Recently, I was driving and took the exit ramp. In the grass on the left was a family of geese, a mother and her baby geese, who apparently had a home in the little retention pond at the center of the concrete jungle. The goose and its babies stood near the road of rushing traffic, and I thought, “Wow, that goose is really out of place standing there.”
Then it struck me that the goose was not out of place. The goose was the only thing in the right place. What was out of place was the massive highway and the car I was in, since the overpass had only existed for about twenty years. Cars alone have only been around for about a century. The goose was right where it was supposed to be, which was near a body of water, with grass around it, so that she could find bugs and weeds to feed to her babies. Everything but the goose was out of place. And to explain why all of the highways and cars and trucks exist is much harder than explaining the goose.
What has been a fascinating exploration for me is to go back and read Genesis regarding the expansion of technology in the world, and from who it comes from. Interestingly, it comes from Cain’s line, and Cain’s name means “possession.” This little story about Cain after the murder of Abel is one of those paragraphs in Genesis that you may feel it’s worth skipping because of the “begat, begat, begat” genealogy, but it so important to slow down or you’ll miss the bus into the next dimension of scripture. Because from Cain’s line comes cities and highways and cars and music and polygamy and swords and bullets. After Cain bashes Abel’s head in, he wanders restlessly in a land called Nod and starts his own family. On the face of it, Cain’s descendants have incredible accomplishments.
Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and named it Enoch after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael the father of Methushael, and Methushael the father of Lamech. Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah bore Tubal-cain, who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. (Genesis 4:17-22)
This little section of Genesis 4 is anything but a yawner, because much else comes from Cain’s line down the road. The boring genealogies that we skip have treasures in them if you follow who begat who in the Bible. Furthermore, the names themselves have great meaning, as they are more than just some username chosen at random. I will consciously avoid diving into Genesis 6 here where the giant clans come from, because that will lead me astray. But let’s just explore Cain’s line a bit.
In terms of what we value today, Cain’s family accomplishments fit exactly what modern parents brag about to one another. From Cain’s line we get the first city, permanent housing (single-family tent homes), and domesticated animals. That alone is amazing. But then we get music, too: the arts come from Cain’s line. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, from Tubal-Cain, we get bronze and iron, which means blacksmithing for building tools and, more ominously, weapons. In other words, Cain’s line is where technology comes from, which most of us worship today. Oh, and we get the first instance of a bad marriage with Lamech, who has two wives. So polygamy enters the Bible initially here, without much fanfare. People often make the mistake in the Old Testament of seeing polygamy and thinking it’s a free pass, that it’s acceptable, and of course it never says that. In fact, it’s always a disaster. Whoever has more than one wife suffers disorder in their house, from Abraham to Jacob to David to Solomon. Never, anywhere, does it suggest that multiple wives leads to anything good. In fact, Isaac has the one model marriage of the patriarchs, and his story is quite happy (aside from the whole trick on Esau by Jacob and Rebekah). But the first polygamist? Lamech? Well, Lamech is a straight-up lunatic sociopath. More on him in a bit. (Note: there is another Lamech in Seth’s line, who we know nothing about. Maybe it was the good version of Lamech.)
Now, you can pass this by and say, “How ridiculous - one family line could not create all of these things.” And in saying so, you will miss the whole point because you’re reading it like a science book instead of a soul book. This is what happens when you don’t stop and think: “What is this book trying to say here?” Because everything in chapter 4 of Genesis has many layers of meaning. In fact, every chapter of Genesis does. (I think what surprises me most today is that the same person who can see four layers of meaning in something like Squid Game cannot see past the surface level literal layer in Genesis. It’s like they can’t apply deep reading if its scripture, but can go full Jacques Derrida on rottentomatoes.com. But I digress.)
Let’s resume.
After Cain and Abel, Adam has another son named Seth, which is the line that leads to Abraham, and eventually Mary and Jesus. After Seth is born, religion becomes a thing. Notice that religion did not come from the line of Cain. This is important.
