You Are Not Your Brother's Keeper, According to the Bible

You Are Not Your Brother's Keeper, According to the Bible

By Gary North

For over 100 years, theological liberals, who in most cases are also political liberals, have used this famous passage in the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis to justify the idea that individuals are responsible for the health and welfare of other individuals, and then, taking it a step further, they conclude that the state is responsible for the health and welfare of people in need.

On the surface of it, the text offers not the slightest hint of any such interpretation. Let us consider the setting. Cain has killed Abel. God then cross-examines him, knowing full well exactly what he has done. Cain, being an incomparable fool, thinks he can fool God. So, he asked a rhetorical question in response to God's very specific question, namely, "Where is your brother?" Cain answered rhetorically: "Am I my brother's keeper?" The issue here was not economic welfare; the issue here was the location of Abel's body.

Cain knew exactly where that body was. So did God. God was simply making a point: He cross-examines individuals before He condemns them. He investigates the facts before He renders judgment. In this case, Cain was about to come under historical judgment. But he thought that he might deflect this, at least for a time, by playing the fool. After all, he implicitly argued, there was no good reason why he should know where Abel was. He was not in charge of Abel. He was not, in other words, Abel's keeper.

The implication of this rhetorical response is this: people who are legally responsible for the affairs of other people are the equivalent of caretakers in an asylum for the mentally disabled. They have control over the inmates, because the inmates are incapable of taking care of themselves. The caretakers supervise the daily activities of the inmates. They make certain that the inmates do not stray far from their cells. In other words, they exercise physical and emotional control over those people whose relatives are no longer willing to exercise responsibility, and who have transferred this legal responsibility to professionals.

Cain was quite correct. He was not a caretaker of any kind. He was a murderer. No one had entrusted the life of his brother into his hands. To the extent that a caretaker over a group of inmates exercises control over their activities, to that extent Cain's characterization of a keeper was accurate. To the extent that the incarcerated has almost no authority over his activities, Cain's assessment was correct. He was not his brother's caretaker.

The concept of keeper in this case is descriptive of the implications of the welfare state. When theological liberals and their political allies designate somebody who needs economic assistance as someone who ought to be locked up, controlled, and managed for his own good, as if the person were a mental defective, they can legitimately appeal correctly to Cain's concept of a keeper. But this is not what the defenders of the Social Gospel and the welfare state ever say explicitly. They invoke the language of the King James Version of the Bible, with a strong accent on economic responsibility, but they neglect the more fundamental aspect of that passage, namely, the judicial responsibility of caretakers to control the activities of those who have been placed under their authority.

When we think of the biblical concept of a keeper, we should have in mind someone who serves as a gamekeeper in a zoo. He keeps those under his authority under tight observation and control. They have to have someone who intervenes on their behalf. They are not capable of making their own decisions. But the theological and political liberals who invoke this passage as a justification of the welfare state prefer that we not think of the setting of the original verbal exchange. They do not want us to think clearly about the nature of economic responsibility, judicial authority, and the absence of freedom in the lives of those who are being kept by professional keepers.

So, they try to create enormous guilt on the part of Christians specifically, and also the general public, by invoking the phrase, "my brother's keeper." It is good politics, but it is rotten exegesis. It creates a sense of guilt, where no sense of guilt should be operative at all. It creates a willingness on the part of individuals to write checks of their own, and when the checks are insufficient to place a sufficient number of people under their care, they call upon the civil government to write checks. They see that these poor people need help, but they do not see that the judicial context of the original passage had to do, not simply with help, but with judicial incapacity on the part of those being supervised.

Cain said he did not know where his brother was. His brother was an independent person. Cain was not his caretaker. Cain was not his supervisor. Cain, in short, was not his keeper.

If you get the idea that I think that theological liberals who defend the social gospel are manipulators of the public, you get the idea. They will twist the Bible in order to promote a concept of the welfare state which does not exist in any text, Old Testament or New Testament. There is simply no biblical justification for the welfare state. I wrote 31 volumes of exegesis to prove this point. But the guilt manipulation goes on, because liberals want to get their hands in other people's wallets, and they use guilt manipulation as their primary means of achieving their goal.

Anyone who cites this passage as a defense of the welfare state is either a theological ignoramus or highly skilled guilt manipulator. In either case, you would be wise to ignore him.