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when I was in san Antonio a short time ago , which is a great place. I was at the bar of a steakhouse called bona hands. I don't know if you guys have been there uh enjoying

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a drink All of a sudden there was a small commotion and two big guys came out in suits yelling at each other and once said to the other and the full hearing of the entire bar, you always

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do this, you ruin everything very exciting evening. Um when the two men exited the restaurant, all the waiters ran to the front window because they want to see a brawl, you know while waiting to

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see if something more dramatic would unfold outside of the restaurant. The server who waited on them and formed all of us that these two men were brothers. Apparently family dinner did not go as planned. Okay

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. Mind anyone of their own family dinners anyways. Um this scene at the bar as well as a series of thoughtless and terrible occurrences in the world and this is just a short list the terrorist attack on

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Eastern Pakistan. The attack Belgium before that, Perez , as well as the very ugly sort of misogynistic anti muslim anti refugee statements and slurs that are occurring in the U. S. Political spear. And

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of course closer to home the horrific murder of Haruka Weiser against student at U. T. Well, family conflict. Especially when we enlarge the notion of the family to include the school, this academic institutions

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in this area, the wider community of Austin, the nation, the world. Well, it all seems that conflict and senseless death are everywhere all the time. And so it's not surprising that conflict is

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on my mind lately. It's kind of difficult not to have it on one's mind. So instead of following the election eri I'm going to talk about another biblical story. The one that reminds me so tragically

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what we are experiencing now, the one that we are living repeatedly over and over again. The story of CAin and Abel and genesis for now, there's another reason I have to admit why I've chosen to

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talk about CAin Abel today, and the most obvious is that I'm teaching a course on the primeval history . So it's on my mind and I've done the research for because I have to prepare for class,

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so that's always helpful. Um another reason is that during our class conversation on this story, someone asked whether anyone has ever had ever heard a sermon on this tale and no one not me included, had

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and this intriguing question got me thinking why haven't any of us heard a sermon on the story Murder and killing our brothers and sisters? This happens all over the world all the time, as I just noted

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. Um and yet why is this tale so rarely discuss is the topic and the story too prosaic murdering each other. Whether we take murder literally or metaphorically , are we over it? The question about why

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the story of CAin and Abel is ignored made me wonder whether we have become so desensitized with death and murder, that we have become desensitized to the original tale about in the bible as well. And if

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so, if you have become accustomed to this a little bit, um is there any way to re sensitize ourselves or at least think about human conflict in the new way by re examining the biblical story of

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the first, the most original murder. Now the story is a big enough and frustrating, frustratingly short on detail. Two stuns, CAin and Abel born right after Adam and Eve's expulsion from the garden of

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Eden. One child becomes a farmer, the other a shepherd. Both decide to offer God uh some kind of offering caIN, the farmer unsurprisingly offers God will through, he's a farmer after all, equally

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unsurprising uh able to shepherd offer God God the fruit of his products that namely the fat portion from the firstborn of the swac. So far so good. Now at this point, however, the biblical story

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shifts and present us with a series of reactions and effects while annoyingly holding out the reasons that causes and motivations driving them. So God, for reasons left absent in the text looks favorably on Abel's offering,

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but not on the one offered by Kane, and with this very simple act of divine favoritism, God sets off a chain reaction that will culminate in humanity's first death and murder. Now cain understandably, is

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upset with this, and some say depressed by God's inexplicable rejection of his offering. And God noticing canes less than thrilled reaction, gives him some advice and a warning, and some say actually a lecture God

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asked cain maybe hypothetically though it's not clear why is he so upset? And then God cryptically states that Sin crouches at the door, but that cane must rule over it. The speech unfortunately appears not to

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have helped came very much indeed. Some scholars have argued that is actually this tet, a tet which might have tipped cane over the edge, you know , as we see in the next scene cain and

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Abel, they're out in the field, something is said between them. Their conversation interestingly absent in the Hebrew text came then rises up and murders his brother Abel after the murder, Why not Before some of

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us God reappears and asking about his brother's whereabouts. And to this query came famously replies, Am I my brother's keeper? And the story ends with came being marked and punished by God with perpetual exile wandering

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and increased difficulty in farming the story as evidence is simultaneously lucid and simultaneously and big ambiguous. The story is short and generally easy to follow as the famous writer, political activist, holocaust survivor Nobel prize winner

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, Elie Weisel nicely puts it. The story in many ways is rather simple. It quote, contains no call, no transcending quest, nor does it open the gates of hidden sanctuaries. Rather, the

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guiding motivation, the essence of this narrative is that a raw, brutal instincts. In other words, the outline the moral message and the heart of the story seems rather self evident. Rather basic. Even