All we learn about Seth is that after his birth “…people began to invoke the name of the Lord.” (Gen 4:26) How interesting. Like so many things in Genesis a single phrase is freighted with meaning. Recall that all of these stories had to come down in oral tradition, so they couldn’t be as verbose as I am in posts like this that are way too wordy.
So from one branch from Adam we have technology, art, cities, polygamy, murder, and from the other we get…faith. Basically, we get humility before God in the line of Seth. That’s his only “accomplishment,” if we want to call it that.
Worth noting is that farming seems to be assigned to Adam, as he had to get his bread from the sweat of his brow. In the story of Cain and Abel we hear about farming of both animals and plants, because the thing that made Cain angry was Abel’s offering of an animal from his flock, which was chosen over Cain’s fruit “from the ground,” meaning some kind of grain. After Eden, we seem to have an semi-idyllic period of farming. Then comes the murder of Abel, and all hell breaks loose. Like, literally. After the murder comes the march of progress and technology.
You could say that Cain is a real go-getter from the start and there doesn’t seem to be much happening in his family around invoking the name of the Lord. He and his children are busy. They seem to have a lot of goals and they hit their goals. In so many ways, Cain’s family line is a model and ideal of all that modern high achievers seek for their offspring.
If you were talking to a modern Cain, you would likely say, “Cain, you must be proud of your children and grandchildren.” I suspect he would agree. He would be very proud. Don’t we all say that today? “I’m proud of you, son.” We are always talking about our pride over accomplishments. “I’m proud of you for working hard.” “Congratulations on landing on the moon, Neil, the whole nation is proud of you.” Or, “Mr. Oppenheimer, we at the U.S. Army are real proud of all you’ve done in helping us build the first atomic bomb.”
And being “proud” is the problem, because pride really, really likes power. This is one of the words that we mistake as a good thing.
One thing that always gave me a weird spidey-sense in the Gospels is when God says he is “well pleased” over his son, Jesus. At Jesus’ Baptism, God the Father uses this term. Then again at the Transfiguration, God the Father says “well pleased.” He does not say “proud”. Because seriously, the word I expect in this sentence is “proud,” not “well pleased.”
At his Baptism:
And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Mt 3:16-17)
At the Transfiguration:
While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” (Mt 17:5-7)
Why does God say “well pleased” instead of “proud”? Is this an accident?
It’s obvious that this wording is specifically avoiding the language we would normally use for a child that we are excited about. There is a very careful wording here to avoid using the word proud. We should have a word in English, without the space, “wellpleased”, because then we could tell our children that and avoid the horrors of pride.
I could always feel in these events that there is something different about being well pleased versus being proud. And it seems rather obvious once you realize that the root sin of everything is pride that it is far better to be pleased about a person, than proud about them. The difference of being pleased about your team winning the Super Bowl instead of being proud is that in the first case, you’re content with the beauty of the game, perhaps satisfied with seeing a great game that happened of athletes glorifying God through their physical gifts. In the second case, with pride over winning, you feel superior for your team.
This is subtle but enormous in consequence. Are you wellpleased or proud?
Because pride is what Cain has. He’s dripping wet with pride. When sin was “crouching at his door,” he did not master it by humbling himself, he opened the door and let sin inside. His prideful ego led him to wrath, and wrath, in turn, puts him into a holy terror. Cain also has a terror in him because after the murder of Abel, he feels cursed by God and expects to be murdered himself:
“Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. (Gen 4:14-15)
His terror is softened by God’s mercy. With God’s mark upon him, Cain is protected, but he’s not free of his sin, nor does he seem to be changed. There is no reference to repentance of any kind. Rather than repent and kneel, Cain’s descendants seem to show no humility for this gift of grace. Lamech, his great-great-great grandson, takes this exemption as a a license to kill. Because he brags about killing two men. Without remorse, Lamech says:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” (Gen 4:23-24)
Thus you have the full-blown sociopath in Lamech, who feels immune from morality altogether. He’s got multiple murders and multiple wives. Incidentally, this is what I see as the fundamental problem of “Once saved, always saved,” because if you are saved and need no further corrections to your behavior, then you can be Lamech. And by the way, Lamech is a perfect example of a Biblical character showing us exactly how not to act. If we need to have our villain wear a black cowboy hat, Lamech is one of those characters.
