When I was growing up, I used to be plagued by this thought: All of you are loving each other but I am left out! It was only later in my early adulthood that I realized part of that kind of thinking came from the roots of rejection in my childhood. And that particular annoying feeling, that particular unexplained fear, was coming out of a base of jealousy.
Cain was the first person to murder his brother out of jealousy. What prompted his jealousy? God looked with favour upon Abel and his offering, but God did not look with favour upon Cain and his offering. And it seemed to Cain that everyone else was loving each other and he was left out!
And so, scripture says, jealousy turned him into a killer and, I suspect, the identical dynamic is present every time we see a mass murder like the ones that occurred at Virginia Tech, Columbine (March 23, 1999), and the recent school killing in Germany (Winnenden, March 11) and the shooting spree in Alabama (March 14). The same is true of David Widjaja, the Indonesian student who stabbed the NTU professor and then committed suicide (March 2). The ‘killers’ are always lonely, dangerously isolated individuals who, no doubt, share with Cain the experience of seeing others' offering as acceptable and their own as not. Everyone else, it seems, is loving each other and they are being left out.
Moreover, what we see acted out so horrifically in these murders or attempted murders often acts itself out inside of us on a smaller stage. Because of jealousy we too are all killers, except when we kill we do not do it with guns. We do it with thoughts and words.
Henri Nouwen once coined these words: Anyone shot by a gun is first shot by a word and anyone shot by a word is first shot by a thought. He is right. We murder in our thoughts every time we say inside ourselves: "Who does he think he is! She thinks she's so clever! He thinks he's God's gift to creation! She's so full of herself!"
Who of us has not walked into a meeting, a boardroom, a church service, a family gathering, a social situation, or a gathering of some kind and, not unlike the mass murderers at Columbine or Virginia Tech, subtly sprayed bullets of jealous anger around the gathering? When we are wounded like Cain, when it seems like our offering is not being accepted while that of others' is, when it seems like everyone is loving each other and we are being left out, the spontaneous impulse is to kill in word, thought, and attitude.
What's to be done? How do we live beyond jealousy and the sense of being left out?
To conquer my own jealousy I had to be courageous enough to admit I am jealous. Once I dare to admit my jealousy, half my battle is won.
When we look at the drama of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the drama in which he struggles to give his death over to us as he had been giving his life over, we see that this drama is precisely a drama of love, not just a physical one. Unlike Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of Christ, the Bible accounts of Jesus' passion and death do not emphasize his physical sufferings. It is as though the physical sufferings, though real, were meant for something greater. What the gospel writers emphasize rather is his moral and emotional loneliness, his distance from others, his being cut out of the circle of human understanding, and his exclusion from human intimacy. That kind of emotional pain is what we can identify most with; more than the Lord’s physical suffering.
As Jesus approached his death, his earthly experience paralleled that of Cain. His offering, it seemed, anyone around him. He felt the radical isolation that comes precisely from exclusion, from misunderstanding, from being the object of hatred. The human temptation, surely, must have been towards bitterness, anger, self-pity, and hatred. But his actions are the antithesis of Cain's.
Surrounded by jealousy, hatred, and misunderstanding, he gives his life over in trust. When everything tempts him toward bitterness, he moves towards graciousness. When everything tempts him towards hatred, he moves towards love. When everything tempts him towards shutting others out, he makes himself still more vulnerable so that others can come in. When all around him there is coldness, paranoia, and curses, he affirms others, blesses them, and affirms warmth and trust. Cain gives us one answer. Jesus gives us another.
What's our answer in those moments of our lives when we sense that "all of you are loving each other and I may be left out"?