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prosaic, don't be jealous, don't kill, don't murder. While the central message seems clear and self evident, everything else about it is murky. The motivations of feelings, of things that we, as

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listeners need to know to make sense of the story , to understand it are not provided they are left silent in the white spaces between the words and the blanks. Indeed, one can argue that the most

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important parts of the narrative remained the most ambiguous and unexplained. Why does God look upon look upon Abel's offering favorably, but not Keynes? Is God just being unfair? Or was there something defective by CAin's

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offering? Or perhaps with Kate himself? As some commentators speculate babies, cane sacrifice was not as nice , awful special. Or some have already even meat centric as the offering of his brother Abel. And

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perhaps this is why God mysteries. He likes one over the other, moreover, what is God telling Kane exactly when he asked him why is he so upset and then tell them that Sin looks at the

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door. This is the first mention of sin in the bible and no, there's no direct mention of sin in the Adam and Eve story and it will lead to the first murder. So how is he

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supposed to know what God is talking about? You know, murder? Since it's never occurred before, supposedly adding to the mystery, Why does God not stop came? If God has an inkling about what

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his favoritism might lead to? Why does God only warn and confront after the deed but failed to come between the two brothers before one of them goes through with killing one another? Why not warn able?

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That his brother seems a tad bit unhinged ever since the offering business. And lastly, what led came to kill, able at all what causes people to kill and murder? Especially members of their own family

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? Was it simply jealousy or anger? Was cain momentarily insane. How can we understand this murder? How can we understand any act of murder? Any act of deliberate killing? What can possibly explain the

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motivations especially of this first? This most original of all murders, we go again nicely summarizes what is significant and important about these unreserved, unresolved mysteries. Um, and questions he writes that the narrative blends

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and raises and interviewees three timeless confrontations, the confrontation between humankind and God, between a person and his brother in the literal and a more metaphoric sense as well, and finally, between a person and herself

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, which oscillates between quote, good and evil mala , addiction and grace. Or to put it less poetically, this tale illustrates and raises profound eternal questions about the universe and about God and ourselves. Why

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is God or life so unfair? Why do we have conflict with each other and kill each other? Why are humans so good and yet so bad? But while it raises them, it fails to answer

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or resolve these questions. The story story only reveals to us to affect the consequences and not the motivation is not why which the tail leaves for the reader to figure out for herself. And these lack of

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answers and resolutions might be part of the reason why the story with a simple moral continues to hunt and to confound us today. So now that I have explained why this story is kind of unnerving, What

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are we to do about it? How does one , what does one do with the narrative that seems to offer simplistic moral messages in place of answers and resolutions to deeper and more profound mysteries? Well,

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I want to suggest the date that the annoying lack of an answer might precisely be the point of this narrative or to put it differently. I think the tales, odd combination of ambiguity and lucidity induces a

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series of chain reactions in the reader. Us that is that leads to an important point or message and the train reaction goes something like this, the missing motivations. The absent reason is the lack of explanations

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, the blank spaces in other words that present these deep questions but stopped short of offering answers and resolutions . These mysteries force us to react in a very particular way by raising questions and yet leaving them and

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resolve the story, compels us the reader to try to answer or resolve them ourselves. And then so doing it forces us to rethink to re examine and to retry in some ways to fill in and make

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sense of the motivations of the various characters in the bible. And we therefore I brought into the story , I'm compelled to take on the garb of the different characters in order to understand this narrative. And

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in so doing, we are compelled, as Visa illustrates to re examine the various actors of the story and the part they played in the crime insure the ambiguities and lingering questions, causes us to come back

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to the story and again, in order to ask the new questions of cause and effect guilt and innocence . Who are the victims, Who are the victimizers , who is innocent and who is guilty and when

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we re ask these questions, who are the victims and who are the victimizers and who is responsible for what we get some complicated answers, answers that I hope will lead to the point that I want to

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put forth today. So who is the victim and victimizer? At first seems simple, able, the one killed victim cain, his brother has murderer. The aggressor. The victimizer. True and yet when

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we start looking at Kane's actions in search of a motivation for reason for an explanation, things become a bit murky. Kane is not just the victimizer, not just an aggressor, his aggression, his murder

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is a result of a series of events, events beyond himself that he did very little to initiate. He brings offerings in itself a good and pious act . But for some mysterious reason it is rejected by

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God and because of this, he becomes understandably upset who wouldn't be divine favoritism I imagine is way worse than parental favouritism because we believe or at least hope that God is not like our mommies and daddies.

