06/22/2008 The Triangle
THE TRIANGLE
Sermon # 2 in the “First Families. Families First.” Series
It’s the first murder, in the first family! Unless we act like the media with only a concern for sensational headlines, there’s much more to this story than the mortal sin of garish fratricide. Behind the passionate murder is human intrigue & relationships: the stuff of mystery writers, detective sleuths, & forensic psychologists. It’s normal human behavior leading to the worst outcome.
Here is jealousy & coveting: “Abel’s gift is better than mine.”
Here is sibling rivalry: “Mom! She hit me!” “Dad! He’s looking at me!”
Here is triangulation.
What!?! Triangle-what? Jealousy, coveting, & sibling rivalry we understand, but triangulation? What’s that?
A quick psychology lesson.
Anytime we bring a third party into a troubled relationship of two indivi-duals we make a triangle. Rather than resolve the relationship problem among the original pair, we trianglulate. It’s an indirect way of dealing with a knotty relationship matter, instead of confronting it head on. Nice people do this, yet it rarely ends up being nice.
Think of the child who doesn’t get his way with Dad, who then goes to Mom. Or, the couple that’s arguing & in the argument, the wife complains about the neighbor. The husband immediately walks over to the neighbor & addresses that problem, pleasing the wife, but ignoring the original issue. It’s easier to deal with the neighbor, than the spouse. It’s simple. We create triangles all the time.
In Genesis 4, God & Cain have an issue with one another. For some unknown reason, God likes Abel’s offering of meat, more than Cain’s offering of produce. To Cain, God’s preference seems arbitary. Why choose the younger brother & his gift? That’s what God does. God, however, recognizes Cain’s hurt & confusion, & reaches out to address him about it in verse 7.
In those brief three sentences, we see that: 1) God has made a decision; 2) that God is compassionate & stays connected even though His decision proves hurtful to Cain (“I like meat better than veggies, but still love you.”); & 3) takes on the role of an encouraging parent who suggests that there is a way for Cain to do well & succeed in pleasing God.
Sadly, Cain rejects God’s help. That decision proves fatal. Cain is understandably dejected because his gift has been rejected. Cain takes the affront personally & feels rejection. He in turn, rejects God & an opportunity to dialogue with God, despite God’s caring advances. God sets the stage for healing & moving on, but Cain chooses another path, the path God warns him about, the path of sin.
Rather than follow-up on what God initiates, & discuss the matter with God, Cain brings in his brother, Abel. The issue between God & Cain, thanks to Cain, now adds a third individual. Cain involves someone else. The triangle is drawn.
Relationships between two persons are like a bicycle. Bike riding can be healthy & fun, but add some form of stress (gravel, puncture, wind) & it doesn’t take a lot to topple a frame with only two wheels that is top-heavy. (Ask
As there’s a downside to tricycles over bicycles, so there’s a downside to relational triangles, as opposed to a twosome. Twosomes & bicycles often take more practice, skill, & grace (you must learn to work it out), but they are really the best.
Cain is under stress. Because of the anxiety the stress causes, he opts to involve Abel in the situation to bring some stability to his emotional imbalance. Rather than hash things out with God, & express his anger & hurt to God (with whom he’s angry & hurt by), Cain takes it out on his brother. For some reason, he doesn’t want to engage God, despite God’s willingness to listen, but has no problem dragging his innocent brother into the problem. It all goes downhill from there – at breakneck speed - yet it begins so innocently.
