When God asks Cain, where is your brother Abel?
Genesis 4.9.
Cain answered peavishly, Am I my brother's keeper?
This is not a bonafide question.
God knows, and the reader of Genesis 4 knows, Abel is dead, killed by Cain.
The ground is red with Abel's blood.
To make matters worse, even after the loving kindness of God has intervened to help Cain
bear the consequences of his misdeed.
Cain complains it is a burden too heavy for him to carry.
So God also places a mark on Cain to ward off potential enemies who might attack him.
The congenital consequences of this sad story are found in the song of Leimek, who is a direct
descendant of Cain, like Father like Son.
I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.
Cain has avenged sevenfold, truly, Leimek, 77fold.
Now an echo, this wolf will story appears in the conversation between Jesus and Peter,
Matthew 1822.
The apostle wants to know the limits to this forgiveness business.
Are not seven times enough?
Jesus replies, not seven times, but I tell you, 77 times.
My wife and I reject capital punishment because the portrayal of Christ as crucifier rather
than crucified is an inconceivable distortion.
But as somewhat argue that the ethic of Matthew 1822 was given for life within the religious
community, I would reply that in this matter the river of the social order and that of
the religious community flow in the same direction and beyond that, without forgiveness and
reconciliation, neither church nor state can endure.
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