Genesis and Matthew XV

Whoever now sheds human blood, for that human shall his blood be shed, for in God's image he made humankind.


Seeing that, the crowds were terrified and praised God for giving that kind of power to mortal beings.

The first murder in history was that of Cain over his brother Abel. I do not think that Cain understood what would happen. No one had died yet. Perhaps the brothers had fought before, thrown punches at each other. They had felt anger and hatred before. But no one actually ever killed anybody. This time Cain was so jealous and angry that he sought to hurt Abel more than he ever had before. But this time Cain's blow ended Abel's life. The healing powers of Eden had ebbed enough that there was no saving Abel, the brother whom Cain loved. Cain's punishment was banishment from his family. And indeed, his life work was blessed beyond that of any other. God flourished and expanded Cain.

God was basically letting humanity have its way, and following through on His directive to us, that we would be fruitful and multiply, and have dominion over the Earth.

But as evil sprouted, with little consequence, humanity became more and more corrupt. We can imagine murder being pretty much rampant. Sin, violence, and evil were the norm. It had to be pretty bad for God to want to nearly exterminate the human race!!

This was humanity when in full control of its destiny. It's the way we still are. Without God's involvement, we drift away into savagery.

God gave us all the control we can handle. He gave us dominion over creation. But this directive goes awry when we seek to have dominion over each other. And we always seek dominion over each other. We extend the Great Commission of the Old Testament (have dominion over the earth) into a pass for us to control, enslave, and even kill each other!

God then says - if you take a life, you will lose your own life. Without violating His commissioning to us, without taking away trust or our dominion over the Earth, He provides a framework that will get some control back over Creation. He tells us what we may do, what we must do, if we are to avoid another era of rampant chaos.

But He is also making a statement about the value of life. Life is so value, that if you take it away from another, you must lose your own. This is not an undervaluing of life. It is a lesson in how precious it is to all of us! Our life, here on Earth, is everything!

What great power we have, when we can end something as precious as life! Is there no other manifestation of dominion and what it means, than for us to have this power? Truly God placed great trust in us, in making us such powerful beings!

But there is something even more powerful than that: the power to return life again to the one who has lost it; the power to restore a limb, or organ, or sense, that has been damaged either through nature or artificially! The taking of life is common, unimaginative, evil. But the giving of life is real power, and God has reserved that for Himself. Thank God we do not have that power yet! As a race, we do not value life enough yet, to be able to grant it!