Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
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Good stuff. You have a better grip than I would have expected.

Essential to the Cain and Abel story is that Cain blamed others for problems he caused. Then when confronted by that, he dug in his heels and filled with hate and sought to get vengeance on the reality that he blamed. He killed his brother, his ideal, what he wanted to be, and in doing so he killed himself symbolically. Because he blamed others for his misfortune and because he took that to the extreme, Cain was lost forever. The Columbine killers are near picture perfect examples of Cain. Leninism/social justice/Marxism/Communism are great examples of this on a grand scale. Their shared core philosophy is to blame others and to exact revenge. And as we have seen from history, every society that used that as its organizing principle damned itself to the worst kind of destitution imaginable.

In less monumental ways, what I discussed in the OP is my family being Cain. The famous "get that log out of your own eye before trying to get the speck out of your neighbor's eye" line in the New Testament is a continuation of Cain and Abel. Jesus is a finalized, fully developed solution to the problem of Cain. In the Cain and Abel story, we only see what Cain did wrong and how he was damned. What we don't see is how to solve for that if you are Cain. Well, Jesus solved for that. He did so by humbling his pride and empathizing with that which he felt was hurting him. When you're Cain, doing that is the hardest thing you can do, which is why it killed Jesus. And Jesus was resurrected and renewed a better person because of his sacrifice he was able to make due to his humility and his empathy, unlike Cain who was forever damned because of the sacrifice he didn't make because of his pride and his hardheartedness.



On Job, it's a very Buddhist/Taoist type story. Particularly the Farmer's Son: http://www.rainbowbody.com/newarticles/farmerson.htm

The Bible tells a lot of the same stories that other religions do, just in a anthropomorphic way. Often where ancient Chinese religion would talk about The Way or Nature, Christianity calls that God, in my estimation.