What I learned from Cain and Abel

As I have been studying the Old Testament, I was reading in Genesis 4 about Cain and Abel.  Cain and Abel both brought their offerings to God and Abel’s offering was respected while Cain’s was not.  It is not clear in the text why Abel’s was respected and Cain’s was not.  Perhaps something about “firstfruits.”  However, I found verse 7 interesting.  

7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. 

It seems as if God is giving Cain a chance to do well, to try again to do it right and “shalt thou not be accepted?”  

But instead of looking at his own actions and into his own life, Cain instead looks at his brother and decides a change in his brother’s life is the solution.  Cain has little control over another person, his brother, and thinks that the ultimate control is to kill him.  

How often, when we have problems in our lives, are we tempted to look for the blame outside of ourselves, our own lives. When we look outside ourselves, we have little control and feel stuck, and sometimes feel like the only solution is to control others.  But if we look in our own lives, painful as it sometimes is to see where we have gone wrong, it is there that we have control, it is there we can enact change, and it is there we have the hope of things getting better.  

Sometimes this comes up in sneaky ways that seem and feel pretty righteous and empathetic.  I want to plan a family vacation so that we can enjoy spending time together and become closer.  Sounds pretty wonderful, right? Except that when I think this, I am judging my success on other people’s actions and feelings.  But it sounds so wonderful to want others to be happy, doesn’t it? Except that when they aren’t, I have made it a judgment on me—giving me responsibility for something I have no control over.  Influence perhaps, but not control. So, if I plan the vacation and family members are unhappy for whatever reason, I feel bad.  And then, how am I interacting with my family when I feel bad?  I might try to do things to control them into being happy, or I might pull away.  Both things that might make me feel worse and perhaps influence others to feel worse as well. 

However, if I consciously decide that I am providing an opportunity for my family, it might be easier to judge myself by the success of something I have control over.  Not for others’ actions and feelings.  God only judges us for things we have conttrol over.  

While Cain took the most drastic way of controlling someone else, how do we try to control others in more sneaky ways to make ourselves feel better? And how can we look at ourselves, while initially more uncomfortable, yields much better results?