No Man Is an Island

Sometimes we caricature the truth in order to promote something that is false. In other words, we make a cartoon out of truth. We make it sound absurd and exaggerate it in order to promote something that is false. A lot of times humor is just truth exaggerated. For instance, if someone is objecting to something that is wrong, I might reply, “I guess I’m just the worst person in the world. I guess I’m just an awful person.” Well, the question is not about whether I am a bad person, but whether or not what I am doing is right, whether it is pleasing to God and honest. So, sometimes the truth is the source of our exaggeration.

That was certainly true in Genesis 4 where Cain and Abel, the offspring of Adam and Eve, were involved in the first murder. Cain, the first person ever born, was the first murderer. It didn’t take long to mess things up. So, because Cain was angry at God and his brother, he killed his brother.

Genesis 4:9 says, “And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?” For sure, this is rhetorical. God knew the answer. Cain said, “I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?” It is almost as if Cain was a keeper of the sheep like Abel and he was saying, “God, what am I, my brother’s little shepherd? I’m supposed to guide and guard him?” That is not the question God was asking. The question was, “Did you kill him?” There is a lot of space between being a shepherd of your brother and slaughtering him. Sometimes the truth is the source of our exaggeration. So, God asked a question, but God knew the answer.

God sees our faith. God knows our deeds and God judges our attitudes. Hebrews 11:4 says, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” So, whatever else we know about him, Abel was a man of faith. Cain was a man of action and did not have faith. In Hebrews 11 you find all these people who did amazing, miraculous things. They did very different things and they were very different people. The one thing they had in common was whom they trusted. People see what I do; God knows whom I trust. God’s question was for Cain’s benefit not God’s. God already knew.

As to Cain’s answer, were the only alternatives to guard your brother or to kill your brother? Somewhere in between is the indifference that characterized Cain. He seems to say, “It doesn’t make any difference what my brother does. I’m not his keeper or babysitter. It is not my responsibility.”

I had a blowout on my fifth wheel trailer during a trip last week from Ohio down to Tennessee. I thought about all the people on the side of the road with blowouts that I had passed all day long whom I hadn’t really thought much about. Am I obliged to stop for every person who has a blowout? No, but to think that I had no connection to them whatsoever is not exactly true either. The story of Genesis really is the story of community. In verse 14 Cain, speaking to the Lord, said, “Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that everyone that findeth me shall slay me.”

Who was there to kill Cain? His parents were the first people. Obviously, there had been some lapse of time so two people turned into a family, then a tribe, then a community, then a nation. To what extent the world had grown I don’t know, but I am reminded that we are all related. We may not know each other, but there is a sense in which we are all created in the image of God. We all have eternal souls.

I recently met a distant relation. Her great grandfather is my great uncle. She and her husband were able to come visit us on the Bill Rice Ranch. We enjoyed meeting them. I had never met them before, but I was related to them nonetheless. There are millions of people whom I have not met, but though we may not have the same last name or common grandparents, we are related.

The point is that no man is an island. No man lives or dies to himself. If I live completely isolated from family, church, and the people around me, the day will come when that will come back to haunt me. No man is an island. Yes, I am my brother’s keeper in the sense I am to regard what God has created. Now I don’t need to be patronizing, a tattler, or a dictator, but to think that someone can live or die and it makes no matter is not true. Certainly if the people in my orbit of influence are not doing right, I need to ask God’s wisdom, not be a know-it-all, but love them and love them enough to warn, give, or whatever, to be involved.

We are living in a day where everyone is living with their own curated reality. With AI we have never been less of a community than what we are right now. In some ways everything is becoming communistic and in other way we are completely isolated. There was a day when there was an artist of some sort who was a national touchstone. Everyone had heard of and been influenced by his work, but that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. There is no common culture. We are all in our own little worlds created by our own phones specifically for us.

I can’t be right with God if I am not right with my brother. I can’t be right with my brother unless I am right with God. They go together. The reason God was questioning Cain was because He had made Abel. It mattered. To ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” rhetorically, is making a cartoon out of truth in order to promote a falsehood. I am not responsible for everyone on this globe, but I am responsible to use my life for the good of others and the glory of God.

What about you? Is your life honoring God and helping others? No man is an island. No man lives or dies to himself, and God wants to use us for good for Him and for the benefit of others today.