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Our Brother’s Keeper

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). Despite the fact that Cain asks this question as a way to avoid responsibility for Abel’s murder, many people have answered it with a resounding “Yes!” The question has prompted generations of Americans to pursue a more compassionate society, each of us looking after our fellow human beings as if they were family.

This biblical question has also been raised by presidents to help unify the country. In 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover observed, “Part of our national suffering today is from failure to observe these primary yet inexorable laws of human relationship. Modern society cannot survive with the defense of Cain, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’”

In a 1956 speech in Philadelphia, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Freedom is rooted in the certainty that the brotherhood of all men springs from the Fatherhood of God. And thus, even as each man is his brother’s keeper, no man is another’s master.”

“We must give life to that fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, that I am my sister’s keeper,” said President Barack Obama in 2009. It was a favorite verse for him, reflecting the reality that “we all have a responsibility to ourselves and to each other to make a difference that is real and lasting,” a message he called “both timeless and universal.”

Reflection

Did you appreciate the emphases of any of these presidential statements? The Bible readings for today include the familiar story of Cain and Abel and the apostle John’s take on the story. Did you see anything different when reading it this time? What was the feeling Cain had about his brother that led to murder? What caused this feeling? To whom does God speak in the Genesis passage? What happens to the murderer? To the victim?