ARGHH!! 

I pounded my clenched fist down on my desk and shoved my desk chair back violently. Like an angry teen rebel, I stormed out of the room and out of the house, slamming the door behind me. 

The crisp fall night did little to cool my temper as I started walking down the sidewalk shaking my head and muttering under my breath. 

The past few days I had sensed a dark undercurrent of anger bubbling up inside of me. I didn’t know what I was angry at exactly, but I knew something was vexing me. Big time. Mostly it would nibble around the edges of my heart. A cold, brooding kind of anger that hadn’t yet been cooked into a full-blown rage. Until tonight. 

As I walked down the quiet, tree-lined boulevard a potent concoction of emotions began burbling up in the dark cauldron of my heart. “Why did you make me this way?” I looked up into the night sky angrily, literally shaking my fist at God. 

“Why do I have to be this way? It’s YOUR fault for making me this way!” 

If my neighbors could have seen me they would have thought I was looney. Talking to the night sky and shaking my fist at it. 

What was it that set me off that night? I actually had no idea. The anger had bubbled up over the past month or two, but it wasn’t tied to a single irritant that I could identify. There was something about life that was intolerable. I couldn’t name it, and I couldn’t shake it.

the Wrecking Crew

MJ and I had gone through a lot that year already. At the beginning of the year, I had come clean about the ways in which I had been unfaithful to her for many years. Soon after that, I began commuting to Texas for work every week. My job was getting more and more stressful and I felt like I was doing less and less of what I was good at.  In conjunction with the nuclear bomb going off in our marriage, the stress at work weighed on me heavily. It was a brutal summer. 

‘God as a sculptor’ is a metaphor that’s often used to describe the pain of transformation. Difficulties in life can be seen as God revealing the ‘true you’ by chiseling away all the ego and limiting beliefs to reveal the masterpiece underneath.

That may be an apt metaphor, but all year long it felt like the sculptor was more like a demolition crew. Precisely timed and devastating dynamite blasts had blown massive chunks out of the foundation of my life and caused my tattered facade to collapse, spilling out into the street like so many piles of useless rubble. There was a strange peacefulness to the process, but it didn’t make it any less painful.

Late in the summer, I knew I had to find another job. Things weren’t going well at work and I had lost confidence in my ability to make things better. After praying with MJ about it, we agreed that I should look for another job, even if it meant taking a pay cut and interrupting my career trajectory. I needed to take some time to heal and figure out what was next. Humbled, emotionally wounded, confidence shattered but with a shaky new faith, I called my friend Dave and landed a new job. It was a pay cut, but it allowed me to work from home and was less stressful than my old job. MJ and I were so thankful.

My new job was a sales role, calling on CEOs all across the country. I had done this kind of work before, eight years ago. It felt like a step backward to leave an executive role where I had a large team to lead, to a sales role with no direct reports. MJ and I were grateful for the opportunity, it was an answer to prayer, but it was still hard on my ego to pick up the phone every day and try to get the attention of busy executives - people in jobs similar to the one I had just left, and maybe more pertinently, people in jobs that I had long aspired to. 

Cain and Abel

The explosive rage I felt that night gave way to a dark brooding by the following morning. MJ and I sat down together with our coffee, trying to find a productive way to start the day. I picked up my bible and flipped it open to Genesis. I’d been listening to Dr. Jordan Peterson’s lectures on Genesis, which had me thinking a lot about the story of Cain & Abel. I started browsing through the first few chapters of Genesis before settling in to re-read the short story of the first human brothers. Dr. Peterson had pointed out some fascinating truths layered into this story that I had never considered before.

You probably know the basic outline of the story. Cain and his younger brother Abel were born to Adam and Eve after they were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. We don’t learn much about these men, other than that Cain was a vegetable and fruit farmer, and Abel raised livestock. They brought offerings in sacrifice to God, and for reasons that aren’t clear in the text, God accepts Abel’s sacrifice, but he looks unfavorably on the gift that Cain brings. This makes Cain angry and he kills his brother Abel. It’s a sad, violent, and short little story that I’ve heard more times than I can count. 

Sitting there reading Chapter 4 again, I got to the end of verse five where Cain was angry with God. It says he looked dejected, which is pretty much what I was feeling that very morning sitting in my office. 

The next verse goes like this:

Why Are You So Angry?

The words leaped off the page and seared into my consciousness. The air in the room went still as I sat bolt upright, eyes wide with wonder.

“Why was I so angry?” I pondered carefully.

A name for my anger immediately presented itself in my consciousness. The anger of Cain. The same murderous rage that drove Cain to kill his older brother had taken root in my own heart. It was so clear that it hit me like a slap in the face. 

The open bible in my hands thudded to the floor and I slid down in my chair, leaning my head back, staring at the ceiling. Anger. Rage. Bitterness. Why was this poison sloshing around my soul? Where had I gone wrong? My spirit groaned prayers I couldn’t find words for. I had no idea how or why this anger was manifesting itself in my life, but now that I saw it for what it was, I knew that there was only one choice. I had to change. Repent. Whatever it took not to let that spirit destroy my life like it destroyed Cain.

