Don't Be Hatin'

I was reading the story of Cain and Abel, (It’s the story about the two brothers who both offer a sacrifice to the Lord. God is pleased with Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain’s. So, Cain gets angry, and he kills Abel. God asks Cain where Abel is, Cain replies with the sassy line, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” then God tells Cain that He knows what happened... There’s more to the story! So, if you’d like to read it for yourself, it’s in Genesis 4) and at first it seems like God is picking favorites. He liked Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s. Poor, pathetic little Cain... God is just so unfair, it isn’t Cain’s fault! He’d offered a sacrifice, hadn’t he?… But then, if you look at verse 7, God is talking to Cain, and He says, “If you, (Cain) do well, will you not be accepted? (ESV)” Which suggests that God isn’t picking favorites at all! Abel gave his best to the Lord, and he conducted the sacrifice the right way! So, God was pleased with the sacrifice.

But, due to verse 7, it seems that either Cain had chosen to not give his best to the Lord, or he had conducted the sacrifice either half-heartedly, or incompletely.

Either way, something was lacking in his sacrifice, and because he had not done well, God was not pleased. It makes sense, God’s not being unfair, and Cain is actually to blame for his own actions. 

Now, this is the part that really hit me:

Cain was wrong. Cain knew he was wrong. He’d had a conversation with the God of the universe to prove it! But… it was something that he could change. He could begin giving his sacrifices the amount of care that they deserved. He could begin to actually give God his best! Whatever it was that was lacking in his sacrifice, he could change it! But he had to admit that he was wrong. He had to admit that he was guilty. He knew he was! God knew he was! It wasn’t going to be a real shocker to anyone.

But, because of pride, he wouldn’t.

Instead, he turns to his innocent little brother, who had done it right. Abel’s very presence probably bugged Cain. And it was easier to focus on hating Abel than it was to admit his own sin. And Abel was a constant reminder of the things Cain knew he needed to change about himself. Without saying a single word, Abel’s presence alone reminded Cain of all the things he was doing wrong. But again, Cain wasn’t willing to admit to sin. He wasn’t willing to admit to guilt. Instead, he focused on Abel. How “righteous” Abel was, and how much it ticked him off that Abel was even born! Then, one day he lost it. He couldn’t stand being around Abel for one more second. So, filled with his own hatred, he killed Abel.

Maybe there had been a conversation, maybe Abel had said something obnoxious, maybe he’d suggested Cain change something. Maybe they were just flat-out arguing and Cain lost control! Or maybe Cain had planned the whole thing out, and he killed Abel before Abel even knew what was happening! I don’t know, but whatever happened, the point is this: Cain despised Abel to a point where he just… didn’t want Abel to live anymore. It was time for Abel to go. Abel was innocent, but because Cain did not want to face his own guilt, he killed the thing that reminded him most frequently of his shortcomings.

That seems so crazy, doesn’t it? I mean, who would never kill someone just because the other person got on their nerves?

Well… we would. But with obvious punishments for killing people, we probably wouldn’t go that far nowadays, but… sometimes we want to. We have the same attitudes that led Cain to that place where he could justify killing his own brother. They’re ugly thoughts and attitudes that are honestly there just to protect us from what we already know: we have work to do in our own hearts.

I’ve watched it happen over and over with friends, and it’s just… heartbreaking. Girls are especially bad at doing this!

There will be a group of girls, and they’ll be perfectly happy right where they are. Talking about guys the way they do, dressing the way they do, having the attitudes towards parents that they do, spending time however they spend it, they’ll just be happy with their standards.

And then the new girl comes in.

Maybe she doesn’t talk about guys as much. Maybe she dresses a little more modestly. Maybe she’s really close to her parents, and maybe she really respects them. Maybe she carries her Bible around with her, and reads it when she’s sitting alone, or maybe she’s just a really, really nice person who never seems to have a cross word for anyone.

Or maybe it’s a combination of some of those things, but whatever it is, suddenly the group of girls feels threatened, because her standards challenge theirs. The new girl may be nothing but nice to them, but even her niceness is hard to deal with, because the group of girls have gone into defensive-mode so they’re acting as if they really could not care less if she dropped off the face of the earth, and her niceness almost makes it harder…

See, the new girl may be sweet, and dear, and just… a great person! But she lives by standards that the group of girls does not. And maybe her standards are too high! But, maybe she’s right to do the things she does… The problem is that sometimes we’re way too much like that group of girls, and we can take people with different standards and beliefs, and we run from them, instead of seeing them as opportunities to re-think those areas of our own lives, to see if maybe this person is a way God is using to point out an area where He really isn’t in control, or if their ideas would be ideas that God could use to mold some of our opinions. We run from them. We get protective of our choices, and we don’t want to think about the fact that we could be wrong. We alienate the new person, or we’re “nice” to them, but we’re not really open, because they make us feel… guilty. And instead of trying to figure out if that feeling of guilt is coming from the fact that, deep down, (even if we aren’t willing to admit it to ourselves), we do need to change, we just… avoid the person!

Unfortunately, it is way too easy to become the group of girls. It’s easy to get around someone who seems to do EVERYTHING right, and feel judged, inadequate, less than we are. It’s easy to turn on them, and make them out to be the bad-guy, rather than taking a step back, looking at ourselves and saying, “Okay. Am I doing something wrong here?”

We get defensive and start putting up walls against people who are just… living! How stupid is that?! It’s unfair. It’s wrong. And it does not honor God.

And it’s really hurtful, too… I’ve also had several different friends look at me and say, “I just don’t get it! Why don’t they like me?!”… and it was for this very reason. It’s unfair to the person being put on the outside. It’s unfair to punish someone else because you don’t want to maybe be face-to-face with your own sin. It’s not right to treat someone coldly because they might be doing something right in an area that you’re doing something wrong. It’s just… wrong to treat people that way. And I think you'll find that if you give that "perfect" person a chance, you'll see that they are just as human as you are...

But, just to sum-up here, I’m not saying that every Christian should agree on everything all the time, and we should all dance around agreeing on super-high standards, and welcoming any chance to make those standards even higher until we get to a point that our children are being born perfect because they have no other choice. Obviously, that’s a flawed, totally impractical plan. 

But, for goodness sake, we can take the pride, defensiveness and passive-aggressive hatred out of our relationships! Jesus died for all of us! The super-conservative girl who quotes verses with every-other breath, and the extremely liberal girl who is in love with Jesus, and that’s about all she’s got figured out. If you’re a Christian, the God of the universe died for you! You have no right to hate anyone, ever! Especially if that person simply gets under your skin because they’re “perfect”. No one is perfect. Everyone has problems. Everyone has hurts. And everyone wants to be loved! So, get over yourself, get over your pride, check your motives for choices against the Bible, and then love that person! That’s what God has commanded of us! We’re supposed to love!! And if God could love you… you can love that person.

Ask God for His help. Ask Him to help you love them! He knows it’s hard… But He’s there to help you. He will help you. Just… ask Him.