CAIN AND THE MEANING OF THE CITY

A Reflection given by Liz McAlister at Kirkridge Retreat Center, September 2005
based on Ellul's Meaning of the City

After he murdered his brother, "Cain went away from the presence of God and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden..." (Gen. 4:9ff)

This story is not historical; it is not a story of causes; it is not a philosophical investigation of causes and origins. Here the Conservative Evangelicals make one of their first mistakes. As so many of these stories, this is theological; it comes from and it concerns God. It gives us God's view of humanity or rather, God's view of certain attitudes and activities of humanity. The divine condemnation Cain is to bear is that of being a fugitive and a vagabond. He will spend his life trying to find security, struggling against hostile forces, dominating men, women and nature, taking guarantees that are within his reach, guarantees that appear to him to be genuine, but which in fact protect him from nothing. ( Guarantees that are within our reach, guarantees that appear to us to be genuine, but which in fact protect us from nothing! Perhaps, in the silence we'll soon enter into, we might each reflect on the guarantees /securities to which we cling. Do we have any better sense than Cain wherein our security lies! Is there any such thing as security that we can count on? )

Cain went away from God's presence. The land of Nod is a literal translation of the Hebrew: " The land of wandering !" The land of wandering is where Cain is living. Cain wants a home and can have none. He is forever going somewhere - but where? The seed of all human questings is to be found in Cain's life in the land of wandering, always searching for a place where his need for security might be satisfied. But the only place he finds is that very country characterized as being uninhabitable - Nod/Wandering.

East of Eden - The east is the country where the sun rises, the point of departure. But one does not stay in a starting place. Cain is fixed at the starting place. He can never finish his journey for he lives at the point of departure. The east has an exact meaning in the Scriptures. It is both the road people take in their futile search for eternity and the one people take when they obey God's call. Those who wanted to build Babel came, we are told, from the east. But... Abram also came from the east, as do all those whom God calls. Moses and the Levites stood on the east side of the altar; the Magi came from the east.

But east of Eden - Cain's fall, we can imagine, raises his desire to a higher pitch, that obscure anguish planted in his heart's inner recesses. No longer is he satisfied with a shadow of eternity - he wants eternity itself. He will take permanent leave of his wandering so as to bring himself closer to the absolute. But he cannot rid himself of his human condition, and thus his departure can never be anything but a journey that never reaches port.

The goal of his journey is given to us even more exactly. It was after he had gone far from God's presence that Cain began his life in the land of wandering . How can we not associate the two notions when the text does so? It is God's absence which is the never-ending sting planted in his heart. Where may God be found? Suddenly to be face to face with God, this is the only way to stop the wandering jew found in the heart of every one of us. The search for home, the search for Eden, is in the end a constant desire for God. But the search appears to be without hope. How well we know that God closed Eden to Adam and Eve and put Cherubim at its gates and that these Cerubim have very little to do with Raphael's pink, chubby little cherubs. They flash fire on every side, bring terror to human hearts when they intervene in earthly affairs.

Cain is completely dissatisfied with the security granted to him by God (read that section) and so he searches out his own security . ("In God we trust!" as long as we have the coins and the bills - the bigger the better - on which the phrase appears, the insurance policies, the military to back us up, the WMD, and the policies that allow us to use them against our so-called enemies, and now to be able to do it preemptively and as policy! etc.) Cain will create his own security system and every step on his road leads further from God. Is it also true that with Cain when we create our own security system, every step on the road finds us further from God?

Then, we are told, he did two things:
           he knew his wife and she bore a son, whom he named Enoch
           he built a city and named it for his son Enoch.

