Am I My Brother’s Keeper?By Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua

By Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua
I often ponder and wonder why a friend should kill "a very close
friend"; why a brother should kill a brother and why a sister should
kill a sister. I have reflected on the gospels especially Matthew 10,
22 that a"Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his
child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to
death. I have loved literature from childhood and I have tried to see
if I can find the answers there. All I have seem points to the human
pride to subject others under his or her ego. William Shakespeare also
battled with a similar problem of the ambitious nature of the human
person in his drama of Macbeth and Julius Caesar.
Macbeth killed King Duncan to fulfil the prediction of the three
witches that he would be king while the incumbent king was still on
the throne." Lady Macbeth who wanted tobe a "First Lady" and Queen by
all means persuaded her husband to commit the horrible crime thereby
staining their hands with human blood. Act 2, Scene 2, of William
Shakespeare; Macbeth captured the repercussion of this evil in a
moving dialogue:
MACBETH
I thought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more! Macbeth has murdered sleep"
LADY MACBETH
What do you mean?
MACBETH
Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to the entire house. "Glamis has
murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more! Macbeth
shall sleep no more."
Lady Macbeth could not sustain her braveness and her whim to conceal
the guilt in Act 5, Scene 1. She confronted her guilt in the depth of
her being and was tormented in her conscience. In her mental agony,
she cried in her sleep, "Here's the smell ofthe blood still. All the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand!" The doctor who
was attendingto her said, "This disease is beyond my practice."
On March 15 (the Ides of March), 44 BC, Caesar was attacked by a group
of senators. He was able to resist until when his best friend Brutus
stabbed him. He resigned himself to his fate with the cry of anguish
"Et tu, Brute?" That is, "Even you, Brutus?" In both dramas,
Shakespeare has demonstrated the truth that love and friendship can be
sacrificed by some people who have made power and position their idol.
In Genesis 1-11, the inspired author delved into this urge of the
human person in a cultic/religious context. The first murder that
portrays the emergence of evil became a gate wayfor the philosophical
question about agood God permitting evil in his name.This question
re-echoes throughout the bible. The story of Cain and Abel is a
symbolic explanation of the inclination of the human person to kill
for a selfish reason and then impute the motive for killing on
religion. I do not know the sense we can make of a situation where
some one is killing another human being created by God either with
physical weapons or psychological weapons and claims he or she is
doing so in God's name and at the same time chorusing "God is great".
You can imagine the energy some "power famished dictators" exert on
ceasing power from a legitimately elected person who is really called
by God to serve the people and is doing his or her job well. Why are
the righteous leaders who serve the good of all including the common
people targetsof some "malicious vultures"?
Cain and Abel in Hebrew are Qayin (קין) and Hevel (הבל). They are
referred to as the sons of Adam (ابنيآدم), in the Qur'an. In the
narrative of Genesis 4:1-16, Cain presented some of the land's produce
as an offering to the LORD. Abel also presented an offering of the
firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord accepted the
offering of Abel who wasa cheerful giver and rejected that of Cain who
offered the worst produce of his farm. Cain was furious, and he was
downcast. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you furious? And why
are you downcast? If you do right, won't you be accepted? Instead of
Cain to take the advice from God by making a better offering, he
tricked his brother, saying, "Let's go out to the field." And while
they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
God reacted and asked Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" Cain
replied, "I do not know:Am I my brother's keeper?" After this, God
said to Cain, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood
cries out to me from the ground! So now you are cursed from the earth,
which has opened her mouth to receive your brother's blood from your
hand. When you farm, the ground shall not yield good crops to you! You
shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth!
If Cain desired to kill Abel for a cultic / religious reason, common
sense would attain the fact that it would have been easier for Cain to
look for another item or better alternative to sacrifice in order to
win God's favour than to kill his own brother. Perhaps the rotten yam
offered by Cain represented his rotten mind and fatal envy.In Cain, a
curse is placed on whoever kills an innocent person for egoistic
reasons. People with guilt do not find rest when they sleep and when
they die. A warring community can not expect good development and
progress for a sustainable length of time.
Today, we see so much rivalry (intra and inter) within many religious
groups. The fight to become the head in a church and in a Mosque is no
longer news. A Nun once recommended that to do a good job in
inter-religious dialogue, the adherents of the various religions
should first do a proper intra-religious dialogue so that they can
live in peace and harmony within their religious community before
inviting others to share in their intra community peace. You can only
give what you have. You can not offer the peace that does not exist in
your community to others. This is the central idea behind ecumenism.
This suggestion is relevant today more than ever before given that we
now live in an era when "parasites of power" and "seekers for prestige
positions" are making religion a serious object of ridicule. The
story ofCain and Abel is an analysis of what is happening in the world
today. There is nothing wrong with religion; it is some people who
claim to dwell in the cult of God and claim to understand the mind of
God better than anyone else that needs transformation and a change of
attitude. Can't we really get along as brothers and sisters? Wherever
brothers and sisters dwell in unity there is peace, love and joy. Then
we can really understand that God is good and God is great!
Fr. Prof. Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua is the Director of Mission and
Dialogue of the Catholic Secretariat ofNigeria, Abuja and Consultor of
the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims (C.R.R.M), Vatican
City ( comonokhua@hotmail.com).