Cain

Recently I read Jose Saramago's book CAIN. It was Saramago's last book. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. In CAIN he retells Biblical stories with great imagination and embellishment. Cain, who killed his brother Abel (Am I my brother's keeper?), is able to travel to the future and have conversations with other Biblical characters.

He goes with Abraham and Isaac up the mountain where Abraham has been commanded to kill his son. Just in the nick of time Cain stays Abraham's hand and saves Isaac. (The angel that was supposed to step in and save Isaac was late because he got lost.) Cain travels with Abraham to the city of Sodom and helps the angels escape from the wicked men who are trying to beat down the door and rape them.

As they leave Sodom, they look back to see God destroy the city, burning everything and everyone to the ground. Cain never gets over this great injustice. Why did God kill the innocent children? he asks. 

At the end of the book Cain is on the Ark with Noah and his family and all the animals. During the forty days and forty nights Cain sleeps with all of Noah's daughter-in-laws, and with Mrs. Noah. Over time he throws everyone overboard except Noah, whom he convinces to jump off the boat and drown himself.

When God comes along and finds out what Cain has done, he is mad. Cain has messed up God's project of re-populating the world. Cain and God argue about who is responsible for this tragic turn of events, as well as all of the injustices in the world. As the book ends they are still arguing.

Jose Saramago has written a long meditation on the theologically unjustifiable dilemma of unjust suffering in the world. It's  a question that bugs all of us. If God is so powerful, and if he really cares about us, why do these things happen?  Conservative religious thinkers always have ready answers to these kinds of questions. One of which is not to question. But all the answers fall short.

Saramago entertains us with humorous takes on Biblical stories while he pulls the rug out from under us at the same time. I appreciate the author's way of wrestling with the unanswerable questions. Rilke said something about just living the questions instead of trying to answer them. 

Terrorists from any religious or secular tradition are always afraid of facing the fact that there are no satisfying answers. What did I just say? Terrorists are afraid? Yep. They try to strike terror in us because they are terrified by liberal traditions that accept the unanswerable.

Fundamentalists have all the answers. They believe in Certainty more than they believe in God. Certainty becomes their idol. I know--I've been there. It seems to me that the real meaning of 'faith' is the willingness to live without answers. To trust. To trust something or someone that 'holds' us despite our limited understanding. 

Faith affirms that life has an 'Ark' that floats on the waters of Being in spite of the injustices of life. Faith means looking at a rainbow and appreciating the beauty that comes through the prism of Goodness. Nihilism means looking at the rainbow and deciding to stay in the prison of a closed universe. That's our choice: the Prism or the Prison.

The novel CAIN helped me reflect on our world and on life. It's conclusion that the debate goes on and on without conclusion is true enough. The God in this novel is pretty clumsy--a Chaplinesque character. Saramago has us laughing at God and laughing at ourselves. I would say that his narrative is a service well rendered. When we create God in our image it's always funny.

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