This first builder of a city thinks of his action as an effort to satisfy his deepest desires. He will satisfy his desire for eternity by producing children and he will satisfy his desire for security by creating a place belonging to him, a place where he is in charge - a city . For Cain the city is the place where he can be himself; it is a material sign of his security. Cain sought security not from God - whom he was trying to escape - but from the world, hostile since Abel's murder. The city is the direct consequence of Cain's murderous act and of his refusal to accept God's protection. For God's Eden, he substitutes his own; for the goal given to his life by God, he substitutes a goal chosen by himself. Cain takes his destiny on his own shoulders, refusing the hand of God in his life.

The city is called Enoch - The exact meaning of "Enoch" is "initiation and the beginning of utilization." The name itself is opposed to Reshith in Genesis 1:1. viz is creation. Initiation as opposed to creation... the city as opposed to Eden. It underlines Cain's purpose: he will re-make the world.

(Remember what we shared about Cain's purpose in the beginning - this story means to reflect on civilization itself, and as such it narrates the history of the human condition. This history should not be understood literally, but archetypally, in the style of traditional societies. What we have here in spades is humans grasping the taboo Tree of the Knowledge as a powerful metaphor of a human impulse to imagine that we can actually improve upon the Creation ?)

Cain is going to reconstruct - in fact the word should be construct - for, in his eyes, it is not a beginning again but a beginning. (We did one whole retreat on the theme that the work of God is beginning; the work of humans is that of beginning again!) You get the sense from Cain and his actions that he sees God's creation as nothing. God did nothing and sure as can be, God didn't finish anything. Now a start is made and it is no longer God beginning but humans. Thus Cain, with everything he does, digs a little deeper the abyss between himself and God. There was a solution for his situation but the solution was in God's hands and that is what he would not tolerate.

Cain begins... just as history begins... with the murder of Abel. So-called civilization begins with the city and all it represents. With Cain's beginning, with Enoch, we have a sure starting place for all of civilization. But note closely what happens here: Paradise becomes a legend and creation a myth . Cain creates the art of craftsmanship. Cain bends all of creation to his will. He knows that by God's order, he has received dominion over creation, and he assumes control/domination. He forces creation to follow his destiny, his destiny of slavery and sin and his revolt to escape from it. From this taking possession, for this revolution, the city is born.

Control/domination - (Stringfellow on the difference between domination and dominion - i.e. restoration of harmony. )

Domination/Dominion - and what does God think of the affair? Is God giving approval? Our text is meaningful because it tells us what Cain wanted to do when he created the city, what he was hoping to conquer, what he thought to establish. And this narrative of the origin of the city is essential, for we see there, in its purest state and expressed simply, the feelings of the builder. Such feelings are no longer evident in our modern day when the complexity of the world hides the simple plans of the never-changing human heart.

What does the Bible reveals concerning the city ? The relationship between Cain and Abel illuminates the relationship between the city and the wilderness (country?) When Cain killed Abel, people and history are so thrown out of kilter that nothing can modify the new situation. The city was, from the day of its creation, incapable - because of the motives behind its creation - of any other destiny than that of killing the wilderness where God put human beings to live their lives as best they could. The first time the word "city" is mentioned in the Bible we should be struck by it. The city is " tyr " or " lyr re'em. " The word has several meanings - the city, but also the watching angel, the vengeance and terror. It is a strange association of ideas. Those meanings tells us that the city is not just a collection of houses with ramparts, but also a spiritual power. The city has a spiritual influence. It is capable of directing and changing a people's spiritual life. It brings its power to bear on us and changes our lives. Cain put all his revolt into it. People put all their power into it and other powers come backing up people's efforts.

The city as power. Terror and Vigilance. A rampart against hate or a sign of wrath.

