The story of Cain and Abel, Cal and Aaron, Charles and Adam

Dear God:

How come what Cain offered you wasn't enough? How come you were so much happier with Abel's sheep than you were the wheat offered to you by Cain? Why did you then punish Cain for the actions of his jealousy, which you so forcefully created?

Cain is the evil one and thus his sacrifice is not enough. Nothing he does will ever be good enough to make up for the fact that his father is the serpent that led Eve astray. He killed his brother because God drove him to it, drove him absolutely heathen with jealousy. Abel was no better than Cain, no more true or pure or honest or loving or devoted.

In fact, I think Abel was a little bit of a bitch.

You said to Cain: "If you do right, won't you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it."

Tell me what Cain did wrong in offering you what he pulled from the Earth. How was his gift to you wrong, how had he not done right by your exacting standards? If anything, Abel was a murderer who killed lambs to satisfy his Master's needs. Cain offered an alternative to murder, but was rejected. He was rejected for sins he had not yet committed and that is WRONG.

I don't blame Cain for his actions; I blame God for driving him to extremes. All Cain ever wanted from God was acceptance and seeing that he could not receive it, even when he had committed no sins, he acted out.

Abel is not a martyr. He did not die due to his own faith or fidelity to the Lord but as a result of God's indifference toward his far more emotional brother. Abel has always seemed cold to me, the detached but beloved brother, a prototype for the prodigal son, whose sins are forgiven because they happened and is favored over those who committed no sins because he has repented, and repentance is critical to earning God's love. (Perhaps, but is it not more impressive and godly to never need repent?)

I'm not a biblical scholar by any stretch of the imagination. But I know sibling rivalries like the back of my hand. I know the color and the taste of parental favoritism and I know what motivates the forsaken. I know better than God what is in the hearts of people rejected for the possibility of sins, and of how it drives them into the arms of sin as opposed to righteousness.

If you believe me a sinner before I have sinned, I have no motivation to prove you wrong. The worst has happened already and I have survived. Your mind will not change over time, when you notice I have not transgressed, but instead I will grow frustrated and increasingly defiant. If you tell me, before I have committed an evil act, that I have evil within me, you grant me permission to be evil and deny me the right to be otherwise.

I am Cain. I am the rejected child whose sacrifices will never be enough, who can never be anything but a sinner. I cannot master my lower nature because I was never given a chance and because you never had faith. Every man is capable of change except for Cain. Except for me. I am unalterably bad.

³⁸And Cain said unto the Lord: Satan tempted me because of my brother's flocks. And I was wroth also; for his offering thou didst accept and not mine; my punishment is greater than I can bear.
³⁹Behold thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the Lord, and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. . .

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I know I shall never be truly forgiven. So why bother even trying? I'll start over somewhere else, with someone new, and perhaps they will expect nothing of me. I wonder what I might be, if I ever truly had a blank slate on which to draw myself. (You say that you forgive me, that you would recognize if I had changed, but you have not and you do not. I am not the same girl that I was yesterday and I try so hard. Perhaps some day you'll notice, but it's already too late.)