Cain You Imagine?

Jun 17

Part II of Epic Mini-Series: Horseshoes, Handgrenades, and Gifts He’ll Love

But wait! There’s Before!

Like I said above, this is Part Deux of an ongoing Epic Multi-Series all about getting God THE Thing He wants the most in the whole wide world. If you’re just joining us, even though I didn’t go to 4 years of medical school this morning, I’m going to go ahead and prescribe you the best medicine for what currently ails you: Part I.

Part I…

Scripture

Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?” And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”

Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Genesis 4:2-8

Part II: Cain You Imagine?

Nothing against Abel, yet – but, I personally think Cain gets the raw end of the deal. If you really put yourself in his shoes – ok, fine: strappy sandals – and give yourself a couple minutes to honestly think about what it would have been like for Adam and Eve way back at the beginning of the end of time, and how difficult it would have been being born into the whole unholy shebang they made for themselves and all the rest of us – let’s be honest: it’s a life Cain did NOT ask for, but curses he lived under nonetheless:

The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis 3:14-19

Oof. Right?

So often – because we’ve been hearing baby-friendly versions of it since childhood – I think we just gloss over the intricate meaning of the above; but if you give it a moment’s consideration – post-Curse, it had to have been really, really awful for Cain when he was a child:

First, he’s famous for being the first one of us ever born. Think about it. How many things did you read, look up at least once, ask an AI chatbot for help with, or had a doctor tell you what to do while an infant wouldn’t stop screaming its guts out. Eve didn’t have a playbook. Eve had Adam, who already blamed her for everything. Poor Eve.

Which, if we’re honest means: poor Cain.

Let alone women today, for the most part, know what they’re getting themselves into way before they’re cursing the doctor into giving them an epidural. Even though God warned Eve in the Curse He pronounced, that from conception to labor it was going to hurt, a lot, I’m pretty sure she didn’t know to expect the nine months of parasitically stealing, nausea inducing, extra 30 pounds gift she was about to receive while she was expecting. Let alone all the squeezing, tearing, crying, pooping on the table, never fitting into those jeans ever again, nor the persistent insecurity of Adam not looking at her the same way ever again. And, as all the above still does today – as the object of, and reason for, all that internal ire – Cain would certainly be subjected to a lot of unconcious latent resentment.

But Cain wasn’t just the first one ever to get blasted through the birth canal. He was inherently the first one to ever receive Adam‘s gift of eternal sin. Or, said differently: Cain is the original heir of Original Sin. I had to pause just there, typing that. Honestly, I really need not say more, here – something about that just sounds really something awful.

He’s also firstborn into a world still really raw from the devastating effects of the very first sin ever committed. Give yourself a chance to really think about THAT: in a single moment, it went from a Paradise that God created just for them, to all of Creation being really pissed at them. I think it’s safe to say while to this day, we still experience the underlying and lingering issues of Adam and Eve’s unfortunate gift to all of us, several thousand diluting generations in between, we are also pretty desensitized to it; which, is a “grace“ Cain didn’t have yet.

Thirdly, while we don’t have an exact headcount of demons prowling about the surface of the Earth right now, not only is it a fixed number, I think it’s a pretty fair statement to say their forces are spread pretty thin today – what, with 9 billion people spread all over the surface of the planet. Can you imagine though, the incredible challenge it would have been for Cain – not just as the third human being ever made, but literally one of the only three human targets that all of the fallen one-third of all the angels God created – now freshly minted as satan’s minions – have available to try, torment, and torture? I think that alone, probably explains almost everything.

But, even more so, Cain is the firstborn son to parents:

still reeling from the trauma of a deep-seeded Father-wound they caused;

learning how to do kids for the first time. Let alone, kids being kids – awful, sometimes – without a babysitter to give Adam and Eve a break;

suddenly thrusted into not just fending for themselves, but now providing for a household that’s literally exposed to the elements and to a world that for the most part wants to eat them;

with lingering eternal regret for all humankind weighing solely on the two people responsible – not, spread across nor shared by several billion;

all of which means, you know Adam wasn’t always careful with how he said things, let alone what he said when he came home after clocking out from eight hours of thorns and thistles, every night.