Biblically, all the builders of cities were sons of Cain and act with his purpose. The post-Deluge genealogies of Gen 10 introduce a "predatory" line of people. The sons of Ham are Mizraim (the ancient name for Egypt), Put (symbolizing north Africa west of Egypt), Canaan (about whom the Bible will have much to say), and most significantly here, Cush. Interestingly, in the ancient Sumerian lists, Kish was the place where civilization resumed after the Great Flood. Cush's most notorious son is Nimrod, given the curious moniker "a mighty hunter" (10:9), and it is his progeny that gets our attention. The list reads like a litany of the imperial kingdoms:

So the next builder we hear of is Nimrod, the first on earth to become a mighty man. He was a son of Ham, the one who disobeyed one of God's fundamental laws and the one upon whom a curse was laid. (Gen.10:6-8) Once again, the city is built following a curse and is an act by which the builder tries to escape the curse. ("I'll take care of my problems alone! And so he puts everything to work to become powerful, to keep the curse from having its effects. He creates the arts and sciences, he raises an army, he constructs chariots, he builds cities. The spirit of might is a response to the divine curse...)

We are told that Nimrod was a mighty hunter before God... Of what concern is it to God that Nimrod was a might hunter? The preposition "before" marks separation as much as presence. We will understand it better if we translate "hunter" as "plunderer" or "conqueror." Then the parts of the portrait of Nimrod come together. He is a spirit of conquering might before God. Nimrod is animated by this spirit and puts it into his work and that is impossible outside of God's presence. The establishment of the first empires, military conquests - all certainly take place in God's presence, but with what separation from God's will. Nimrod's power will be established not only by his plundering but by his cities. He is the great builder. Bablyon, Accad, Calneh in the land of Shinar were the cradle of his empire, his domination. They were not all established by Nimrod; but they were established by the spirit of Nimrod. The bible does not mean to give us history here but it is teaching about certain peoples. The story is more about cities. For people aren't mentioned - only cities. The city is a center from which war is waged. Urban civilization is a warring civilization, Conqueror and builder are no longer distinct.

All the cities constructed were marked with the stamp of power. Nimrod settles down in the land of Shinar where he builds and whence his conquests for war and the contruction of new cities are launched. The land of Shinar is the opposite of the world of peace. It is the land of piracy and destruction. The presence of Shinar is clearly the presence of a spiritual power, of a temptation to evil.

The center of Nimrod's kingdom is Babel, Babylon. "The gate of the gods... The place of confusion." "Come let us build ourselves a city with a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves." But, says God: "Let us confuse their language... And they left off building..." Gen.11:4-8)

They want to make a name for themselves... Become independent, separate from God. It is more than taking over God's power; it is excluding God from God's creation. People become masters of all things; they can make a tower up to heaven off bricks baked in the fire.

Let us confuse their language that they may not understand one another. This has always been used to explain different languages. Perhaps so but a separation of tongues is not mentioned but a "confusion of their language." It is not stated that people will speak several languages but that they will no longer understand what others are saying. The emphasis is not on speaking as such but on understanding. Just as the story of Pentecost, it is not stated that the apostles spoke all the languages of those present but rather that "speaking other languages," they were understood by all. In Genesis, they cannot communicate even when they speak the same language and use the same words. In (and because of?) the spirit of city, peole no longer understand each other and get along.

Biblically, Babylon is not a city; she is THE city. None can rival her - because of what she represents mythically. All the cities in the world are brought together in her; she is the synthesis of them all (Cf. Dan 3 and 4; Rev 14 and 18) She is the head of and standard for other cities. The blame laid on her is applicable to all other cities. Business operates for the city; industry is developed in the city; ships ply the seas for the city; luxury and beauty blossom in the city; power rises and becomes great in the city. There everything is for sale - the bodies and souls of people. Babylon, Venice, Paris, New York - are all the same city and all are mortally wounded.

So the first city was founded on Cain's rejection of God, specifically God's offer of protection against vengeance, and Cain's counter choice to create his own protection - the city. The creation of the city is the attempt to exclude God, to shut oneself off from God, to fabricate a world which is exclusively human. Such an exclusively human world is founded and maintained through force, which is legalized and ritualized! (Could go off here on "Thou Shalt Not Kill/ Murder!")

