Many who read the Bible with a fine tooth comb somehow miss this part and have no trouble with the support of the death penalty. How are we to interpret it?
Here I would invoke tradition—and the Gospel—to interpret this as the action of God the Father. The Father is stern but merciful. He doesn’t kill his child, but banishes him from his face. Sin has caused a greater alienation between the Father and His children.
God’s mercy is seen again when he merely scatters those who build the Tower of Babel and again when he spares Noah’s family from the Flood and again when he spares Lot’s family from Sodom and again when he sends Cyrus as a deliverer for Israel and finally when he sends Jesus as our Savior.
These things I’ve mentioned already are easily visible on the surface. They are the main strokes. However, there are things in the story that are subtler, but are still woven through the entire Bible.
Besides “Where did Cain get his wife?” the question I’ve heard asked most frequently is “why was Cain’s sacrifice refused and his brother Abel’s accepted?” The jealousy this engendered led to Cain’s crime, and some attempt to use this to blame God for the crime.
The sacrifice was not accepted because the offering was sub par. God says this in the story, but why was Cain’s offering sub par?
We need only look one chapter earlier to see the sacrifices Cain and his brother were performing were imitations of the sacrifice God himself had performed when he had killed animals so that Adam and Eve could have clothing. In that sacrifice, blood was shed, an animal lost its life, and their nakedness was covered.
When Cain made his sacrifice it was not a real sacrifice because there was no shedding of blood. The sin of Adam and Eve had caused death to enter the world, and the performance of blood offering was a reminder of the consequence of that sin. Cain’s offering of fruit of the ground did not meet the criteria. There was no sacrifice because it came at no real cost.
Ironically, blood was shed when Cain killed his brother, but this did not please God. His sacrifice in order to clothe Adam and Eve had been an act of mercy, and while sacrifice is a reminder of the cost of sin, it is also a reminder of that mercy. Murder for the sake of blood is no such reminder.
Christians believe this tradition of blood offering continues to the time of Jesus, when He Himself was the final offering. Caiaphas the High Priest spilled Jesus’ blood much as Cain spilled Abel’s. In this case, it was Jesus’ selflessness in the sacrifice of himself that earned our salvation rather than the action of the priest, and God’s mercy is still the reason.
There is a bundle of threads passing through the story of Cain and Abel that are woven into the whole fabric of the Bible. They are colored with human nature and when we examine the fabric produced we can see God’s mercy.
The key in using the Bible as an aid to greater understanding of ourselves and our world is the interpretation. Tradition, experience, and reason are proper tools in this interpretation.
It is my opinion that understanding our place in God’s world is more important than ever as we’ve removed ourselves from his presence and wander even farther to the east of Eden.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and lay speaker in the United Methodist Church. He is the author of two books Grandma Dipped Snuff and Confessions of an Ice Cream Socialist.)
The East of Eden
Or
Jealousy, guilt, and mercy as seen from the east of Eden
By Bobby Neal Winters
I like to revisit Genesis and do it frequently. In some sense, the rest of the Bible is spent elaborating issues raised in that first book in the Bible.
Visiting Genesis is pleasurable and rewarding, but it does carry with it a burden. It is a book that requires more interpretation than may first appear. There are portions where the stories convey actual historical events, but there are others I which are told for the purpose of conveying a particular truth in the most effective way. The problem arises because it is sometimes difficult to separate the accounts which are historical from those that are not.
Let us take the first part of the fourth chapter of Genesis as an example. It is the story of Cain killing Abel. If we look at this simply as a historical account like a police report, there are certain questions we can ask. For instance, where did Cain get his wife?
Folks—and many of them non Christians—can make a big deal out of this. They ask it with sort of an “Aha, I got you now attitude.” If you don’t give them an answer, they can skip church, cheat on their taxes, leave their lawns un-mown, and still be as good as you are because you can’t answer the question in the way they want you to.
To be fair, there are answers to this which would fit the historical interpretation and fit in with themes of the rest of Bible, but my best answer to those asking such a question is “That’s not the point of the story.”
There is another sort of reader who likes to read the Bible very closely—with a microscope in fact. They can look in the first two verses where it specifically mentions that Adam knew Eve and she conceived and bore Cain, but it doesn’t repeat that exact sequence about Abel so there must have been something about Abel’s birth that was different, and they focus there energies on that, while ignoring the main points of the story.
Whole religions have been established with ambiguities such as these for a basis. We might laugh at this, but it’s really not a laughing matter. I could point to examples—but I won’t—of sects which have taken nonstandard readings of a verse here and a verse there and have discarded thousands of years of the Judeo-Christian tradition while going off in their own idiosyncratic direction.
This is a risk of studying the Bible in isolation. One can take false turns from which it is hard to recover. We have a tendency to love our own ideas, and many a lone scholar has labored feverishly to light a candle while missing the bon fire right behind him. In there are some cases in which charismatic individuals have convinced others to ignore the bon fire too.
There are some to whom the Bible becomes an idol. It is something you can take, utter a few words, and magically come away with answers, the true answers, the only answers. What’s more is that there are those who set themselves up as a priest of the sacred mysteries. They are the sole interpreter and do their interpretation without listening to the knowledge of the scholars or the wisdom of the saints. If they are pastors, their “knowledge” can be used as a means of power over their flocks. This practice has become so ingrained in parts of the Christian culture that the people doing it don’t realize that’s what they are doing; or worse, they think it’s normal.
Before we go any farther, I need to share with you I am a United Methodist. It is my personal opinion that the Bible was inspired by God, but it was written by people—or a people, I should say. As a Methodist, I believe it must be interpreted using tradition, experience, and reason. Before finally exploring the text I mentioned, I will briefly expand on these three items as a lens for interpreting scripture.
