And this leads us to the deeper problem, namely, the problem of evil itself and why a so-called good God could allow evil to occur in the first place. Here is the first real consequence of the story that started in Eden with the eating of the forbidden fruit. “The First Funeral,” 1878, by Louis-Ernest Barrias. There is a wonderful sculpture by Louis-Ernest Barrias called “The First Funeral,” which captures the full pity and tragedy of this story: Adam carries the dead body of Abel in his arms, while Eve, his mother, bends over in grief and attempts fruitlessly to stroke the young man’s hair. Cain also has the distinction of being the first human being who was born, as opposed to being created directly by God, and of course his brother, Abel, by contrast, was the first human to die. He is the first murderer in human history, and he also has the dubious distinction of being the third human being to fall directly under God’s curse as a result of his actions (following in the footsteps of his parents, therefore). But what does a positive or a negative life mean or look like? Well, we have clues in the archetypal story about this polarity of good boy and bad boy in the Bible’s account of Cain and Abel.Ĭain is the first born child of Adam and Eve, the first human pair.

There is a profound sense in this of binary opposition-a positive life versus a negative life. What is reincarnation but a source of pain and, therefore, of punishment? But in our modern era, if one believes in an afterlife at all-and the immortality of the soul-what especially rankles is the “unfairness” of this situation: God couldn’t possibly-and how could we believe in a god who-condemns people to hell. The ancient Egyptians believed it, and even modern Buddhists do in the sense that reincarnation occurs. All orthodox religions (though some cults try to evade it) past and present advocate the idea that at the point of death, a judgment and then a separation occurs which has everlasting consequences. William Blake, in his poem “Auguries of Innocence,” wrote:Īnd there you have it, the inscrutable mystery that has perplexed humanity since its inception: Why is it that some are saved and some are damned? How can that be fair? And to be clear, this is not a specifically Christian issue.

Images of cain and abel