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Okay, we hope that God doesn't play favorites in essence more problematic. Not only does God not behave very nicely to Kane, seemingly nice gesture, but the text never explains why God favour able to get

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over that of canes and hence we have to presume that k might not have been told the reason either might not have known the real cause behind God's real objection of a seemingly innocent and perhaps even pious gesture

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and yeah, I know all the reasons that commentators have before to get got off, you know, so that maybe can offered um an offering of lesser quality or maybe Kane's heart wasn't in it. Yeah

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, maybe, you know, God does tell Kane ambiguously something about being good and making good or something like that in genesis 47 but the hebrew honestly is not that clear. The hebrew is interestingly never really

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clear in the parts that you wanted to be clear , but that's a different story. Okay, uh more interesting, they are more importantly, the text and the author of the story never gives us uh

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, you know, never gives us that clarity and never tries to get God off the hook by clearly telling us what CAIN did wrong. Exactly. The writers could have done so I think, but they

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seem to have chosen not to present a clear reason or explication and therefore, I think it is a much more profitable exercise to try to think about why the authors didn't provide a clear to get out of

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jail card for God what their purposes might have been . And telling such an unclear story than they're trying to squeeze out of the text excuses for divine actions that we find rather uncomfortable. Obviously, as you

00:14:15.560 - 00:14:30.730

see, I'm gonna I'm gonna proceed in such a manner. Anyhoo coming back to the story after mysteriously rejecting canes gift God seems to twist the knife in a bit more according to Ezel instead of consolation for

00:14:30.730 - 00:14:39.220

the depression that came his feeling. God instead gives him a lecture on morality and a warning. A lecturer and warning, which I would like to point out again at no point explains why what cain did

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wrong. Instead of comforting the upside cain, God seems to make can't feel worse. After invalidating his offering, God seems to invalidate canes feelings not only does God not like what cain gives them as an

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offering, but tells him that he has no one to blame but himself, that his feelings of depression and anger injection are unjustified and unwarranted. The second rejection seems even more pointed and hurtful than the first

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and were viewed in this light through this lens, it doesnt cane feel seem a bit like a victim too. Certainly the murderers of the murder of his brother. I'm not trying to get him off for

00:15:22.580 - 00:15:35.640

that. He does succumb to sin and he does kill his own brother. And perhaps as some have noted, he has punished way too lightly by God for this wandering. A little farming difficulty. They

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seem a bit trite for taking the life of taking the life of his brother. All true, but read in this light, read through this other point of view doesn't came become at least more understandable,

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much more complicated, Not simply black and white. 100% pure aggressive, pure evil. There seems to be something victim like about him as well though at the end he remains and he stands as the aggressor

00:16:03.190 - 00:16:15.240

. The antagonist, the murder of his brother, the first killer of a human being and hence of humanity itself. The victim like sense of cain becomes even more imaginable more possible when we enlarge chains of

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people in the world today who kind of seem to resemble him and I don't mean the cane as murderer per per se. How many people out there in the world right now feel like they're offering to God

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or to the universe be at their talent, their hopes, our desire to do good to serve to work to live accordingly. It's correctly how many of them feel that this desire, this offering has been

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returned to them by the world and by God with the reaction that looks and feels a lot like unexplained rejection and how many such people feel badly about this and are told or or met with a response that

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tells them that their sorrow and depression are unjustified that they brought this rejection inequality upon themselves that they somehow deserve the hand that they are dealt. And how many of them are attacked it angry and upset by

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all of it. First by this kind of cosmic and divine direction and then by the lack of acknowledgement of their feelings, by the people around them. Yeah. How many people out there in the world

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who feel like this? How many canes are there ? That is pre murder canes a whole lot I would imagine. Indeed we may have felt like this at some point or another like CAin though cain's evil

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, did his act of murder cannot be justified? Or even a sense of came as this kind of person imagine in this way doesn't he become a bit more human, more understandable, more empathetic. So

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also these ambiguities in the text lead us to reexamine able and able at first seems like uh just to function is purely a victim. He has no lines his offer he offers and offering that pleases gone,

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has some mysterious conversation in the field with his brother and then as a result is similarly murder. Indeed , his name itself means something like nothing less or vanity or a fleeting thing and hence able seems to

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symbolize the quintessential victim he lives simply to die and to be victimized. There are no doubt such labels in the world as well. Today, people who exist, it seems only to be beaten down or

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to be killed or murdered. For reasons we can't begin to make sense of. There are many such people we in Austin we might have just witnessed a murder of such a person in our community. And

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I have to admit, I can't make sense of it. It's too close. Who can figure out why a student writing home one night, why her life was suddenly extinguished, What motivational reason can explicate

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it. And then this we come back to the heart of murderers. Something unhuman, perhaps something mysterious , something without reason. And while this event is so murky with emotions and with lingering questions, the

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story, this narrative in the biblical text, it still beckons asking us to not look to look, not just that came, but also again at a table and without victim blaming april. Why did one

00:19:23.890 - 00:19:37.640

has to ask why did able become the target of his brother's anger and depression? Was it jealousy as most readers or commentators presumed, or was it merely madness on Kane's part? Maybe some kind of misdirect