So - what passes for civil order is founded on violence and maintained by force. The clear implication is that what humans esteem as " law and order " is established by a crime, and is fundamentally unjust. Here we cite the study and insight of Rene Girard on the foundation of culture - a theory and process of scapegoating/victimizing that directly parallels the insights of our Genesis study. Because the murder which was the founding incident was violent, there can be no authentic justice in the city. The victim upon whom the city is founded is innocent, and what the rulers of the city believe just only legitimizes their unjust order. Throughout, there is the illusion of justice which serves to suppress all consciousness of its criminal origins. In the city "justice" means that the victim of arbitrary violence is given credit for the establishment of (temporary) peace. Justice comes too late for the victim, but is timely enough for the consciences of the perpetrators. They can point to the ensuing peace in order to confirm that they did the right thing. Still, the memory of the victim is never effaced. And, in time, s/he becomes a sacred being who is simultaneously malevolent and benevolent.

Conclusion - "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them," Jesus says, "Yet it shall not be so among you" (Mt 20:25-6) . Jesus' refusal of power resulted in his crucifixion, a signal of his failure to overturn the secular order. Paradoxically, it is this failure which is also the victory over the powers, and the followers of Christ are called to participate in that failure. It is truly a fight - against a power that can be changed only by means which are the opposite of its own. Jesus overcame the powers - of the state, the authorities, the rulers, the law, etc. - not by being more powerful than they but by surrendering himself even unto death.

The Biblical revelation calls the community of faith to endure the powers rather than sanctify them, and to bear the burdens of those who suffer under secular power. In every situation of injustice and oppression, the Christian -must represent the victims. Our confrontation of the powers proceeds from concern for the victims of secular dominion:

Bear with me here. If I understood this better, I could be clearer. I almost get it - but now quite. Political power cannot self-limit and tends in every case to expand beyond all bounds. The myth of its necessity tries to clear the way by paralyzing all resistance. Into this world of fatal necessity, Christ comes announcing liberty to captives. Christ's resurrection defeated death. In Christ we know that our lives will not always be this way, and the present hope of our resurrection enables us to insinuate freedom into an otherwise ironclad system. We proclaim by our words and demonstrate in our action that another path exists beyond the illusory "freedom" purchased or wrested by force from the hand of power. Freedom exists when people refuse to be taken in by the idea that freedom will surely come tomorrow, if only... No! Not tomorrow. Freedom exists today or not at all. When we shake the edifice, we produce a crack, a gap in the structure, in which a human being can find freedom, which is always threatened. In order to bring this bit of play into the system, however, we must bring to it a radical, total refusal.

Our faith necessitates a rejection of the political order. The ethical content of the life of faith is a continuation of the salvation story inaugurated in Genesis 1-2. The historical content of our faith demonstrates that freedom in Christ is totally incompatible with political power. The Church's attempts to maintain an authentic practice of faith while legitimizing the secular order are exposed as bankrupt by the Biblical critique of power. While the growth of the global state has made a total withdrawal from the political order inconceivable, its utter domination today makes it critical that we resist it with all the love and hope and faith that are in us.

Isa. 41:25 "I have stirred up one from the north, and he comes-- one from the rising sun who calls on my name. He treads on rulers as if they were mortar, as if he were a potter treading the clay.

We are told that God made all the fowl of the air and fish of the sea and great whales and beasts of the fields and herbs and fruits and creeping things, and by taking God's place and manipulating genes we've turned around and subdued every damned one of them.... God set it up, we knocked it down. We are the winners. Why aren't we saying, "This is good!"

Origin stories matter. Our relationships with one another, God, and the Earth are deeply shaped by them. For most of human history on the planet, the myths of beginnings told diverse stories of how God or the gods placed humans in a created world for vocational purposes.

All this began to change with the Enlightenment. Ideologies of positivism, capitalism, and rationalism first challenged, then deconstructed, and eventually eclipsed the biblical tradition, replacing it with the myth of Progress . This is our official civilization story today.

