I never noticed that Cain killed Abel…

I never used to give much thought to the stories found in the Old Testament other than the days when I was six years old in my Sunday best and had no idea about anything other than my ruffled socks… back to the days of Sunday School and lectures and long sermons before Sunday dinners. Those stories were just something I grew up listening to with such a childlike innocence that they became normal, I became desensitized and never gave them much thought. They were always a part of the story I grew up believing… 

God created the world.
He made Adam.
He made Eve.
The sun.
The ocean.
The land.
Animals.
Everything else.

Not in that order, but somewhere in seven days all those things came to life.

Adam sinned, Eve was a little jerk and was manipulative and she led him to do it. The serpent was the devil or something, he talked and convinced her to do it… which is totally weird, but normal because I first heard this when I was five and that's how the story goes. They sinned, they saw that they were naked, it was awful, they tried to hide from God… then they were kicked out of the garden and now I have killer cramps every month. I paraphrase well. Long story short, Eve was a woman and women tend to be have problems saying, "No," to food. I like to think about it as chocolate… I can say, "No," fairly easily to apples… but not to brownies, so it helps me relate to her.

Later there was a flood. Noah saved the animals two by two. Elijah went into the heavens on a chariot. There was a bush on fire. Jonah got swallowed by a whale, people got turned into salt, Abraham almost chopped up his son, crazy stuff happened. That's my point.

It all became ingrained into my mind and faith that I never truly thought about it, I always took it as truth. I never questioned it. Never tried to relate. Never identified with the suffering of these people, I never recognized them as people, but rather as pawns or characters in a story… completely separate from me.

For some reason, tonight, my mind was elsewhere and I got to thinking… not truly about any of those stories listed above, but about the story of Cain and Abel. Two brothers. One good, one bad… murdering the other. Everyone knows the story. We're talking about homicide here, of blood… of family killing family, not a friend or drug dealer or random person, we're talking about Cain murdering Abel out of anger, out of jealousy, out of envy. Killing him, taking his life, murder. That's what this story is about.

I grew up knowing this story so well that I never thought about it. Is that not the worst story you have ever heard? A brother killed his brother… the only way I could possibly imagine it (since I only have one brother) was imagining one of my sisters killing the other or killing me or me killing one of them. What? No. That is simply unbelievable. It's not even fathomable… it hurts to think about.

When I was about 15 or 16 years old, I remember being so angry at my sister that teachers and our friends in high school staged an intervention because we went for THREE whole weeks without talking. They put us in the same room and forced us to actually address the situation… what were we mad about? By the time it got to that point, my soccer coach laughed as he drug me by my shirt into his room because neither one of us could remember the initial fight. We beat the hell out of each other, we got up, we hugged it out, we cried, and we were back to being sisters. BUT never in my entire life do I EVER remember a time where I thought, "I should kill her." There's been times when I said out of annoyance, "I'm going to kill you," which again usually happened after she ate my ice cream or brownie or refused to drive me somewhere, but after 30 seconds I was over it and never could I even think about taking her life.

Don't get me wrong, my family can piss me off like no other. My sisters drive me crazy, they're way overprotective sometimes and treat me like I'm nine years old going off for the first time to a sleepover… I hate it when they tell me what to do or laugh at me as if I'm an idiot… but I love them and could never imagine life without them or anger big enough for me to take their lives. I cannot do it, I cannot even think it.

How could Cain do that? Why would he do that? Why has this never mattered to me before? Why have I always skipped over this without any thought? It's murder and I wrapped my head around it as if I was talking about Cain giving Abel candy.

How does this happen?

This weekend, I was once again reminded of the horrors associated with being a part of this world… where Christians were gunned down for their faith. It's inconceivable. Christians. No, actually… I won't even go there because it is unbelievable for me to think about ANYONE being gunned down whether you are five years old in the middle of your kindergarten classroom or twenty-two sitting in a lecture hall at a community college, whether you are white, black, whatever… christian, muslim, atheist, anything. Why does this happen? Again and again and again…

If I was to write a book about the experiences and tragedies that we all face in the world right now, would anyone believe it in a hundred years? In 2,000 years? Would they become so detached from today that they simply would be stories, characters without meaning or life or substance? Would their lives matter? Does Abel's life matter today? 

Did Abel's life ever matter? What about the twenty six people who were killed at Sandy Hook or in the movie theaters? In classrooms? In shopping centers? In streets? In cities across the world? Do the people of Syria not matter? As a person, as people, as a nation, how do we not stop this nonsense, how do we justify ignoring murders, of senseless acts of violence, of hurt, of suffering?

I was told last week that death is natural… but I refuse to believe that there is anything natural about saying, "Yes, I am a christian," and being shot for it. There is nothing natural about offering a sacrifice to God and being killed for it. There is nothing natural about having to teach our children intruder drills so they won't be gunned down in rooms with letters and numbers on brightly colored posters. There is nothing natural about being afraid to go to work, of being pulled over, or having your child killed while they watch a movie. 

I usually have point to the things I write, but truthfully, I don't tonight. I wish murder wasn't a part of the world we live in, I wish people didn't have to live in fear, and more than anything, I can only pray that I would have enough courage and strength to stand up and say, "I am a Christian," even if a gun was pointed at me. 

I refuse to believe that I live in a world where these things are common… when will the good eventually outshine the evil? At one point do these stories become as routine as Cain killing Abel? Will we eventually stop even noticing, even caring, even being affected by the killing of innocent lives? As a human race, we owe it to our children and their children and their children, to make these stories become so obsolete that they don't even exist in the context we know them in, to be known just like Cain and Abel, but to be so uncommon that our children cannot fathom and comprehend their impact.