Cain: the evil one or simply infantile?

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A lot of Christians identify Cain with more general evil which they refer to as "the way of Cain". The way of Cain is identified with a range of a number of things, starting from good-works-based-theology (that is, "bloodless sacrifice") to the New World Order. However, fresh reading of Cains account just doesn't sound this way to me. Scribes and Pharesees and other enemies of Christ are crafty. They will polish themselves on the outside and look like most righteous ever. This can be hardly said of Cain. Jehovah Wittness would write books trying to confuse ppl into believing their doctrine; on the other hand Cain didn't go into any length beyond "am I my brother's keeper". Falso teachers, from Pharesees, to Jehovah Wittness, to Hitler, would claim God on their side. On the other hand, Cain fully acknowledged that God is on Abel's side. And, most importantly, the real craftinness is always well calculated; what Cain did to Abel didn't look very calculated because there is no logical reason why would it help Cain; he simply had a temper tantrum. The Bible even says "his countenance fell". Does it really sound like some evil antichrist who will deceive the most elect trhough carefully planned new world order would have his countenance fallen?!?!?! No, of course not. To me Cain sounds like an example of an infantile.

Even more importantly, GOD HIMSELF probably viewed him as infantile -- judging by INCREDIBLE patience God had for him. Just look at HOW MANY chances God had given him:

1)"If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door". Thats the chance to repent and do better afterwards. Sounds reasonable -- BUT THAT IS NOT IT!! !

2)"And unto thee [shall be] his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. " Now, most ppl would lump 2 with 1. However I view them as distinct. #1 tells Cain he has a choice IN FUTURE to do good or evil. #2 says taht EVEN IF he CONTINUES to do evil and his answer to #1 is "I will do evil" he will STILL be able to deal with the sin that would rest at his door as a consequence of such a choice. So you see -- sin does NOT rest YET at his door -- even though he already failed to make a good sacrifice. Sin WILL rest at his door IF he CONTINUES to do evil. AND, even THEN, he will STILLL be able to conqure it!! ! Well this sounds like a pretty big stretch in Cains favor!! !

3)"And the LORD said unto Cain, Where [is] Abel thy brother? " Pretty patient way to start conversation with someone who just committed a murder -- UNLESS GOD KNOWS THAT CAIN IS A LITTLE KID -- WHICH HE PROBABLY IS.

4)"And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. " SOUNDS LIKE THE WAY PARENTS TALK TO LITTLE KIDS, DOES IT NOT? Again, perhaps the message isn't as nice as it used to be, but the wording of it is patient to the extreme.

5) "And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. " God placed this mark strictly in response to Cain's complaint that it is more than he can bear. Now, God didn't owe him ANYTHING. But what God DID give Cain was MUCH MORE than Cain ever asked. In fact when Cain simply asked for welfare he instead got a special priviledge that Abel never had!! !

Either way, lets get back to the topic. The point I am trying to make is that THE reason God was so patient with Cain is that God could see into his heart, and see taht he wasn't an evil person but simply a little kid with poor temper.

I don't know about American christians but it seems that at least some Russians thought in that dirrection, just by looking at their language. In russian "to repent" is "caiatsia". Now "atsia" is an ending, that is common to LOTS of russian words and in itself carries no meaning. So the "root" of the word is "cai", and literally "caiatsia" would be "to cai". Now, there is no "cai" in Russian language, but still the fact that there is "to cai" and it means "to repent" ... kind of suggest that they identify "Cain" with "repentance" (even though they dropped "n" from teh end).

Now, when a little kid throughs a tantrum, he will soon be really sorry about the tantrum he just threugh and will cry about it. So, if Cain trully was a little kid, then surely enough he would repent about it; which is what inspired Russian people to come up with the word for repentance.

Another thing about Russian people: there is a russian fairy tale for little children about brother and sister, Cai and Gerda. The witch captured Cai, freezed his heart and took him to her kingdom up north where he forgot all warm feelings and his whole point in life was crystals. But Gerda continued to lvoe Cai, she found her way up north and rescued him and her love warmed his heart back and htey both escaped this kingdom and went back home.

Now, Cai's heart was cold, just like Cain's were. Now, as far as this fairy tale goes, Cai was NOT depicted as evil; rahter, as an innnocent victim of evil; proper response to him is NOT curess but love that is to warm his heart back.

