Rule Over It

I just got a new Bible.  It's not pretty; in fact, I think it's the polar opposite - it's drab dark blue with five words: Holy Bible - New International Version.  On the inside there are two inch, lined margins on every page which allow me the opportunity to reflect on the pages themselves.  The last Bible I wore out from constant 4pt scribbling in the margins, but now I can read it. 

I never do this, but I'm starting at Genesis: Many I meet give me advice on how to read the Bible; start at three different places, maybe one of Paul's letters in the New Testament, explore the Psalms or Proverbs, but I'm going against my normal biblical instinct to write about Genesis first.  In the beginning...

I've read it lots of times, but my eyes stuck fast on the words in 1:28 right after God creates Adam and Eve and then blesses the humans: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Yes!  I, as a human, like those words.  Subdue, rule over, multiply!  We're good at those things because the idea of power (borne in those words) is our favorite breakfast of champions.  To feel power is to feel alive.  To feel the opposite, to have it acted against us - being subdued, ruled over and divided (the opposite of multiplication) - those things cause us fear and we rear up against them.  When God spoke to Adam and Eve (pre-fall) his blessing includes power for good over the earth.

But then I am struck by the immensity of the contradiction which occurs later (post-fall).  Cain is distressed by God's seeming dismissal of his offering.  He has worked diligently toiling for the sin of his father.  (2:17,19 "Cursed is the ground because of you (Adam); through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life...By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.")  We have this heightened sense of the futility of farmers who not only can't trust the elements, but the harvest is not always fruitful either. 

Here's the sinful contradiction:  3:8  After Cain was upset and jealous because of God's preference for Abel's offering it reads, Now Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let's go out to the field.'  While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

The murder is great, but the premeditation, the invitation to destruction, is what gets me.  Cain, it seems, knowingly planned to destroy his brother because of jealousy.

Unfortunately, it plays out far too often in this world.  I don't know how many funerals that I have attended where the family is at odds because of the will.  It's a double meaning - the literal will of the deceased, and the willful jealousy over objects of a lifetime of attrition.  Brothers and sisters are destroyed and relationships are metaphorically murdered over an antique vase or stamp collection.  It's the willful sin of covetousness, or a perceived slight, that bring us to a place of fratricide. 

God's precognition  to Cain's jealousy, after Cain's almost disconnected attitude to the reality of the upcoming murder, is poignant and soaked in pain.  4:6  Then the LORD said to Cain, 'Why are you angry?  Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?  But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must...

Rule Over It!"

We don't talk about sin much anymore; we're more inclined to intentionally speak of grace and more intentioned to act as if God has already flushed our dirty stool of sin before we've dumped it.  We know that God will forgive us, so we willfully act against what we know to be right.  Sin crouches at our door waiting to spring.  It is not a devious little imp with pitchfork in hand, it is an attractive option to the goodness of God - it makes us believe that we are gods and it give us the power of God, to create and destroy.  But God calls us to rule over that sin - the same sin of our father Adam.  Subdue the lurking beast, rule over it and do not let it multiply.

Is there sin in your own life which is crouching outside your door?  Or, have you already invited it across the threshold, welcoming it as if a special guest?  Do you have rule over sin in your life?