Editorial February 25, 1950 Issue

MY BROTHER'S KEEPER

George Channing

My brother's keeper is God. Simple fairness requires that I acknowledge and respect that fact because I acknowledge and respect it with regard to myself. My own keeper is God. My complete allegiance is due to Him, and He alone is responsible for me. He needs me in my true selfhood as the perfect idea which could not exist unless there was perfect Mind to conceive it. Hence, in my true selfhood I bear witness to God's presence, and since He needs His witness, He, being all-powerful, will supply His own need and remain my keeper eternally. So, likewise, my brother's.

The so-called Golden Rule, uttered by the master Christian (Matt. 7:12), "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," is the key to the right position on this subject. What one knows about himself he must know also about his brother. The relationship of God to man and of man to God is primary. Man is not primarily responsible for man. God is responsible for man, but each of us is responsible for his own right concept of God as his keeper. No individual can entertain the right concept of himself, that is, understand man to be in the keeping of God, until he includes every individual in that same concept.

Hence the impertinent question of Cain, when God asked the whereabouts of Cain's brother, Abel, whom Cain had slain (Gen. 4:9), "Am I my brother's keeper?" was a perverted acknowledgment of truth. Since the answer, in a primary sense, is "No," the question was employed to hide the fact that what Cain was responsible for had been neglected by him, namely, a right sense of himself in the keeping of God. This neglect was evidenced by his failure to entertain a right sense of the true identity of Abel as remaining forever in the keeping of God, and his consequent failure to keep his human obligation to refrain from any effort to destroy his fellow man.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

THE PATRIARCHS AND THE CHRIST