All that to say, you really gotta know growing up in that household was tumultuous at best. And remember, these are prehistoric times where environmental conditions has everyone living into the next millennia – so this little family was together under the same primitive lean-to every day, for every part of a century or even more.

And by the time we get to Genesis 4, just based on some of the clues we have on both sides of the Scriptures, above – best guess for this little family of four is it was about 100 years of hard living, living out the direct and full manifestation of every curse and warning God had pronounced in Genesis 3.

Which means:

100 years’ worth of misery with miserable people, and miserable circumstances,

100 years of misplaced anger,

100 years of regret,

100 years of bitter,

100 years of blame,

100 years of shame,

100 years of toil,

100 years of living exposed and in the open,

100 years of loincloth chafing their loins,

100 years of insecurity,

100 years of Curse,

leaves a wounded, emotionally writhing first born, first bound Cain starving – for not just acceptance, but also firstly desperate for a semblance of a Father‘s loving satisfaction with him; and in Genesis 4, on the occasion of harvest, this was finally his big moment to get it.

As the special day approaches, they each put together a little something special to honor the One that made it all possible. Abel from his flock. Cain from his fields.

Abel, the youngest, the creative, the risk-taker – puts not just what’s he’s feeling about God into it, but clearly what he wants God to feel in the moment. He gives it all he’s got, by giving God all he’s got: the firstborn of his livestock.

Cain, the first born, is responsible first and puts a little sensibility, and maybe I’m projecting here, but I think 100 years of ‘how long until next harvest?’ into his. Cain gives just enough of his crops to God, while making sure he’ll have still enough to last through winter.

Bind it all up on the altar. Wrap it with fire. Put a prayer bow on it.

Wait to see if He likes it.

For Abel, it’s tangible Pleasure and Favor – I think, just based on how Scripture usually plays out, its symbolized in a Fire that gets bigger, hotter, brighter, louder that at some point not just consumes everything, but reaches up to Heaven.

For Cain, I think, just based on how Scripture usually plays out, it’s a fire that maybe gets snuffed out but I think more likely: slowly dies out. And the smell says what God is thinking. Ever burn corn on a grill? Honestly there’s only a few things worse than the smell of cooking vegetables. Charred vegetables is one of them.

Not only is the expected loving, accepted response to his gift intangibly absent for him, but so is God altogether.

And, as he looks around, somehow Cain’s able to perceive that the gift he was really wanting to get from his Father had already been given to another nearby.

And in a repeating theme throughout the Bible, when the other, younger sibling gets the blessing we thought we were going to get, or at least thought we deserved more, it usually doesn’t end well.

And again, despite what they may have alluded to in Sunday school, it’s not sibling rivalry, nor teenage angst – not even the thinking that Abel has replaced him as favorite son – that has Cain simmering; it’s really, everything:

an epoch’s worth of seemingly-absent-Father-issues that an entire era’s amount of offered up sheep and goats could never really resolve;

generational curses he’s inherited being piled onto ALL the Curses on all the generations, now seemingly all on him;

along with more than a Legion’s worth of demonic advice;

that’s stoking Cain’s pain into a rolling boil.

And instead of giving the gifting opportunity another try – a Grace that God unequivocally would have given without the need to reschedule the special occasion – Cain, unfortunately, instead takes matters into his own hands.

And infamously also becomes the first one of us to ever take life away from another.

Like they say: hurt people hurt people.

Don’t get it twisted, I’m not trying to rewrite history, nor even give Cain a second bite at the apple – but I do think, given everything going against him from the very beginning, if we’re able to see his story through the lens of his latent pain, maybe we can get a little more insight into how it all went wrong at the first ever recorded gift exchange, in the first place.

But really, there’s not much there at all – ironically, not just on Cain’s altar – but, in Scripture altogether to give us any tangible insight in what not to do in giving our thanksgivings to God, let alone at Christmas or on His Birthday.

So, let’s look to the one who’s commended for not just good gift giving etiquette – or at the very least, the only one to have had enough common sense and sympathy to explicitly give God both, a Birthday and a Christmas gift on December 25 – but knew the really good thing He could give to GOD – that GOD wouldn’t want to return – in return for all the good He’d already given.

Behold(en), still