Cain's Battle With the Borg

Suggested Reading: Genesis 4:1-16

There is a pivotal scene in Star Trek: First Contact where Captain Picard has issued orders for the crew to stand their ground and fight a hopeless battle against the Borg, a group of cybernetically enhanced aliens who are over-running his ship. At the time his judgment seems to be clouded by his own experience with the Borg, an experience in which he himself had been kidnapped, his body implanted with Borg devices, and his mind controlled as he was forced to kill and destroy people for whom he cared. Though he had buried his anger and desire for revenge, when the Borg attacked his ship once again he allowed those feelings to take over. Only when a stranger quoted Moby Dick to him, comparing him to Captain Ahab who allowed his thirst for revenge to destroy him, did Captain Picard realize what he was doing and decide to let go of his anger in order to save his crew.

Unfortunately for Cain in Genesis 4, Moby Dick hadn't been written yet, but Cain did have someone point out the danger of holding onto his anger. After his offering had been rejected, Cain was visited by God himself who warned him, "Why are you so angry? Why is your face so downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it" (Genesis 4:6-7, NIV). God himself warned Cain about his anger, and told him that he had a choice to make: deal with his anger and do what was right by mastering his sin, or allow his anger to continue unchecked and allow sin to master him instead.

Another path along the road to committing horrible deeds we never could have imagined is the choice to stay angry. God warned Cain that he had a choice to make, but Cain chose to stay angry. Cain chose to ignore the warning that God himself had issued about the dangers of allowing anger to rule him and he ended up murdering his brother. Even when we are truly injured and wronged, we have a choice to make about the role anger will play in our decisions. We can continue to be angry, justified or not, or we can choose to forgive so that we don't give sin a chance to master us. At times, it simply feels good to be angry. It feels good to be consumed with something that energizes and motivates us. But we cannot allow anger to be our driving force. 

Paul said in Ephesians 4:26-27, "'In your anger do not sin': Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold" (NIV). Allowing anger to motivate us and dictate our actions is a very dangerous game, one that offers Satan a foothold in our lives. Cain didn't pay attention to the warning he received. Will we?

Dealing with Cain's Login Errors

Suggested Reading: Genesis 4:1-16

Not long ago I had one of those frustrating computer moments. I was trying to login to one of my online accounts and I kept getting the error message that my user ID and password didn't match. So I kept trying different passwords in an attempt to get something to work. Nothing did. I just kept getting that same error message. After about 15 attempts I finally stopped long enough to look at my user ID and noticed that I had left out a letter in the ID. After that, I tried the very first password again and within seconds I had logged in. I felt rather embarrassed that I had gotten so frustrated about forgetting my password only to discover that something else had been the problem all along.

In the story of Cain and Abel we see a similar dynamic in Cain's descent to murder. He and his brother had both brought offerings to the Lord but only Abel's had been accepted, probably because Abel had offered the first fruits, the first-born of his herds, while Cain had just brought some of the produce the ground had produced, not the first fruits of his crops. Whatever the reason, God had a conversation with Cain about the rejection of his offering, asking "Why are you so angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?" (Genesis 4:6-7, NIV). The fact that Cain then went out and murdered his brother Abel would seem to indicate that his anger was directed in the wrong place. He either murdered Abel because his brother had made him angry by showing him up (not an uncommon emotional response) or in order to get back at God for accepting Abel's offering but not his own. In either case, Cain directed his anger and probably the blame for his failure somewhere other than where it should have been: on himself.

Quite often, as sinful human beings, we find ourselves doing horrible things we never would have imagined doing beforehand: killing people, having affairs, cheating on our taxes, lying. And quite often the first step along the path to those unimaginable deeds is blaming someone else for our own failures. Affairs often start because one spouse blames the other for not meeting his or her unrealistic expectations. Cheating on taxes or stealing from the office is justified because we manage our money poorly and then blame the government for taking too much or our bosses for not paying us enough. The first step on the road to unimaginable deeds is frequently placing the blame for our failures anywhere but on ourselves, which, apparently, is exactly what Cain did.

Have you experienced anger so deep that you feel tempted to do things you know are wrong? Have you felt so cheated or under-appreciated that you consider doing things that would previously have been unfathomable? If our reaction to those feelings is the temptation to knowingly do something wrong, we have a problem. Instead of placing blame on other people for our own failures, lets take good long looks at ourselves. Just like when trying a dozen different passwords instead of checking the user ID, putting the blame in the right place will help us fix our problems a whole lot faster than laying our failures at someone else's feet.

