What Will Be Expected of Us

God cannot be of two minds.  Nor can God fail to understand internal conflict within his creatures.  Moreover, the incarnation of God in Jesus would entail Jesus being ever conscious of such conflict.

In fact, we are drawn inevitably to the conclusion that Jesus--through whom all Creation was made and who has (timelessly) understood the implications of his identification with Creation--this same Jesus has ever and is ever and will ever experience the full depth of internal conflict.

What we need to do is understand existence always in terms of the present-ness, the now-ness, and the ever-ness of Jesus' bearing the burden of conflicted Creation.

This burden of conflict in Jesus is best understood by us--as though that were possible--in terms of the agony of the Cross.  This we also best "understand" in terms of a time element--the "finishing" of Jesus' work on Earth.  Let it be enough for now to say that we can never understand the depth of that agony, nor can we believe that Jesus ever knew a "time" in which it was not a present experience for him.  We cannot imagine how many "Gethsemane's" Jesus might know.

To put it another way: Jesus has always worked, and Jesus is always working.  We need to keep this in mind if we are to understand correctly the implications of the accounts to which he draws our attention.

The best example of this is the early chapters of Genesis.  I will set aside, for the moment, the Garden and humanity's expulsion from it, since that account is more the preparation (as opposed to the presentation) of a moral scenario.  The first couple were first exposed fully to the concept of culpability in the same moment they were convicted of it.  This account (though it mirrors the awakening to discipline of all children) cannot be understood properly in terms of actions and consequences.

But the undoubtedly moral scenario of Cain and Abel can only be understood properly in terms of Jesus' ever-present work.  Cain kills Abel, but that is not the beginning of the story, and that fatal act is not the beginning of sin as a part of the story.  Sin as an element of the Cain-and-Abel story is present from the start.  Cain and Abel were born into the sin of all mankind (post-Eden, of course).  Hence the need for sacrifice.

So Abel's sacrifice is accepted, and Cain's is not.  Cain is offered the opportunity is behave correctly in the future, and so to gain acceptance.  God's upbraiding of Cain does not include a prescription of how Cain might make amends for his unseemly behavior, and the upshot of God's admonition to Cain is for Cain to avoid a spiral of sinfulness that would lead to the corruption of his soul.

In short (before the first murder) God is acting as though Cain--downcast wretch that he is--is presented with a clean slate.  "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?"  Much has been written about Abel's offering, and about Abel's status as a prophet, and it has been reasonably surmised that he is a type of Christ.  If we see Jesus the Christ as always involved in Creation and always working, then we are driven to a wonderful conclusion: Abel's sacrifice was sufficient for all humanity.  Cain, though his prior life and (somehow) deficient preparation for the sacrifice was characterized by sin, is burdened by none of that in God's estimation.  All that matters is the future.

Indeed, it might be wondered, if not for Abel's sacrifice, what would have been humanity's future from that pivotal moment.  Adam and Eve had fallen into great sin, and Cain was no better.  If Abel had been no different from the rest of his family, might not humanity have been in such a state as later prompted God to issue the Flood?

So we can begin to see what is required of us as moral beings.  All we can do is work, incessantly and hopefully, in a manner that reflects the work of Jesus.  We cannot dwell on fresh starts or the lack thereof (that is, we cannot escape being "roused" to endless overlapping scenarios that seem to have begun before we are ready); we cannot stop addressing ourselves to opportunities, one upon another, to profit from life's unasked challenges (that is, we will always be "readied," whether we are ready for it or not); and we cannot assume we know the character or the duration of what will be expected of us (that is, we can only expect to be endlessly "reaped.")