On The Floor

MJ sat beside me, unsure what I was going through, but gently holding space for me. She wrapped her arms around me and I leaned over, resting my head on her chest, weeping softly. 

There was no other place to go but the floor. I got out of my chair and laid face down, burying my tear-stained cheeks in the rug. When you’re at the end of yourself, that’s the place to go as far as I can tell. Get down on the floor and cry out to God. I don’t know of a better place to go when you’ve had the slats kicked out from under you.

I prayed the simple prayer that I had written on my whiteboard, the simplest prayer I know: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”. 

On the floor in my office is where the picture started to form in my mind. How had this anger of Cain emerged in my life? Why was it the kind of thing that I didn’t feel like I could shake? Did it have a hold of me in some way I didn’t understand? Things started coming into focus as God’s spirit ministered to me as I lay prostrate on the floor. 

The answers are found in the story of the first brothers in Genesis. Let’s take a look together. 

Genesis 4:1-15

1 Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.” 2 Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. 4 Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; 5 but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. 6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” 8 Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. 11 Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is too great to bear! 14 Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

Proper Sacrifice

In verses 4 and 5 we see that both brothers sacrificed to God by bringing an offering. It’s not immediately clear what was ‘proper’ about the sacrifice that Abel brought to the Lord, or what was ‘improper’ about Cain’s sacrifice. It says that God ‘had regard for’ the offering that Abel brought, but he ‘had no regard’ for Cain’s sacrifice. 

There are a couple of questions here that we just have to gloss over for the sake of time. For example--why did the brothers bring a sacrifice in the first place? We don’t really know just from reading Genesis. It’s remarkable that this idea of sacrifice emerged at all. Out of the collective unconscious it occurred to humanity that we can bargain with the future in some way. Sacrificing something in the present will make the future better for some reason. That’s an incredibly sophisticated construct and I have no idea how it emerged, so we’ll leave that for now. 

So the brothers brought their sacrifices to God. Take a moment to appreciate just how little Cain and Abel knew about the nature of reality compared to modern man. There was no canon of Scripture to consult to gleen anything about God. What might please God, or what might offend him, or really anything. Put yourself in their position - you’re scratching a living from the Earth through tremendous toil and you have an inborn knowledge of your own suffering and limitations. You know you’re going to suffer and die, but you don’t really know much more than that. 

Nonetheless, Cain and Abel each acted out this idea of sacrifice to God in their own way. Cain brought ‘an offering’ the text says, specifically the ‘fruit of the ground’. Abel, on the other hand, brought ‘of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions’. I’m certain that someone with a knowledge of the culture would be able to tell us more about the meaning buried in these texts, but even to my Western eyes, it seems clear that Abel brought the best he had. He sacrificed what was ‘first’ and what was ‘best’ (the ‘fat’ portions). So we see that Cain simply brought ‘an offering’ and Abel laid down his best, his premium, prized possessions and burned them in an offering to God.

It says that God ‘had regard for’ Abel’s offering, but not for Cains’. That phrase ‘had regard for’ is the English translation of the Hebrew word ‘Sha`ah’ which means something like ‘gaze at, turn your attention to’. How do you think that manifested itself to the brothers? How did this play out, this thing of God ‘noticing’ or paying attention to Abel’s sacrifice, but not to Cain’s? 

Who’s In Charge Up There?

Try to put yourself in Cain’s situation. You’re grappling with the complexity of life as you become aware of your own limitations. What’s the meaning of all this? Every day as you work to scratch out a living under the merciless sky you wonder ‘what’s the point of all this?’ Mother nature is trying to kill me half of the time, my back is killing me all the time, and at the end of this miserable life I’m going to die, probably after suffering a lot. “Who is in charge up there? What kind of God would make a world like this?” It’s easy to imagine Cain’s questions.

“Look at my brother Abel! Things sure seem to be going pretty well for him! His beautiful family loves him, his friends want to be with him, he always has more than he needs, and he shares generously. Things just seem to work out for him… why not me!? It’s not fair!” 

It’s easy to understand why Cain was shaking his fist at God and kicking rocks bitterly. The text says ‘his countenance fell’. You’ve seen people like that. People with a darkness in their face that comes from years of resentment about the unfairness of life. Snippy and snarly and ready to extract a pound of flesh where and whenever they can, because surely life owes them whatever small pleasures they can pry out of their miserable existence by any means necessary. 

Facing Your Ideal

Think about it. When Cain looked at Abel, what did he see?

He saw his ideal. He saw someone that lived a life that he wished he could live. His older brother was someone who ‘sacrificed properly’, and he wasn’t, and their lives were each bearing witness to the quality of their sacrifice. Worse than that, Cain lived with the realization that he too could have sacrificed properly and chose not to.  

An ideal is always a judge. It’s what we wish we were and know we aren’t. The things that are true about our ‘ideal’ become a judgement of our own insufficiencies.

Take a moment to let yourself drop into the cauldron of Cain’s murderous rage. Have you ever been in a situation in life where you were questioning God? Have you gazed at your ideal, that thing that you wish you could be and wondered why God would be so unfair? Yet a part of you could also observe yourself and see that the fault was not God’s, but your own? 

What an awful place to be.

That’s what God revealed to me right there on the floor of my office.

The anger of Cain. 

In my new job, I was faced with my ideal every day. The target of my sales efforts were CEO’s and Vice Presidents of successful and growing companies. Every day I would study them, connect with them on LinkedIn, and look at their various accomplishments. When I tried to reach these executives on the phone, their assistants would often put me through to their voicemail, they were too busy to talk to me. 

That’s who I wanted to be. A year prior, I was that executive. My assistant would schedule my calendar full of important meetings, respond to a steady stream of emails, and put those pesky sales calls straight through to my voicemail. Now I was burned out, spun out, and I couldn’t even remember what I was good at anymore. 

“What’s going on down here God? I’m breaking myself in half down here and it’s not working out! I thought that if I came clean about my sin that things would start working out for me God! This isn’t fair! Look at my neighbor with the Porsche. Things are going well for everybody else around me. What’s up with that, huh?” 

This was me, subconsciously bitching at God. Only nine months prior, I had thrown myself on the mercy of God and openly confessed my sins to my wife and family, coming clean about a life of sin. Yet here I was, with a subconscious torrent of accusations against God stewing in my heart.

Thankfully God loved me so much that he wasn’t going to leave that rage subconscious. That morning, sitting in my office chair, my countenance fallen, he asked me the same question that he asked Cain. Those fateful words leaped off the page, grabbed me around my neck and threw me to the floor with nothing left but the simplest prayer I could muster. “Lord. Have mercy on me, a sinner.” 

I didn’t know how to let go of the anger that gripped my heart like a vise. I didn’t know exactly how I had gotten here. I just laid there and allowed God’s Spirit to speak. And speak He did.

Choices

“You’ve got a choice to make Patrick. What are you going to do when you’re faced with your ideal? Are you going to do what Cain did? He destroyed his ideal so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. Is that what you want? What would it look like to live life after you’ve destroyed your own ideal?” 

I shuddered at that idea. Cain’s awful realization in verse 13 haunted me. “My punishment is too great to bear!” He had destroyed his ideal. How would he go on?

That’s real darkness right there my friend. 

Then it came to me, the gently whispered invitation of the Spirit. 

The Perfect Sacrifice

“I’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. Come. Get off the ground, dust yourself off. You know how to confess, you’ve done that before. You know about repentance, the way that I heal your mind as you speak the truth in love.

You have a new ideal now. Those CEO’s with the cool cars, that’s fine but it’s not a sufficient ideal for you anymore - let that go. Your new ideal is Yeshua, Jesus the Christ. Make me your aim. You can start living the life of Abel. Always aiming at the ideal, the God-man Jesus, willingly sacrificing the limiting beliefs that trap you in your perception of lack. From the ashes of those sacrifices, you will arise in new life and live the life of one who sacrifices properly.” 

This discovery came at such a pivotal time in my life. I had already learned about the transformation that is possible when we face our demons with the truthful, loving speech of confession. Now I had a new opportunity to be made more like the Father. 

I sat with MJ in confession, thinking carefully about the ways in which I had lived a life of improper sacrifice. In many ways, I had lived to see how little I could get by with, and now I was becoming aware that true life only starts when I live out of the power of total sacrifice. 

Out of The Fog

We live most of our lives in the fog of unconsciousness. We’re on autopilot at least 80% of the time. The thought patterns and behaviors that shape our lives rarely come into focus unless we intentionally name them. 

Perhaps confession is the process by which we “make the unconscious conscious”. The act of carefully naming and articulating the ways in which we ‘miss the mark’ (sin) is a form of truthful speech that brings us back into alignment with the Divine. It’s as if ‘God in us’ brings the same truthful and loving speech that spoke the world into being at the beginning of time to bear in our own lives, mending the rift we had torn in the fabric of reality with our lies and insufficiencies. 

The utility of this pattern of confession and repentance was once again made evident in my life. I was not the same person when I walked out of my office after being walloped over the head with this revelation. I had encountered a terrible shadow in my life and the light of Christ had overcome it. 

Awakening To Truth

Awakening to this terrible truth, that I had allowed the anger of Cain to take root in my life, changed so much in my life. It changed the way that I look at my work, it changed the way I manage my money, it fundamentally changed the way that I look at my goals and ideals. It’s given me so much hope, which is why I wanted to share it with you here. 

When you’re faced with your own ideal, you have a choice. You can destroy your ideal or you can become it. The choice is yours and the path is before each one of us.

What do you choose?