Cain is Impatient

The text is odd: it says that God did not have “regard” for the sacrifice that Cain made. It is not clear how Cain or Abel knew the absence or presence of God’s “regard.” But it is clear that, whatever it means, to fail to have regard for something is different from rejecting it. God seems to have (merely) not looked at Cain’s offering. This is a neutral stance, something between acceptance and rejection. (The text, of course, is in Genesis 4.)

God asks Cain why he is angry, why his countenance is fallen. God tells him he has a choice ahead of him to do good or to do evil. God makes it clear that what he is interested in is how Cain is going to develop as a character. Cain is free here; there is nothing foreordained about his future. Like his parents facing the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he can choose to go either the one way or the other.

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A biblical characteristic of God is that he often waits to see what people will do. Have you noticed in Genesis 1 that God does not pronounce human beings to be good? Through the preceding “days” of creation God repeatedly recognizes the goodness of what he has made. But there is no such statement after he makes human beings. It is as if he is withholding his judgment. He needs to wait and see—or perhaps not “needs” but “wants.” God is interested in us, in how we unfold as characters—interested in what sort of characters we will turn out to be.

God’s waiting is related to his patience. God has a lot of patience with us. Whatever we do, he keeps open the possibility that this story we are in will turn out to be a good story. In contrast with God, Cain is impatient and he kills his brother. God then calls him to account and tells him he will have to start a different kind of life; he can no longer be a farmer. But this is not punishment, I think, in the usual sense; God is merely laying out the consequences of Cain’s act. Then God promises to be with Cain in his future, to protect him, to defend him from anyone who would harm him. God, we could say, remains interested in how Cain will turn out, keeps a door open for Cain to do well rather than ill.

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And so with us. Whatever our past has been, God remains interested in seeing what our walking will be like. He wants us to act with good character, to walk in a way that pleases him. He never forecloses final judgment upon us; final judgment awaits the final end. Until then he keeps a door open. He is patient. He waits. He is interested in what we are going to do.

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Out & About. Have you been reading The Hobbit lately? On a recent road trip I listened to a reading by Rob Inglis. I found there’s more there than I remembered, and that it is interesting to think of it in terms of a world in which people walked. We’ll discuss it at the September 18 seminar “Good Books & Good Talk” at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas. You are welcome to join us.

On the Web. The Human Life Review posted my pastoral reflection “To Change the World.” You can find it here. 

 

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

Creation Ex Nihilo

Some theologians argue that creation “ex nihilo” (out of nothing) is not biblical, is a post-biblical idea imposed upon the text, and we can get along without the teaching. I think they miss the point. Creation is necessarily “out of nothing” or it fails to be creation in the most basic sense. That is to say, you can’t have creation unless it’s the bringing to be of something where there was nothing.

Of course, this is a matter of semantics. We speak of artists as being creative, for instance, when we want to point to a certain genius or unexpectedness in what they bring about. Yet no human being creates in the most basic sense. Even a highly creative painter uses materials already at hand (e.g. oils, brushes, and canvas). Her creations are derivative and not basic.

But God, as creator, brings into existence everything. His creative work is the ongoing activity which gives and keeps giving existence to everything that exists for as long as it exists. He does this without using anything that already exists. The Creator creates, in this precise sense, out of nothing.

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Almost every error in thinking about God stems from a failure to realize how strange God is. Many errors come from imagining God to be a force in the universe, something that is like other things just more powerful. These errors take the adventure out of Christianity. True Christian faith proclaims a God who is beyond all our imagining. We know he loves us; “God loves me” is literally true. But we don’t know fully what “love” means when it comes to God. It is like love that we know with other people—although it is better to say, the love we know with other people is like the love of God.

In Losing Susan I tell this story. I am with a group of young adults. One of them is going on at some length about how good God’s love is, but what she is saying about it was all rather tame stuff. There is no adventure in it. It sounds like she thinks she has God all figured out.

In my frustration, I venture that the Bible tells us the following: loving us, God intends to kill us. And he will succeed. (Once you’ve gotten over the shock you can reflect how death is good news for “miserable offenders.” It means we won’t go on forever as such.)

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I recently sang again the hymn that begins “They cast their nets in Galilee.” I heard this hymn for the first time when I was in college and new to the Episcopal Church; I have never forgotten the way it captures God’s strangeness. They were “happy, simple fisherfolk”—until they met Jesus! Jesus messed up their lives. “Young John, who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos died.” And Peter “head-down was crucified.” The final stanza drives home the point: “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.” Nonetheless there is only thing for us to pray for: this marvelous peace of God.

God’s peace is strange—as is his love, as is he himself, creating ex nihilo.

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Out & About. I am to preach at the traditional services at Incarnation in Dallas this Sunday, July 24, at 7:30, 9, and 11:15 a.m. My sermon will be on Genesis 4 and is called “Cain and His Sign.”

On the Web. I penned a review of Louise Penny’s The Madness of Crowds and First Things published it as a web exclusive with the title, “Given for Love”: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/07/given-for-love


Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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