THE EDITOR, Sir:
AT OUR church, on Sunday mornings we were studying the book of Genesis, and have come to the 4th Chapter, which is the story of the first murder in Scripture. Cain kills his brother Abel in cold blood, because God accepts Abel's offering and rejects his. God says to Cain as he calls him to account for murdering his brother, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from the ground" (Gen. 4:10-11).
According to this, God values human life so much that he calls Cain to account for Abel's blood and curses him when he refuses; for bloodshed with malice cries for vengeance and God cannot rest until it is avenged.
I think that if the blood of one man in antiquity can cry so powerfully to God to move him to demand an accounting from the shedder and when the shedder refuses, curses him, then the blood of thousands of innocent Jamaicans is crying to God for vengeance and God is cursing the nation.
Some of you are already horrified at this as the delusion of a twisted mind, unpatriotic to the country or as the result of a too literalistic reading of the Bible. But what you can't deny is the senseless shedding of blood and that God disapproves of it. Yes, the Scripture tells me, not only in the account of Cain and Abel, but elsewhere, that God disapproves of senseless bloodshed and withholds his blessing where it occurs.
Maybe one way God is cursing Jamaica for shedding so much innocent blood is by afflicting us with irremediable economic misery. For years the economy has been heading downhill, steadily resisting all governmental and personal efforts to stop it, even as the economies of our neighbours, have been heading uphill to success.
Could Jamaica's irremediable economic woes have more than human origin? I wonder whether it is coincidental that the acceleration of the economic misery has proceeded apace with the senseless blood-shedding? Up to the end of the 60s Jamaica was a safe place; you could unlock your house and walk at night, or pick up anyone in your car without fear.
Could it be that God would end the economic misery and give us success, but we cannot receive it, with hands so full of blood.
I am, etc.,
EWIN JAMES
eroyjames@aol.com
A preacher in Florida.
Longwood
Via Go-Jamaica