Misunderstood and Angry

Suggested Reading: James 4:1-10

When my son entered preschool, his speech skills had not yet progressed to the same point as most of his peers. For a while, his lack of communication skills caused some problems at school. He would try to talk to people but they couldn't understand his words. As a result the person listening would often get frustrated and give up. That, in turn, would make my son frustrated and angry. He wanted to be understood and nobody but Mom and Dad seemed to be able to understand him. His anger started driving him to lash out, which got him in trouble. Our son's behavior made us grow frustrated and angry until we finally figured out the problem. Once we and his teachers figured out that he just wanted to be understood, we were able to do something about it and address the situation.

In James chapter 4, the early church leader asked the question, What causes fights and quarrels among you?   Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight (James 4:1-2, NIV).  James understood that most of the fighting we do is the result of not getting something we want and God felt the need to codify that sentiment in Scripture because we have a tendency to forget that.  Sometimes, when we get angry or hurt, we understand exactly why we feel the way we do. At other times, however, we just feel angry and want to lash out, sometimes at one person, sometimes at everybody, and we don't know why. James reminds us that we tend to quarrel and fight because we have some desire that is not being met, because there is something we want that we're not getting.

If you find yourself getting angry a lot, if you find yourself fighting and lashing out, and you aren't sure why, instead of assuming that there is just "something about that person" that gets to you or excusing yourself because you are "just tired", take some take time and figure out what you want that you're not getting. Once you figure that out, you may discover that you're being silly, that your desires are unreasonable, or that your anger is perfectly justified and you need to address the situation directly. Or you might just decide it's not worth being angry. Whatever you discover, uncovering the source of your anger is infinitely better than constantly losing your cool or fuming inside and not knowing why.

If you're angry and don't know why, figure out what you want that you aren't getting. Once you know why you're angry, you can start to deal with it.

Being an Angry Tattle-Tale

Suggested Reading: James 1:12-21

Something I've noticed since having children is how often kids are eager to run and tattle on someone for doing the very thing they were doing just few minutes before. Children universally have the attitude, "It's ok for me to do it to you but you better not do it to me." The younger children just don't grasp the concept that they do the same thing they are mad at someone else for. The older children come up with reasons to justify their behavior, reasons why it's ok for them to behave badly, reasons they deserve to behave badly. Unfortunately, many of us never grow out of that attitude, especially when it comes to anger.

As we get older, we get better and better at coming up with ways to justify our anger. What that person did was wrong, I have the right to lose my temper. I've had a really hard day at work and I don't deserve to be harassed as soon as I walk in the door. And my personal downfall, I had to yell because it's the only way to get you to listen. We each have our own excuses and justifications for mishandling our anger. And we each tend to believe we are justified, even while we judge someone else for the same thing. Jesus's brother James, however, had this to say, Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:19-20, ESV).

Anger itself is not a sin. But anger tends to retard our judgment, cloud our reasoning, and blind us to rational thought. As a result, anger very often leads us into sin. Quite often, we are justified in our anger and have legitimate reasons to be upset with someone. But acting in our anger does not produce the righteousness of God. Anger can be a wonderful motivator for correcting injustices, but only when we have allowed the heat of our anger to die down so that our good judgment can reassert itself.

You may be dealing with anger today. Perhaps someone has hurt you or hurt someone you love. Perhaps you have been confronted with an injustice that leaves you seething. You are allowed to be angry, even furious. But you must remain quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. You never know when you have misunderstood the situation or when acting in your anger will only make things worse. So before you do anything, take a breather, listen, and think. Allow the heat of the moment to dissipate. You might just save yourself from doing something you'll regret

Losing Your Temper Hulk-Style

Suggested Reading: Ephesians 4:20-32

When The Avengers first came out, one of the characters my son was most looking forward to seeing was the Hulk. At that point in time, everything he had ever seen about the Hulk had been from cartoons or the movies where he only really hurts people who were trying to hurt him. So when Hulk made his first appearance because Bruce Banner got angry my son got scared. If you have heard anything about the movie already you know that the Hulk ends up fighting really well for the good guys but the incident reminded me of Ephesians 4:26, which simply states, "Be angry and do not sin" (HCSB).

Anger is one of those emotions we often misunderstand. We often either think of it as something entirely negative or as something we have no control over. Neither one of these concepts is true. Anger can be an extremely positive force for good if we use it correctly. Jesus used his anger to drive cheats and swindlers out of the house of God. Martin Luther King Jr used his anger to lead the fight against injustice. Anger, if used appropriately, can be the difference between saving life or destroying it, between doing justice and letting evil prevail.

Anger can cloud our judgment and make us reckless, causing us to lash out at anyone in our path like the Hulk does when he made his first appearance in The Avengers. But anger can also be used to motivate us for good when we see injustice or evil and then temper it with intentional, clear thinking. Not all anger is bad, but all anger must be directed in a positive direction or it will eventually tear us apart.

What have you been angry about recently? How did you handle it? If you are angry for a good reason, direct your anger. Don't let your anger direct you.