The triangle in Genesis 4 is prototypical & becomes typical of our all-too-human relationship triangles. “It mirrors the reality of family life in every age” (Terrence Fretheim in “Genesis,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 1, p. 372). Disharmonious relationships begin in
Psychiatrist Roberta Gilbert, writing in a text to counselors & therapists, notes some common manifestations of triangling. This is her list & I read it in the exact order she provides. Triangling includes:
- talking against the boss (God?), the minister, or the teacher to people other than the boss, the minister, or the teacher (talking about someone, rather than talking to that someone);
- gossiping or talking about someone who is not present;
- having an affair;
- taking a morbid interest in other people’s problems (our culture’s addiction to soap operas & reality TV?; living vicariously through them);
- thinking more about a child or anyone else than about one’s marriage or oneself. (I’ll say more about this one in a minute.) --- Extraordinary Relation-ships:
We all engage in triangulation at one time or another, don’t we? The fact that we all do it, however, doesn’t make it right or healthy. Now, it’s easy, even natural for some of us to be trianglers, especially since we learned it growing up & have been doing it for so long. The problem is that we focus on the third person while ignoring the original person. That’s not nice. It’s rude. That re-focusing always creates loss in the original twosome, & isn’t helpful to the third party, either. Triangles have sharp points that hurt everyone.
Take the story of the Troxel family.
It wasn’t that Mr. & Mrs. Troxel were not caring parents. On the contrary, they were committed students of the subject of childrearing. In preparation for the birth of their first child…the couple attended several classes on parenting. By any standards, they would be considered nurturing parents. Yet, Mrs. Troxel &, to a lesser degree, Mr. Troxel, found themselves worrying a great deal about their children. Both considered being parents one of the most important jobs of an adult’s life, & both felt ill-prepared for the task….*
… Their conversations mostly centered around their first child, 8-year-old Melissa, & her problems. She did not do well in school, even though both of her parents were bright & well educated. She had no friends. She had a rather unhappy look on her face most of the time. Mr. & Mrs. Troxel became completely preoccupied with how to help Melissa achieve in school, make friends, & feel better…. Of course, the more difficulty Melissa experienced, the more her parents worried. Most of their conversations with her were anxious ones.
… Mr. & Mrs. Troxel both denied there were any problems in their relationship. Everything between them was fine…. They were, however, capable of spending hours describing their worries & concerns about their daughter in great detail.
(My psychological curiosity wonders, “What) about the relationship between the worrying of the parents & the underfunctioning of the child? (Is there any connection?)... These parents were gradually able to lessen their focus on Melissa. (Very good.) As they focused more on their own lives & less on their daughter, Melissa’s response was positive. (Hmm.) In time, her friendships, school achievement, & mood were all on course.
As soon as Melissa began to do better, however, her parents came into … their own relationship distress…. With the focus on their child diminished, the two were at a point where they were able to work on their relationship. (Empty nest syndrome = example.)
--- Extraordinary Relationships: A New Way of Thinking About Human Interactions, Chronimed Publishing, 1992, pp. 73-74.
This child-focused family changed for the better, meaning that as the original couple successfully worked on improving their relationship, the child whom they made part of their triangle, became healthier, too.
Triangles take all forms: from the heinous murder of Abel, to parents’ innocent over-attention to a child & lack of attention to one another, to gossip that involves a third party in someone else’s business. Triangles all. Our triangles may not end up as bad as Cain’s, but they’re regularly bad/unhealthy. It’s easy to let in the sin that’s lurking at the door, as verse 7 states.
Our job is to master the sin, to rely on God to help us master it, to not make the same mistake as Cain. God gives us the Bible for a reason: to learn. Prayerful conversation with God – that’s talking & listening – has genuinely salutary benefits. Learn from Cain’s poor judgment.
For the unjustified hurts we experience, like Cain did, the approach is two-fold: 1) engage the other party directly; 2) & when the hurts are so big, cast those cares on the one whom God appointed to carry our burdens. Let Jesus have those sins nailed with him on the cross for God to care for, redeem, & bring healing & blessing.
In the Name…. Copyright 2008 by G.D.Knerr at
* - Mrs. Troxel’s mother had been a worrier, too, & had some major bouts with depression while Mrs. Troxel was growing up. So one of Mrs. Troxel’s major concerns was how to not be worried or depressed, as her mother had been.
Mr. Troxel, in the early years of their marriage, had had a drinking problem. When his wife threatened to leave him if he didn’t stop drinking, he attended Alcoholics Anonymous & quit drinking.