The Bellowing of Cain| by Jeremy Gordon Grinnell

A Book Whose Time is NOW

Every day, it seems, we hear of another minister, celebrity, or neighbor whose bad choices have cost them everything they worked for.

While many excellent books have been written on how to survive and grow through pain, why are nearly all of them written by victims for victims? The cancer diagnosis, the loss of the child or parent, the layoff, the unrealized dream—terrible things, yes, but things that come from without and happen to us. This fails to recognize that much of the pain we endure in life comes from our own bad choices—pain for which we are the perpetrators. This is especially true when the perpetrator is a leader in a church or other organization. For all its value, the “surviving trauma” genre fails to speak fluently to the leader whose pain is self-inflicted. Where are the books that speak to the lost leader after they’ve ceased to be a leader? Who writes to them about their unique journey? Who can?

Do we believe in a gospel that seeks to redeem even the leaders who’ve so disappointed us? Do we really want to?

The Bellowing of Cain is written primarily to people in public positions, who, like Cain, have made horrible life-wrecking decisions and secondarily to those who have a calling to live and work with them. It is written by a fellow traveler who understands what it means to destroy one’s life… for he once did so.

What are the ingredients of a life headed for self-destruction? How do you end up there? How do you survive the self-inflicted loss of the life you’ve built? How do you rebuild afterward? Is there any hope for you, any point in dreaming dreams again? And what do such people really need from Christ’s Church?

The book even includes two chapters written by Jeremy’s wife, Denise, discussing how she processed both her husband’s prodigality as well as the church’s reaction which multiplied her own losses.

In a culture of disposable people, where leaders who’ve suffered moral failure are shamed, cast aside, and forgotten, we need a book like The Bellowing of Cain to teach us about the unique journey taken by people with such baggage—baggage like shame, guilt, and remorse. Such luggage is heavy and bends the back of those who must carry it, and they often walk alone. Who speaks for them? If they enter heaven at all, it will be minus an eye or a hand. But unless redemption exists for the worst of us, it exists for none.

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