The Question We Still Ask Every Day
The story of Cain and Abel is about more than murder. It is about responsibility.
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Today’s reflection explores one of the oldest questions in the Bible and why it remains surprisingly relevant in modern life.
Every time I go into the biggest town near where I live, it is the same.
I pass people sleeping in tunnels, sitting in shop doorways, or huddled beneath blankets in places that were never meant to be homes. Sometimes they hold a cardboard sign asking for help. Sometimes they simply sit and watch the crowds pass by.
I never quite know what to do.
Part of me wants to stop. Another part hesitates. I have heard all the arguments. Some people say the money will be spent on drugs or alcohol. Others insist that some people choose to remain on the streets. I have no way of knowing the full story of the person sitting in front of me.
What I do know is that they are human beings.
Yet it is surprisingly easy to keep walking. It is easy to tell myself that somebody else will help. Easy to throw a few coins into a cup and feel as though I have discharged my responsibility. Easy to conclude that their situation is not really my problem.
That thought has always challenged me.
Because it sounds remarkably close to one of the most famous questions in the Bible:
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The older I get, the more I realise that the hardest moral questions are not always the dramatic ones. Most of us are unlikely to face decisions involving life and death. What we face instead are countless smaller moments when another person’s need brushes briefly against our own lives.
Sometimes we stop. Sometimes we help. Sometimes we look away.
More often than we might like to admit, we simply carry on walking.
