“And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”
John Steinbeck, in his book “East of Eden” has a subplot running through the book. There is a discussion between the father and the cook about this section. The cook is puzzled at the difference between the way that this verse is expressed in the Authorised and the Revised versions and wonders what they mean. After much discussion and research they come to the conclusion that the Lord is telling Cain that, even though sin is lying at his door, he has the choice as to what he will do. He can overcome the desire to kill his brother that has come from his anger at God’s rejection of his offering or he can allow the anger to overcome him. Cain made his choice and he suffered the consequences. There are many experts today who define vast multitudes of mental diseases and they tell us that we are just victims of our circumstances and forced to act in certain ways. The Lord’s message is different: we choose what we think and the thought is father to the deed. In every case we can choose how we will react to our circumstances. We always choose our attitudes.
(However, there are some diseases that are organic and we must take care not to ignore sound medical advice and go off our medication because we may suffer the consequences of doing that.)
This is not so much an issue of the size of our faith but the size of our God.
If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
No comments:
Post a Comment