Monday, July 22, 2019
662 - For Your Sake
Spirituality Column
#662
July 23, 2019
Common Christianity
/ Uncommon Commentary
For Your Sake
By Bob Walters
“I
don’t know” … and … “Am I my brother’s keeper?” – Cain, to God, Genesis 4:9
First
a lie, then a dumb question …after starting with a weak offering.
Cain
simply did not understand, embrace, or cherish his responsibilities to God.
Since
the second generation of man – well, if we include Adam and Eve it actually
starts right at the beginning – humanity has sustained an overall miserable
record of discerning that for which we are and are not responsible in the eyes
of God.
Abel
– the object of God’s question and the brother whom Cain had just killed – was
an exception. Abel honored God with an
offering of the best that he had, and God looked upon him with favor. Cain, essentially, offered God leftovers and
God knew the difference. God’s favor was
not on Cain, and Cain was self-righteously outraged.
You
can read the entire story in Genesis 4, but here let’s focus on God’s reaction
and some of the important aspects of man’s various responsibilities to God, to
Mankind, and to all God’s creation. I
can’t think of a better starting point than Cain and Abel.
First,
note God’s even-keeled response to both offerings. He favored this and didn’t favor that. No celebration, no anger … just … favor or
not. Abel’s pleasure was in honoring the
Lord, period. Cain’s heart was set more
on the transactional dynamic of if he gave something to God, God better like it
and act like He likes it! Or I’ll get
angry!
We
often skip over Cain’s dissatisfaction with God and think Cain is simply but
murderously jealous of his brother Abel.
No … Cain is angry at God so he destroys that which God favors. Who/what does that sound like? Satan’s playbook; Page 1.
Just
as God never asks a question to which He does not know the answer (such as, “Where is your brother?”), so too He
knows the exact heart of every man and woman in His creation. Abel with his “fatted parts of the firstborn
of his flock” revealed a heart truly with God.
Cain thought his own duty to God amounted to something like a trade for
which Cain could keep account. It is an
error still with us today the world over – in church and out of church. Do we simply love God? Or are we working an angle?
I
bring this up because I see a modern society quick to assign and approve an
entirely self-directed, secular, and personal responsibility in sole support of
one’s own appetites and opinions. But it
is a one-dimensional responsibility to self, not the proper, manifest palette
buttressing the workings of a Godly and civil society: responsibilities to
family, community, nation, and God.
The
shame of the modern public square is its numbed, frequent, and shockingly dire
opposition to – and typically total ignorance of – God’s coherent commandments
for how things go best for us. Call it
“360-degree accountability.” We must
honor God, but also weigh and discern the circumstances of our brothers and
sisters; and they, ours.
This
is the great lesson of Jesus Christ, what true responsibility before God and
mankind looks like. We wildly assert
personal rights of pleasure, comfort, and opinion, yet vehemently shout down
suggestion of Godly regulation extending beyond our liking.
Jesus’s
death wasn’t so much a payment; it was a picture of responsibility.
In
the light of Jesus, we are all each other’s keepers and our responsibilities
are never just to ourselves. We must
always ask others: What can I do, for your sake?
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