Typing to the wolrd wide web is not new to me, but blogging is. It is part of a semi-requirement of a grad school class lovingly called Scriptures I, catchy title I know. In this blog I will discuss deep thoughts on things we read and discussed in class. So, here goes. In reading Genesis ch. 4 we come across a well known passage in the telling of Cain and Abel. For those who don't know the story, here's a quick recap. It comes time to give God an offering and Cain who toils in the field all day brings God something from the field, while Abel is a shephered and brings God one of his animals as an offering. God picks Abel's offering over Cain's and in Cain's distress over the matter he kills his own brother, Abel. It is a very quick and precise story, but there are so many things here to discuss as I quickly discovered in class today, but I won't go into all of that. Rather I want to stick with one subject and that is the matter of brother killing brother. This we find is something that is far more reaching to us usually than a random murder or act of violence. For a brother to raise arm against brother is something so intense and diliberate that it echoes with us far after we have expereinced it, read about it, or heard about it. We have to but look into history's pages on warfare to find that some of the bloodiest, most violent, and often longest wars are ones atributed to so-called brothers. We turn chiefly to our own American history to see the Civil War and albeit these were not literal blood borthers, the implication is there; countrymen against countrymen, for even though the Confedrate States of America had declared themselves independent they were still americans, notice how america is still at the end of their offcial title. Yet we lost more people in that war combined than almost all the other wars we have fought in since, this of course is being erased as history moves on, but the loss there was tremendous and it was americans against americans. Or how about we turn to something more closer to home for me as I am half jewish; the palestinian-israli conflict. It is sad to say even the title of this ongoing fight, there have been so many different battles and wars amongst generally the same people that it is now just generally reffered to as a "conflict". Religously speaking I do not think there could be closer brothers, one being Jewish and the other being Islamic (speaking broadly of course) and Jews trace back to Isaac while Islam trace back to Ishmael who are both sons of abraham and whom we both claim as the father to our religion. Yet there is not a longer more violent ongoing, ceasingly never-ending conflict than ours. Even something that Dr. Reid said today struck me when he mentioned that oprressed communities so often kill each other far more than they do so-called outsiders and that really never occured to me significantly until he said that and I realized that that had been my experience with such places and communities as well. So then why do brothers raise hands against one another and often so violently? I think maybe more often than not it is because we are so close, maybe too close. We know each other's deslikes and likes, our short comings, our buttons and in the little things that we do to one another may go on being ignored at the time, but we store them up in us always becuase it was our family and one day that just spills out into this violence, at least it does for some. Maybe more than anything in this cain/abel context it expresses to us just how real sin is in our lifes. Maybe when sin first entered into human's lives we really didn't have this undersdtanding of how detremental it is and can be and we acted accordingly with no regard until one day when we weren't really paying attention it snuck up on us and influenced us to even kill our own family as God so warns in Genesis 4:7 that "Sin couches at the door: its urge is toward you". So maybe we kill our family becuase we are even too busy and neglectful to notice the sin waiting right around the corner until it is too late. Something, as always, to pounder. Sorry for the bleak message, but thought I would share, becuase it struck a chord with me. With that being said, LOVE YOUR BROTHER!
Kalos, elpis
Kelly M. Doolittle
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