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rage at God? All these conjectures make a lot of sense. We go again, offers another reading which sends a slightly different light on the story, and he argues that it might not have been jealousy

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per se, but a much more personal sort of a deeper offense that lead came to lash out so so violently against his brother. Rizzo posits that CAin was not jealous of able per se, but that

00:20:04.990 - 00:20:19.710

instead he felt betrayed by able How. So you may ask. Able. His own brother did not sympathize with cane or side with him. When God inexplicably rejected his offering or to put it differently,

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abled did nothing to help cane during his sorrow, he did not empathize with his brother when his brother was grieving and hurting. Indeed, Apple might have even felt that cane deserved his rejection and that he

00:20:33.470 - 00:20:44.660

able in turn deserve the applause. If CAin did nothing to be rejected, that april would have to admit that he might have done nothing to deserve the blessing. one can easily see why Abel might have

00:20:44.660 - 00:20:59.940

resisted the idea and might have been rather unsympathetic, easier to think that he able earned the blessing than to think that all blessings and rejections are haphazardly and randomly given. In short, it's easier to blame

00:20:59.940 - 00:21:15.050

cable for his came for his rejection than to believe that God is perhaps unfair. Abel's mistake according to result can be expanded into a more universal, larger uh kind of misdeed with all writes quote in the

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face of suffering. One has no right to turn away, not to see in the face of injustice . one may not look the other way when someone suffers and it is not you, he comes first

00:21:26.810 - 00:21:38.220

. His very suffering gives him priority when someone cries and it is not you, he has rights over you. Even if his pain has been inflicted by your common God, to watch over a man who

00:21:38.220 - 00:21:49.870

grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God. Though too weak to oppose. God man is strong enough to defend his fellow man or at least a dress. His wounds able did nothing Such

00:21:49.880 - 00:22:03.360

was the nature of his fault. According to this interpretation, Kane, and the face of a lack of kindness and understanding from God hope to find it and his brother Abel. But he did not.

00:22:04.040 - 00:22:18.210

And though evil again is not at fault for his murder, so he did not cause it, nor deserve it able to might be slightly faulted for a different offense for not acting like a brother to cane

00:22:18.220 - 00:22:32.680

for not sympathizing or empathizing with him when his brother was suffering and sorrowful. And as we are perhaps guilty of mimicking Kane at times being jealous, the press angry, perhaps even lashing out at those who

00:22:32.680 - 00:22:42.740

are close to us. We are also guilty of perhaps being able not, not that we are continually hated as a writer for Sean argues. Uh, but in this other way, the way that we

00:22:42.740 - 00:22:56.710

sell perhaps outlines for failing appoints to sympathize and empathize with our fellow brothers and sisters who are suffering and grieving over the rejections. They're facing whatever they may be from God and from the universe, for failing

00:22:56.710 - 00:23:07.550

to side with them or as a result, states failing to wash over than what she argues is quote , a more urgent duty than to think of God for not defending them or at least dressing their wounds

00:23:07.750 - 00:23:22.190

. We all do this and then this enlarged vision and a large reading of CAin and Abel and discovering how we are canes and how we are at points tables and how we are surrounded by canes and surrounded

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by Abel's. I hope it's here that we can find a message or a point what this narrative shows in different ways, by bringing us into the story through its ambiguities for compelling us to take on the

00:23:34.250 - 00:23:45.770

garb of CAin and Abel, its need for the family of humanity, for the Kanes and Abel's for all of us really to try to approach one another with more empathy, more understanding, more of an

00:23:45.770 - 00:23:57.340

attempt to place ourselves in the place of our brothers and sisters, or to put it differently. The narrative seems to argue that it is empathy that forms the very heart of being a brother or sister to

00:23:57.340 - 00:24:10.250

someone else. And so doing, the narrative points , the empathy is not only unnecessary, prevented it to murder, but also as a way to live in the world, is set by larger, unresolvable

00:24:10.250 - 00:24:22.380

problems and issues. How does one live in this horrifically unfair world where some are blessed and some randomly damned? Where God seems to favor some and not others? How does one behave as a keeper of

00:24:22.380 - 00:24:33.620

one's brother or sister? Both metaphorically and literally in the world filled with victims and with bullies? How should you react when someone has been blessed by God ? And how should how should one react when someone

00:24:33.620 - 00:24:48.410

has been linked and stomp down by God? What the story seems to suggest is that the wise to these queries remain mysterious, remain unknown may be distant from us, but the how that is how do

00:24:48.410 - 00:25:00.430

we live in this world? But the answer to this, how lies at least in part in offering empathy and compassion to the Abels and to the canes in the world, to all whom we consider our