Once you go back and read about the Fall in Genesis, and follow the line of Cain, who first sought power by murder due to his wounded pride, a picture of a world full of pride, sin, sex, and violence begin to take shape. His descendants have an increasing urge to control nature via technology and knowledge. There is strong economic drive in the line of Cain to gain wealth and influence. Thus, eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is passed on to us all through some kind of cosmic inheritance, and yet anyone can reject evil. We are fallen yet not ruined. We are damaged but not beyond hope, because we see Seth on the other side of Adam’s line taking a very different approach to life: he is not hammering the world to his will, he is invoking the name of God.
So why does Cain’s line feel so compelled to invent, explore, study, seek, as opposed to say, kneeling to pray? Why do cities and highways and guns come from Cain but not Seth? It’s because of pride and the fear that stems from it. There is fear of the Lord, also known as awe and wonder, and then there is fear of losing what we have “won” here in this life. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because it will bring you to kneel and pray. Fear of others, fear of losing what you have, is the beginning of a vicious circle, the rat race, and it is the gateway to sin.
Cain has “won” a license to sin, and his family uses this badge of honor to reject God altogether. But then his descendants attempt to “gain the whole world,” which Jesus warns us against, because it’s a trap. Whatever you gain you can then lose to another, and in the process you will lose your soul.
Whoever has much is fearful of losing it, and thus needs more power to push the fear away. Lamech laughs at God, saying that he will be avenged seventy-seven times by God if anyone tries to hurt him. Lamech’s comment is even referred to by Jesus later on in the Gospels. Jesus references this same number. It’s not a coincidence. Because in way, Lamech is right. God will forgive him seventy-seven times. God will forgive us all that many times. That’s exactly what Jesus tells Peter. But the whole point is that it shouldn’t take us seventy-seven times to wise up and stop committing the same sins. Imagine how depressing this must have been for Peter to hear:
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Mt 18:21-22)
Unlike Lamech, Jesus tells Peter that he must constantly take the lowest seat, the humble place, and forgive. This is difficult to do. Why? Because of pride. Because we want to be Lamech or Tony Soprano, in our own way. We want to win. And you see this play out in the wider world, far beyond the individual.
Fear is why the wealthy nations must keep their foot on the head of weaker nations and peoples. Really, this explains any sin, from racism to theft to adultery to sodomy to murder. All sin is a lack of trust in God. All sin is a rejection of God for the pride of the self and fear of not getting what we think we want. But Christ is the king who trusts, rather than fears. So for everyone in the last century who wanted to flatten Christianity into “just another religion”, like Joseph Campbell or James C. Frazer or the New Atheists, they are missing the whole point.
This is why Jesus is different. This is why Christianity is different from every other religion. This is why God does not act like a professional wrestler or politician.
To say that all ancient religions are all just a replay of the myth of “the hero with a thousand faces,” or that ancient agricultural sacrifice was the same thing as Christ on the cross, is to miss the whole purpose. They cannot see yet because they haven’t asked Christ to rub the healing mud into their eyes so that they see what and who he really is.
Christ rules in love, not in fear. If you are being told that you must believe or else you’ll go to hell, you are hearing the completely wrong motive to believe. Because fear is not the reason to believe, it’s the thing that gets conquered when you come to believe. Fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom, but love of God leads to eternal life, and that joyful life can begin today. And this doesn’t make sense until you have the experience of blind Bartimaeus, who only knows one thing, and one thing only, and that is that Jesus healed his sight and his soul. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (Jn 9:13-25)
