Sacrifice — The Judgemental Father & Satan
To begin with, please note that this is not a religious piece. I have tremendous respect for all religions and believe sacred stories hold the key to all of our questions. During Ramadan, I have been connecting with my spiritual side a lot and trying to learn about my faith more. During one of these online searches, I came across a very interesting story from Christianity and began reading it. Now many of you might be aware of Cain and Abel but I was reading it for the first time. Before I share what I made out of it, let me recap on this famous tale.
So in the book of Genesis, Cain and Abel are the two children of Adam who have been asked by God to sacrifice their prized possessions to please God. While both of them make the effort, God accepts Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s. The next portion of the story states how Cain murders his brother, hides his body, and goes about his business as usual before being condemned by God to a life of eternal wandering. The murder confused me, shouldn’t he be motivated to do more, sacrifice more to please God. After all, he has the opportunity to please the creator of worlds. Would he lose it all in a moment of jealousy?
As you start to dwell on it, a different perspective may come to mind. Maybe the act of murdering his brother was not just a naïve act of jealousy but an act of protest. Cain is ready to face consequences to protest against the divine structure established before him. It is in his mind, a way to showdown or fights the idea of God itself. In the story, it signifies the idea of Satan and how it drives Cain to reject the established orders and protest against it. At what cost? All religions, no matter where they originate from have an element of sacrifice. The children of Abraham, be it Muslims, Christians or Jews have an element of sacrifice. Hindus have it, Buddhists have it. In one form or the others, every sacred practice encourages sacrifice.
Over the years of the study of successful men and women, sacrifice has been the common link in all their stories. People have sacrificed the joy of childhood by focusing on a single craft from a young age and attained mastery in it. Financially sound people have sacrificed indulging in luxuries so that they can invest in their portfolio and earn dividends thus making money work for them instead of vice versa. Athletes sacrifice the range of tasty foods we have available to attain perfect fitness which propels them forward when they compete. This is no theory, its a fact — Success Demands Sacrifice. In the real world as well, we find people who didn’t sacrifice or sacrifice enough are troubled, failing, or unhealthy. I for one have always been a foodie and despite my active lifestyle have gained quite a bit of weight and if I continue, health problems are certain. Despite that, I may not sacrifice on my next meal. It’s a conscious decision knowing the consequences.
Our sacrifices in our careers are judged by an extremely judgemental father, the Future. The future is shaped by what we sacrifice today. You don’t stop eating fast food, the future has diseases and fatigue for you. You don’t develop new skills, the future has unemployment or stagnation for you. You don’t sacrifice on buying that LV bag today, the future may make you sell it tomorrow. Like Cain, we all know the future is judging us by what we do today and we try to work for it, to sacrifice for it. But also like Cain, we can fail despite all the sacrifices we make. I have seen perfectly health-conscious men getting heart attacks, talented people losing their jobs, hard-working athletes losing. This can be a frustrating time and this is where the satan comes in.
There is a Satan in all of us. This Satan apart from all its sins is a huge believer in not the productivity of individuals. It will do everything in its power to promote nihilistic ideas in your brain. It prompts you to think of the systems in place as wrong, unfair, and unholy. And it is most active when you have failed at something despite your sacrifices. Satan can take many forms. In this case, it becomes your ego, your negative mindset, your anger, your procrastination, and drives you to make decisions as Cain did. Decisions that lead to action to protest, to detest, and to challenge the established order. The same order which is a result of years and years of evolution and the culmination of learnings and experiences of our ancestors.
The point being, we may fail after the best of our efforts, but to blame the society, the rules, the law, the system and to protest against these is when we will truly and permanently fail. Most failures are a result of miscalculations and timing and that is how they should be seen. Cain didn’t understand this, but we can.
If your sacrifice, didn’t please your God, maybe you just need to sacrifice more because your reward is bigger.