Let me first mention tradition because it is some sense the most important. Tradition has gotten a lot of bad press, because in the eyes of some, former times should be thrown away and forgotten. But tradition is a mountain we can stand upon. We can see so much farther using the knowledge of those who came before than we could if we simply stood in the valley without that benefit. Using tradition as a tool for interpretation means we must only discard the opinions of previous ages if we are forced to. It is an anchor that keeps us from dashing ourselves to pieces against the rocks.
Next in line comes experience. Experience is, of course, the world’s best teacher, and one may argue it is our first teacher. Let me say that as an aid to interpreting scripture, there is nothing quite like having a share experience to put a fine point on one understands. Experience can bring meaning to a passage like nothing else.
Finally, let me address reason. The use of reason surprises some who believe that religion and reason have nothing to do with each other. I view the use of reason as simply taking advantage of the fact the stories in the Bible are reasonable. The writers of the Bible might have been primitive in some ways, but they were not irrational. They thought long, hard, and well.
So, after this overly long introduction, what do tradition, experience, and reason have to say about the story of Cain and Abel? What is it story about?
It is a story told with some powerful strokes. The first and most important of which is this. Cain was jealous of his brother and killed him.
That is worth repeating: Cain was jealous of his brother and killed him.
The power of jealousy is so strong it can overcome even the power of brotherly love. This is an insight into the darkness of the human spirit that we need to meditate upon, and some of us need to do it daily. In dealing with the world, when is my criticism of a brother, friend, or co-worker justified, and when is it just jealousy?
In reading this passage, how do I know jealousy was Cain’s? The word “jealous” is never mentioned in the chapter. I know it is jealousy because I have experienced jealousy. Cain was human, I am human, and we both can experience jealousy.
Jealousy is touched upon in a number of other places in the Bible. We can think of the relationship between Joseph and his brothers. Much later we can cite the feelings Saul had toward David. Finally, we might ask whether it was jealousy that caused Judas to betray Jesus.
Another of the main themes of this story is Cain’s reaction to his crime. Cain reacted just as his parents had when they ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He covered it up—and God found out about it any way.
Here we can compare and contrast Cain’s reaction to his sin and the way his parents reacted to theirs. God had told Adam and Eve beforehand not to eat of the fruit of the Tree, but he’d never issued an edict to Cain not to kill Abel. Regardless of this Cain hid his crime. We can reason, therefore, that even though God had never told Cain not to kill his brother, he still knew it was wrong.
Much later in Genesis the son’s of Jacob hide their selling of Joseph into slavery by faking his death, which is in turn blamed on a wild animal, and later still, in Second Samuel, King David hides his adultery with Bathsheba by having her husband Uriah the Hittite killed. In each of these cases, the sinner seeks to hide the sin.
The capstone to this story is God’s reaction. How did God react to this first murder? Did he issue the death penalty? Was there an electrocution? Was there a lethal injection?
No. He sentenced Cain to live. Indeed, he put a mark on him so that no one would kill him. Many who read the Bible with a fine tooth comb somehow miss this part and have no trouble with the support of the death penalty. How are we to interpret it?
Here I would invoke tradition—and the Gospel—to interpret this as the action of God the Father. The Father is stern but merciful. He doesn’t kill his child, but banishes him from his face. Sin has caused a greater alienation between the Father and His children.
God’s mercy is seen again when he merely scatters those who build the Tower of Babel and again when he spares Noah’s family from the Flood and again when he spares Lot’s family from Sodom and again when he sends Cyrus as a deliverer for Israel and finally when he sends Jesus as our Savior.
These things I’ve mentioned already are easily visible on the surface. They are the main strokes. However, there are things in the story that are subtler, but are still woven through the entire Bible.
Besides “Where did Cain get his wife?” the question I’ve heard asked most frequently is “why was Cain’s sacrifice refused and his brother Abel’s accepted?” The jealousy this engendered led to Cain’s crime, and some attempt to use this to blame God for the crime.
The sacrifice was not accepted because the offering was sub par. God says this in the story, but why was Cain’s offering sub par?
We need only look one chapter earlier to see the sacrifices Cain and his brother were performing were imitations of the sacrifice God himself had performed when he had killed animals so that Adam and Eve could have clothing. In that sacrifice, blood was shed, an animal lost its life, and their nakedness was covered.
When Cain made his sacrifice it was not a real sacrifice because there was no shedding of blood. The sin of Adam and Eve had caused death to enter the world, and the performance of blood offering was a reminder of the consequence of that sin. Cain’s offering of fruit of the ground did not meet the criteria. There was no sacrifice because it came at no real cost.
Ironically, blood was shed when Cain killed his brother, but this did not please God. His sacrifice in order to clothe Adam and Eve had been an act of mercy, and while sacrifice is a reminder of the cost of sin, it is also a reminder of that mercy. Murder for the sake of blood is no such reminder.
Christians believe this tradition of blood offering continues to the time of Jesus, when He Himself was the final offering. Caiaphas the High Priest spilled Jesus’ blood much as Cain spilled Abel’s. In this case, it was Jesus’ selflessness in the sacrifice of himself that earned our salvation rather than the action of the priest, and God’s mercy is still the reason.
There is a bundle of threads passing through the story of Cain and Abel that are woven into the whole fabric of the Bible. They are colored with human nature and when we examine the fabric produced we can see God’s mercy.
The key in using the Bible as an aid to greater understanding of ourselves and our world is the interpretation. Tradition, experience, and reason are proper tools in this interpretation.
It is my opinion that understanding our place in God’s world is more important than ever as we’ve removed ourselves from his presence and wander even farther to the east of Eden.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and lay speaker in the United Methodist Church. He is the author of two books Grandma Dipped Snuff and Confessions of an Ice Cream Socialist.)
