Does pain justify wickedness? ; the anatomy of the sin of Cain part 2

In part one we explored on how our take on failure is more important than the failure itself and how we should by all means try to not follow the footsteps of Cain who does not insist on correcting his mistake and learning from but takes a rather destructive route which we try to discuss in this post if it was justifiable at all.

What Cain does is a stretch by all means but like Jordan B Peterson says these are archetypal narratives and the worst response will eventually dwarf any other and therefore dully qualifies to serve as a prime example.

So in average life situations people rarely kill at least physically( some say they poison you in a span of a lifetime) but people take all sorts of responses to disappointment that you will be surprised at what sometimes motivates an average man. And here it more likely about what people act out not what they merely say.

How many are no longer committed in a relationship because of one disappointment they had and now they see no point of being faithful instead of being prepared for disappointment at anytime by always having a backup plan? How many people are no longer honest in business because they were swindled? How many no longer follow proper channels because it is the offenders who are uploaded simply because they did not get caught? How many are narcissists, sadists, thieves, manipulators, naysayers, crooks, murders, adulterers, fornicators? Because of a past experience.

Some people say depending on the kind of suffering you are subjected to sometimes it is understandable if you take such a route? Understandable it is possible but justification is another thing. It is equal to something like changing the ideal.

Being sad and anxious about the whole thing is alright. The biblical corpus offers narratives which tend to be antidotes to the spirit of Cain. I cite 2 here

1. JOB

The man is just doing his thing when Satan shows up in heaven and the conversation between him(Satan) and God eventually leads to Job. To be informal it is like God and Satan puts a bet on Job’s faithfulness. It is us the readers who know the cause but to Job all these are inexplicable as are most of Life’s challenges. There is even contrast here with Cain because Job did nothing wrong apart from being better than the rest. Fast forward Job goes through it all, he questions God, he is sad, and everything but he still maintains his posture of reverence to the ideal. On the other hand after his restoration he does not make revenge his only purpose but he goes on to live which what we are invited. How many have suffered as this man suffered ? Why do we want to betray ourselves by thinking our cruelty is understandable ?

2. JESUS

If Job did not know what was going on, Jesus knew everything right from the beginning even the man who was going to sell him out. He knows it is at the hand of his own people and in some moments he asks if this cannot be taken from him but he relinquishes his will to accomplish his mission. He does not even become bitter afterwards but opens his arms to whosoever wants to come to him.

So from these two examples we see that turning bad because you were hurt is not justifiable. It does not prevent us from deviating at times but at least if we don’t kill the ideal we stand a chance to go back and work on ourselves properly. You will see that it is in fact some of the people who have suffered the most harm that turn out to have the warmest of hearts.

Look at some stories of war victims, the holocaust and other forms of human suffering and you will see that the human spirit is much stronger than we tend to think it is.

In a situation where you are tempted to change your ideals because of hurt, disappointment, do not think it is justifiable but rather seek comfort and spiritual comfort comes in handy because we are touched to our core by these things.

A bientôt!