Just before Cain goes for that fateful stroll in the fields with his brother the Almighty speaks to him. This is what He says:
Why are you angry and why has your face fallen? Is it not the case that if you do well -- lift up! And if you do not do well -- sin lies crouching at the door, its desire is unto you, and you can rule over it. (Genesis 4:6-7)What do these rather cryptic words really mean? And, whatever they in fact mean, why is it that Cain needs to hear them right now?
......... Anger and depression make good bed-fellows; they often go together. The reason, perhaps, is that each is basically a passive emotional response. Anger and depression take for granted that the source of our woes is located outside ourselves; that we have been betrayed by others, or have been victimized by forces beyond our control. And while this may sometimes be the case, it is often an exaggeration. More often than not, we do have choices available to us, even if we are not always prepared to recognize them. Once we see this, our anger and depression begin to evaporate.
Harriett Lerner, in her book, The Dance of Anger, paints a hypothetical scenario that nicely illustrates the point. Imagine that you and your roommate have a pet kitten. One night, the kitten wakes you with some strange meowing. It is two-thirty in the morning and you are concerned. You turn to your roommate, and a conversation ensures between the two of you that goes roughly like this:
You: "She really doesn't sound right. I think we should call the vet."You both go back to sleep, and when you wake up in the morning, the cat is dead.
Your Roommate: "What do you mean call the vet? It's the middle of the night!"
You: "I don't know. She really sounds pretty bad. I think we should call the vet..."
Your Roommate: "Look, just go back to sleep. She probably swallowed a hairball."
You: "Are you sure we just shouldn't call the vet?"
Your Roommate: "Goodnight!"
Now, take a deep breath and ask yourself: How are you going to feel towards your roommate, when morning comes and you discover the lifeless kitten lying next to your bed?
You are likely to be enraged.
"It's all your fault! Here I was, telling you that we should take the kitten to the vet, and all you could think about was getting a good night's sleep! And now, the kitten is dead..."Whether you like it or not, though, the reality is otherwise. You were not the victim of circumstances beyond your control here. You were not betrayed by your sleep-seeking roommate. You had free will. There were choices open to you, choices you refused to grab hold of. No one forced you to get permission from your roommate before calling the vet; you could have made whatever calls you wanted to. If you feel angry or depressed here, it is because you choose to see yourself as helpless, as a victim of your lousy, insensitive roommate. But in fact, you weren't a victim at all.
Cain, in feeling angry, locates the source of his problem outside of himself, in God. No one can control God, and as long as that's the problem, you're nothing but a victim. But that wasn't the reality. The core of his problem lay entirely in the choices Cain was himself making, in the nature of the relationship he was trying to build with God, and this was a realm entirely within his control. The first step off the bridge, then, is letting go and of anger and depression, and reclaiming this element of control.
So Cain, all in all, is being given an antidote to his feelings of anger and depression. You have choices, God is saying, the ball is in your court. "If you do well, then, lift up!" What had been downcast before -- Cain's face ("why has your face fallen...") -- can now be raised. Cain will be able to look himself in the eye, as it were, when he stares at the mirror in the morning. When we seize on our power to act in a positive way, we begin to lift up our faces again, in the ultimate gesture of self-respect.
Of course, when there are choices available, there is always the option of choosing poorly, too, "And if you do not do well, sin lies crouching at the door..."
Earlier, we got stuck on this phrase. How could the consequence of sin, be vulnerability to sin? But when the verse talks about "not doing well," who says that's the same as committing a sin? After all, the text doesn't say "if you do evil," then sin lies crouching at the door; instead, it says "if you do not do well." Not doing good isn't the same thing as doing evil. It is simply being neutral.
Maybe God is saying something like the following: Why has your face fallen? If you are active; if you seek out the good -- you can lift up your face. And if you are neutral -- if you do not act positively -- you can't tread water. While being neutral is not itself an evil -- it leaves you vulnerable to evil. Sin lies crouching at the door, and even the most well intentioned neutral party can still be become its prey.