Now, whoever wrote this story, probably pursposely called him Cai because he believes the same applies to Cain. Why? Because Cain is so much infantile.

So, what are your American opinions about Cain? It sounds like Russians do see him as infantile rather than evil, and they do feel sorry for him at least sometimes. Now how do you guys, amreicans, think?

Last edited by Roman on 15 Jun 2005, 2:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Where's 'Symbol of envy' on that list? I didn't see it.

I view Cain as having a really cool name. Also he was sloppy. Only kill someone if you can get away with it. God is omnipresent! Bad f*****g idea!!

cain is all of us. our father, the survivor. we are all as helplessly flawed as cain and god loves us anyway.

I agree with tech, probably a symbol of envy, and frustration too I imagine. Roman, you should check out the novel "East of Eden" by Steinbeck. It is an exploration of the Cain/ Abel theme. A really great book.

After Cain slew Abel, Adam and Eve gave birth to more children. In fact, Noah did NOT come through the line of Cain. Since Noah is the only survivor of the flood, it implies that NONE of us are of Cain.

However, there are also non-traditional teachings that may be flood didn't cover the whole earth, which means that there are still descendants of Cain left. This is supported by the fact that there is group of people referred to as "Kenites" taht were present after the flood. Some speculate that Kenites will be behind the antichrist-ran New World Order government. I have also seen some speculation that ppl that are today known as Jews are NOT a true Hebrews but an imposters, whose true geneology is of Cain. But in either case it isn't all of us but just the evil ones of us.

That was by the way part of my intention of the post -- Cain to me sounds rather sloppy and NOT a good liar. As Nomaken said, don't kill someone unless you can get away. So I find it rather ironic that Cain's descendants would be behind New World Order, which FAR more crafty and deceptive than waht Cain was ever able to accomplish.

Likewise, the analogy between Cain and Pharesees is also rather ironic since Pharesees made out of themselves the most righteous-looking ppl you can find, quite UN-like Cain. Yet Jesus himself made an analogy between them and Cain when he said that on them the blood of prophets "starting from righteous Abel whom YOU have slew".

I think it is something interesting to think about.

I think Cain was an aspi. Aspies miss out on social requirenments; Cain missed out on requirenments for sacrifice. Both Cain and Aspies are so misunderstood. And a lot of aspies reach the point of outburst due to the constant failures, just like Cain had a tantrum becaue of his failure. And, just like Cain was sent away to endlessly wonder the earth, so do aspies have to endlessly wonder around as they are strangers everywhere, finding no friends and no rest.

An interesting thing to note is this- A "Cane" is associated with disability, "able" is associated with ability. Perhaps this has relevance, perhaps not.

I had to vote in order to see the poll. So considering I could pick only one I chose the most positive. I did not know Cain, so who am I to judge him.

Oh i love the story of cain, wich only proves why the bible is a bunch of bull. tell me something when adam and eve only had two kids at the time, how then when god bannishes cain from the land does he suddenly get a wife? where does she come from???? and why doesn't the bible say anything about adam&eve having other children besides cain and abel, at the time cain killed abel? if thats where all life suposidly came from?

I read an article somewhere that stated that adam and eve did bear more than two children. I do not recall where and I do not know if it was credible. Seemed legitimate though. Who knows.

Of course. after the fact all the religious people saw that there's no way that could have made sence for adam and eve to only have two male children, and suddendly bam cain has a wife. thats when they got smart and wrote the apocryphal books of the old testement like the book of jubilees to explain where cains wife came from. WOWZAH! what a bunch of marlarky.

How do you know if the apocrypha is or is not Marlarkey?

read this from top to bottom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudepigrapha

and you will have your answer

Cain and Abel are present in a lot of polytheistic mythologies, including Slavonic and Sapmì mythology [Chernobog and Bielobog], as well as Egyptian mythologi [Osiris and Seth].

AFAIK, Cain and Abel are mythical symbols of territorial battles that occurred in the Mesopotamian region several thousand years ago. Subsistence farmers and hunter-gatherers were forced out (and frequently murdered) by the proponents of large-scale agriculture. (Source: Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael)