Sunday favorites

March 4, 2012 By Fred Clark 11 Comments

1 John 3:11-18

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

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  • Guest

    Great quote.  Still, I think if the religious right nutjobs see this, they’re going to stop”the quote at “the world hates you.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Sue-White/1605859612 Sue White

    Ah, don’t you get it?  It says “love one another”, not “love everyone”.  That means they only have to love members of their own clique!

  • vsm

    Were Cain’s deeds really that evil, prior to the murder thing? He just gave God a bad gift.

  • http://www.blogger.com/home?pli=1 Coleslaw

    I was thinking the same thing.

  • Tricksterson

    Or did he?  The assumption is that he gave second or third rate goods to the Lord.  But if you actually read the passage it never says that.  My belief is that his gifts were rejected because he offered fruits and plants and Yahweh is an obligate carnivore.

  • Anonymous

    He was lying to God and when he saw that his brother didn’t lie and God answered him he got jealous.

    And when he was asked after the murder he said: am I my brother’s keeper?

    (yes you are)

  • http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

    I remember the meat vs. plants thing from Neil Gaiman in SANDMAN. Does it have an earlier genesis (so to speak)?

  • http://www.blogger.com/home?pli=1 Coleslaw

    Isaac Asimov talked about it being a story that arose from an early settled farming culture looking back nostalgically on the nomadic life of the herdsman. The good old days are not a new invention.

  • Anonymous

    well nostalgia isn’t what it used to be

  • Anonymous

    We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother.

    Did I miss a memo? Last I heard, Cain was part of the big happy human family. 

  • Tricksterson

    Except Yahweh never answers him.  He siply asks him what he’s done (presumably a rhetorical question if one assumes (which I do not) that Yahweh is God with a capital “g” and all knowing).