Where do I start?  A few things went wrong in my life and I’m the one who has to suffer for it all.  Much of the time, it really wasn’t even my fault.

Abel was a good enough brother when we were young, but as we got to be adults he started becoming a know-it-all and such a goody-goody.

I shouldn’t have killed him, I know that, but I wouldn’t have done so if he hadn’t been so sickeningly “righteous”.

The whole family knows the story now, but my side of it rarely gets any fair consideration.  It makes my wife quite angry at times.

Of course, “the whole family” means all of the world, and I’m the one they all look down on because they wouldn’t have done anything like that.  Sanctimonious, self-righteous and smug – and everyone tells me I need to control my temper.  It makes my blood boil when I hear it.

I was the older brother, and took up growing plants and vegetables quite young.  Since I didn’t really want competition, I was quite pleased when Abel showed an interest in looking after sheep instead.

Things seemed to be going well until Abel wanted to show just how holy he was.  God likes us to acknowledge that we are sinners, so we go through the motions and offer sacrifices.  Well, I am a horticulturalist, so I gave an offering from the delightful produce in my garden.  Sumptuous potatoes, perfect pumpkins, carefree carrots and luscious leeks.  Shocks of tall waving wheat and some gargantuan grapes.  Carefully culled from the furrows I struggle to keep free of weeds – weeds that grow so wonderfully since Mum and Dad made such a mess of this world.  If only they had followed instructions we would all have been better off.  It makes gardening really hard work, not to mention all the bugs and things that like to feed on my crops too.  We just have to get used to the fact that sometimes when we bite on an apple we get a bit more than we bargained for!

But never mind that, I brought these offerings and you might expect that God would be pleased with them.  A gardener bringing a gardener’s offering.  A tiller of the soil bringing the produce of the soil.  Makes sense?  Well of course it does.

Abel followed my example and did the same, bringing some of his spare sheep and presenting bits of them to God.

Well, God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected mine.  All those beautiful turnips and tasselled corn cobs were just worthless in God’s eyes.  Only the pathetic remnants of some cute little lambs would satisfy God, and I just don’t grow those things.  Animals are such noisy and dirty things, and they cause so much trouble everywhere.  Give me a nice calm line of radishes over a messy bunch of bleating lambs any day.

And what irked me even more was when God asked me why I was angry!  Surely it’s obvious that I’m going to be angry when my little brother is praised for giving something that he had easily available, while my offering is cast back in my face?  It shouldn’t be any surprise, and it’s not my fault either.

God told me that if I did well I would be accepted, suggesting that I knew that what I had done was wrong, and that I had to rule over sin instead of giving in to it, but he wouldn’t explain to me what was wrong.  No comment at all, nothing to help me learn, just blame, blame, blame.

Now I ask you, what was God getting upset about?  All that he would tell me was that I had not “done well”.  Now, I ask you, what does that mean?  He wouldn’t tell me, and as we talked I got angrier and angrier.

As soon as we finished talking, I went looking for Abel and suggested that we should go out into the field.  He probably thought I wanted his advice about what offering I should make.  Maybe he planned to give me instructions about what grapes I should give to God, or maybe he hoped to sell me one of his flea-bitten sheep, but either way I didn’t give him the chance.

He’s dead now, and although I suppose I shouldn’t have killed him, he really got what he deserved.  I did my best to control myself, but he just seemed to have such a smug expression on his face that day.  He knew that I always get angry easily, so what did he expect?  If he’d had any brains he wouldn’t have come out with me into the fields.  But he came, and that put the cat among the pigeons.

Naturally, my anger and feeling of being badly treated went with me.  Naturally, I wanted to take it out on him.  Naturally, I can’t do anything to make a dead man alive again.

When Abel was dead, I was really sorry, but I couldn’t help feeling that he had brought it on himself.  Fortunately I had a spade with me, so I buried the body and went back home.

Everyone wondered where Abel was.  I’m sure they wouldn’t have cared half so much if it had been me missing.  Even my wife was asking where he was.  I suppose he was her brother also, but her questions made me angry too.

Then God talked to me and asked me where Abel was.  He dismissed my evasive answer and told me that I was going to be punished with a special punishment aimed just at me.

God cursed the ground specifically for me, so that even using all my skill as a gardener wouldn’t make things grow well for me.  No longer would I be able to settle down and be a happy and contented farmer.  Instead, I would have to wander around finding food as best I could.  The punishment was overwhelming.  I knew that if God said it, he meant it, and despite the way God had treated me, I still didn’t want to be sent away from him either.

To be honest, I was also concerned that if I had to keep wandering around, I would not be able to build a strong, safe house that could keep out any eager vigilantes who decided to try to make me pay for killing Abel.

God listened to my complaints and gave me a solution.  Ever since, though, it has seemed to me that his solution might have been worse than the problem.  God put a mark on me so that everyone could recognise me.  It didn’t matter much at the start, since there weren’t very many of us, but nowadays there are a lot more people around and whenever anyone meets me, they either know who I am already, or they ask me what the mark is from.  No-one else has a mark like mine, and I have been very glad to see that it hasn’t passed on to our children.

God said that he was putting the mark on me so that no-one would kill me – and I’m still alive, so I suppose it has worked – but more than that, it has made me think every day about what I did.  Every day makes me consider my actions of long ago, and it isn’t making me any more sorry for what I did.  Abel has ruined my life.  First he showed me up before God, and now he shows me up before anyone who meets me.  I even find my wife looking at that mark when I’m sounding angry.

Despite the fact that we have to keep moving, I am determined to build a family of my own and to worship how we want to worship.  My wife supports me completely in this now, and we’re sure to outnumber the do-gooders soon, so we will be able to defend ourselves if they ever attack us to try to punish me.

Overall, I’m a bit sad that Abel isn’t here anymore, but there’s no doubt whose fault it was – and it wasn’t mine!  It seems to me that even God agrees; after all, Abel is dead and God has put a special mark on me to protect me from being killed.  He didn’t protect Abel in that way!

I’ll keep worshipping God my way, thank you very much, and I think everything will work out alright.  After all, doing things “God’s way” didn’t help Abel, did it?

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