Paraphrasing the words of cultural commentator and theologian David Wells, our society has rapidly lost moral altitude. We’re not merely morally disengaged, adrift, and alienated; we’re morally obliterated. We’re not only morally illiterate; we’ve become morally vacant. The onset of this spiritual rot has come so rapidly that many would say that we’re in a moral free fall. Since we’ve abandoned the pursuit of virtue, we’re left to talk about values, but our values have no universal value because the idea of absolute truth has disappeared from public discourse. We’re looking now at a society, a culture, even a civilization that, to a significant extent, is travelling blind, stripped of any moral compass. Some would even say that we’re all Cainites now.
Isn’t there an increasing likeness between our culture and the culture of Cain and his descendants? Sure seems so in some key ways. Consider that question in the light of Gen 4:16-24.
Like Cain and his descendants, we claim to be “people of faith,” but we don’t live coram Deo. Notice Gen 4:17-18. Cain and his wife were fulfilling God’s command to fill the earth, but notice the names that they gave to their sons: several had a short-hand version of God’s name (“El”) embedded in them. What are we to make of those names? Arguably, in them, the Cainites displayed a form of godliness, but they didn’t live their lives coram Deo, that is, in God’s presence, under God’s authority, to God’s glory. In that sense, they took God’s name to themselves in vain. What happened then appears to be happening today. Like Cainites, some have taken the name of God-in-Three-Persons in Christian baptism but have no discernible intention of living coram Deo.
Our culture seems to share a second likeness to Cainite culture too. Like Cain and his descendants, we endorse marriage and family, but we redefine them apart from godly virtues. Look again at Gen 4:19-24. Cainites believed in marriage and family alright, but in just seven generations from Adam, they had exchanged monogamy for polygamy, and husbands like Lamech sang of their ability to intimidate their wives. Similarly, in our culture: secularists redefine “marriage” and “family,” celebrating what God condemns. Meanwhile, professing Christians take marriage vows but live together oblivious to biblical teaching on marriage.
