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BAR 36:06, Nov/Dec 2010
The Bible In the News: Answers to Cain’s Question
By Leonard J. Greenspoon

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” The first person to utter this question, Cain (in Genesis 4:9), more than likely expected, or at least hoped for, an answer in the negative. It is clear, though, that readers of the Bible are intended to respond in the positive: Yes, I am my brother’s (and sister’s) keeper.
In contemporary society, at least as based on reports in major newspapers worldwide, the appropriate response to this eternal query is decidedly more mixed. For example, advice columnists tend to proffer resounding “hands-off” responses. A Canadian asks, “My brother is a lifelong heavy smoker. He’s now 29, married for two years, and the very proud father of a beautiful baby girl ... I’ve nagged and at times pleaded with him to stop [smoking]. Where do my ethical obligations to ‘be my brother’s keeper’ begin and end on this matter?” According to the expert (in the Toronto Star), the inquiring writer “should get off your brother’s case ... Your intentions are noble, but all you’re accomplishing is distancing yourself from him and making him feel guiltier than he already feels ... Your brother, in this case, has to be his own keeper.” Something, I suppose, like “physician, heal thyself.”
Such pragmatic negations of “keeping” our brothers are countered elsewhere in the press. For example, a correspondent in Malaysia’s New Straits Times writes (in a piece titled “Life Means Little Without the Sharing and Caring”): “I am my brother’s keeper. I say it not out of some misplaced sense of responsibility or schmaltzy sentimentality. I say it as it is part of some higher calling. It is a question of duty.”
Even more expansive is the definition of brother that encompasses those to whom we have no blood relationship, as in a Newsday story titled “My Brother’s Keeper: A Long Island Veteran Makes Sure a Brother in Arms Is Buried with Dignity.” This account narrates the efforts of veterans to provide an appropriate burial for a Korean War-era veteran who had died “penniless and long separated from his family.”
And it can even cross species: “There is a deep beyond-its-years wisdom in Suma’s eyes—a look that speaks of a shared understanding between keeper and orangutan about the animal’s precarious existence, and the lifelong dedication of zoo staff to help.” These efforts, playing out in Borneo and Melbourne, are the subject of a story in Australia’s Herald Sun titled “They Are My Brothers’ Keepers.”
Returning to the realm of humans, we discover that overcoming adversity is often the stimulus for positive attitudes and actions toward others. Thus, we read (in USA Today) of Michigan State basketball player Kalin Lucas, who had to overcome considerable personal tragedy as he grew up. Now a leader, Lucas, along with teammate Durrell Summers, sport “the same tattoo inscribed on their right forearms, the letters BFSG. What the letters stand for is private and sacred, Lucas says, but he sums up their significance this way: ‘I am my brother’s keeper.’”
Alas, “I am my brother’s keeper” does not always equate with the positive sentiments we tend to associate with the expression. As reported in the Herald Sun, the same words are part of the insignia of the Bandidos, an “outlaw motorcycle gang” in Australia. Their definition of “brother” and “keeper” is decidedly less expansive than others, as also seen in another of their slogans: “Real power can’t be given—it must be taken.”
As always, I want to conclude on a higher note: a story from Glasgow’s Herald with the title “‘Going Green’ Is a Moral Duty for Scots Christians.” As part of his argument, the Right Reverend William Hewitt, moderator of the General Assembly, stated: “There’s a moral and ethical argument to [environmental issues]. It’s absolutely basic to the teachings of the Bible. Am I my brother’s keeper? Yes, you are your brother’s keeper.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.