Am I My Brother's Keeper?

Cain first asked the question of God after he had killed his brother, Abel, and it has since become a casual quip to deflect personal responsibility. Seldom, however, does the speaker seem to grasp the irony that the truthful answer is affirmative. Cain assumed ultimate responsibility for his brother's life by depriving him of it.

Almost all of my actions -- and many of my thoughts -- impact someone else. Some of these are blatantly obvious. I got halfway through painting my house, changed my mind about the color and couldn't decide on a new one. Time got away from me, and now my neighbors have been looking at a half-painted house for almost two years. I am not terribly organized. I don't keep a day timer or a blackberry or even a basic calendar very well. It is not uncommon for me to double-schedule myself. I end up having to back out of something or just plain forgetting, which doesn't just impact my schedule but several others, as well.

Other reverberations are less obvious. When one of my sons was just a little over two years old, he started having the most incredible temper tantrums. He would scream until his face turned deep scarlet and he couldn't catch his breath. His mouth would be wide open, but for 10, 15, 30 seconds, no air would be going in or coming out. When I tried to pick him up, every fiber of his being went rigid with anger, and he would end up lying on the ground wherever we happened to be -- the park, the grocery store, the sidewalk. I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to it, and I had no idea what to do. So I called an older, wiser mother -- expecting perhaps a step-by-step method for dealing with tantrums -- but she surprised me. She asked, "Is there something you are angry about?" I think I actually stuttered: "Well, yes, my husband and I are losing our restaurant, and our relationship with our partners is extremely strained. I'm angrier than I ever remember being in my life . . . and at a whole bunch of people." Meanwhile, I'm thinking, But my son is two years old. He has no idea what's going on. It didn't take my friend long to convince me that my son did indeed have some idea what was going on -- not the reasons perhaps, and I've never been a yeller, so there were no adult tantrums, but somehow my anger was being communicated. If I wanted to deal with his anger, I had to deal with my own.

I think it's possible to take this too far. We are not responsible for other people's behavior. We are only responsible for our own, but our behavior -- our thoughts even -- have a sometimes profound impact on the people around us. We do not liveth unto ourselves. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. We are part of a larger body -- our families, our churches, the Body of Christ -- and when one body part boils with anger or languishes in despondency or rejoices in God's creative work, it impacts us all.

Barbara