![]() ![]() Cain’s rhetorical question to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, is not merely about Abel. Yet Cain and Abel are not merely legendary brothers in a nuclear family. God tells Cain, “You can rule over Sin,” meaning in this context that Cain has the free choice to struggle with his impulses and to master them, and so do we. They remind us with such force and pathos that we should not – and we need not – give into our worst impulses to strike out at others, despite our deepest feelings of rage, envy, loss and victimization. In particular, God’s engimatic but telling conversations and confrontations with Cain are our other mirror. Thankfully, it also says so much else about us. The first family is our mirror and our cautionary tale. Rivalries, petty and important, hurt feelings, poor parenting and communication, opportunities missed to be better and do better, families at every level of family destroyed by anger, misunderstanding and hatred: they are all part of the biblical first family’s story and they are all part of our stories. Sadly, it says so much about us: The first family reflects the extremes of verbal, emotional, and at times even physical violence to which we go in our nuclear, extended, communal, and national families, and in our global family. ![]() Dan Ornstein by Colleen Piccolino What does the first family say about us? ![]()
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January 2023
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