WARD AVE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
  • Home
  • Church Information
  • Staff
  • Contact
  • News/Events
  • Pictures
  • Videos
  • Pastor's Blog

Cain and Abel (Where Did He Learn to Do That?)

2/17/2021

0 Comments

 
So, we are now in the season of Lent.  And it may seem early for Lent this year, but keep in mind every three years we will have an early Easter.  But I have decided to do something slightly different to prepare for each week for Lent.  I was talking to Rev. Braun from Providence Presbyterian Church and he had a good idea about preparing for Lent, which he got from First Presbyterian Church of Stroudsburg. 
​
Each week of Lent I will be focusing on Covenants.  And the covenants we find will all be in the Old Testament!  We rarely get the chance to focus on the Old Testament as our primary text, but I think we should try.  And as I was preparing for this week’s sermon, which is about how the “Covenant defines God.”  I had to re-read and study the beginning chapters of Genesis.  I don’t want to give too much away about what my sermon is about, but it does focus on God’s covenant to Noah after the great flood.  But thinking about, how God came with the conclusion to flood the earth is kinda heartbreaking.  But again, I am not going to re-iterate my prepared sermon on here, you all just got to tune in on Sunday!

But I was trying to figure out what led God to bring the great flood.  And during my studying, I came upon the story of Cain and Abel, which is from Genesis 4.  We may all be familiar with this story.  The story in which Cain takes the life of another human, which happens to be his brother.  This was the first murder committed in the Bible. 

I wonder how God must have felt, when He realized that Cain’s anger and rage towards his brother would be the outcome of murder.  God must be wondering whether the people He created were capable of such a gruesome and heinous act.  Makes me wonder if it is just human nature to act in such ways of violence?  We always assume that the way that we raise our children will reflect what they will become in life.  Some cases can be true, there is a lot of learned behavior when it comes with raising children.  But there are also unlearned behavior, the behavior that just seems impulsive.  Are acts of violence considered to be unlearned behavior? 

The reason I bring this up, is that I had my “Cain and Abel” sort of moment.  No it’s not murder… but I just witnessed my son Ben, hit my daughter Norah for the first time.  I was a bit shocked because he had never done that before, and I can’t figure out how he learned to behave in such a way.  It’s not like he learned it from preschool since he was only there for a few weeks about a year and a half ago.  And mostly he has always been with me and any time the TV is on I watch it with him so he doesn’t watch anything he is not supposed to watch.  But somehow he knew that if he got mad, you show your anger through a fist.

I wondered if god felt the same kind of disappointment with Cain in Genesis.  I wondered if God said things like, “I never taught you to do that?!”  Makes you also wonder how many times we break God’s heart when we ignore people in need, talk behind people’s back, hurt each other physically or psychologically.  And God had to think, “I never taught you this?!”
In this world, we will have to realize that when it comes with our children, grandchildren, and young people, we can raise them the right way, but sometimes things can happen that we never expect.  Not everything we learn in this world is learned behavior.  Teaching our young ones and ourselves how we deal with anger, disappointment, and depression is key for a healthy environment.  I never taught Ben how to hit anyone, but it happened.  Not everything is learned, and somethings are involuntary reactions.  Here is another example of unlearned reactionary behavior.

I was watching the Special Olympics a long time ago and there was a runner competing who was born blind.  He ran the race and when he finished, he raised his arms in arm to celebrate victory.  How in the world did he know how to do that?

Like God, we set up a prefect place for our young ones and do our best to protect them from danger and give them the right example of behavior.  Like God, we made our little Garden of Eden.  Like God, we taught our children what is good and what is bad.  Like God, who sent Jesus Christ to us to be an example of tenderness and care and wisdom for us, we do with our children.  We show our children the example to be.  Yet, even all of this taken place, God knows, we will find our way that is prone to sin and possible violence.  The question is when violence and misfortune and aggression happens, how will we react to what we witness.  Will it be revenge?  Will it be compassion?  Or will we just ignore it.  That is the choice we can make.  And maybe our choice to how we react to cases of aggression will make all the difference in how our young ones will behave in the future.

Let’s go back to the Cain and Abel story.  What did God react to Cain when he found out about the murder?  God had compassion over Cain.  He gave Cain a mark of protection and sent Cain on his way.  I am sure if we changed the way we react to something shocking and unbelievable we can make a difference in the world.  If instead of being angry to witnessed acts of aggression, we do what God did, which was feel hurt, sure, but also send guidance and protection against other acts of aggression that could happen in the future.

As we move into Easter, each week in Lent will teach us something about how God will continue a covenant with us.  We will explore how God will find ways to reach out to us and why Jesus was the perfect answer to all learned and unlearned behavior and social interactions.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Hey this is Rev. Brian Choi's random thought throughout my week.  Most of this stuff, will probably be about family, church, fishing, music, movies, food, whatever I think of, hopefully it will have some sort of theological reflection (maybe).

    Archives

    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

We Would Love to Have You Visit Soon!


Hours

Office Hours: M, W, F: 10am - 2:30pm

Sunday School All Ages Every Sunday 9:00am
Worship: Sunday 10:00am

Telephone

814-942-6859

Email

[email protected]
  • Home
  • Church Information
  • Staff
  • Contact
  • News/Events
  • Pictures
  • Videos
  • Pastor's Blog