History commenced with the rise of the first civilizations, recognizable to us by their concentrated populations, official religious cults, city-state organizations, standing armies, hierarchical politics, surplus economies and separation from nature.

This origins story was a deliberate philosophical project begun in the 17th century by men like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. They sought to unravel the last strands of human interdependence with nature, which was objectified, instrumentalized, and, most important, "de-spiritualized." This was necessary to pave the way for the privatization of commonwealth lands, the intensive accumulation of wealth through more and more resource exploitation, and the radical reshaping of both culture and nature through social and industrial engineering.

By marginalizing God (banishing God) and exalting an autonomous and ingenious humanity, the Enlightenment produced a compelling historical fable about the nobility of civilization and its "redemption" of a deeply flawed natural world. One fragment of the Genesis tradition was preserved however: the divine commission of Genesis 1:28 giving humans "dominion/domination" over creation and urging them to "fill and subdue the Earth." This text subsequently received wide circulation to rationalize and even mandate ecological destruction in the name of civilization.

We see this in the Bush presidency, which has used religious justification for its aggressive resource exploitation and the largest rollback of environmental laws and regulations in history. Indeed, environmental issues are now part of the culture wars that divide North American churches and society. Note the right-wing Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship (ICES). Their aspiration is for "a world in which widespread economic freedom - which is integral to private, market economies. The ICES mission is to "harness scripture in the service of free-market environmentalism."

The misappropriation of Genesis 1:28 continues to be deeply consequential. Rather than conceding its interpretation to environmental imperialists, however, or throwing it out as hopelessly problematic, we would do well to place this text in its cultural and narrative context. Genesis 1-2 tells a different story about the relationship between human society and the rest of creation than the one we tell ourselves. It offers old wisdom that, if heeded, may help us step back from the brink of ecological catastrophe - it may now be too late!

Humans have received the world as a gift from the Creator and must never mistake it for a possession (Leviticus 25:23). Genesis reminds us that the gift can be revoked, at least partially. In only two other places is the divine council convened. In Genesis 3:22 it decides to expel the human being from the garden. And in Genesis 11:5-9 it takes action to "deconstruct" the Tower of Babel in favor of the original vision of a dispersed, tribal humanity living in diverse bioregions. The concern in both cases is that humanity has traded its vocation of careful stewardship for a fantasy of omnipotence. The lesson is that societies that "subdue" the land for agricultural production ultimately subdue others as peasant labor.

But in Genesis 1:28, human rule over creation does not connote subjection. It doesn't even include eating the fauna (cf 9:2-5). Indeed, the very next verse, 1:29, reminds us that humans must share with "every other thing that has the breath of life" the Earth's flora.

To rule the Earth in a way that destroys its fertility or renders other species extinct represents the paramount biblical example of bad government.

One final piece to the Genesis creation story contrasts sharply with modern theologies of production. The only work done in the garden is the conjuring of life. And there are limits to God's work, which ceases on the 7th day (Genesis 2:2f). The intention was a cosmic Sabbath, that all beings might enjoy the world forever. It signals a crucial lesson: The flip side of natural abundance is self-limitation. This lesson is later pressed upon Israel in the institution of Sabbath practice, with a particular emphasis on constraining how much people "gather" of the divine gift of sustenance (Ex. 16:4-30).

Nothing in Genesis 1-2 coheres with the interpretation of "domination" that sanctions environmental destruction in the name of progress. Quite the contrary: The biblical tale of creation finds wide resonance with other origin stories found among indigenous peoples the world over, in which "the people" emerge from the earth, the other beings are all relatives, and stewardship means thinking ahead 7 generations. Such stories articulate the most ancient human cosmology: We are tightly woven together with the rest of creation and the Spirit world in a deep relationship.

The modern myth of our "lordship" over nature will not serve a sustainable future. Could the older, wiser creation story of Genesis, carefully handled, restore to us the "memory" of where we came from, so we can turn around from where we are headed.