The Horror of Christmas

I sometimes get into the mindset that the evil in our present time is of a different sort and magnitude than other ages. It’s not just the “normal” tragedies of life that fill the news: cancer, broken relationships, miscarriages, or even ‘first world problems’. Instead our news is often filled with  pretty wretched stuff that makes us question where we are at in history.

Hidden, and often overlooked, in the birth of Christ is a reminder that there have always been tyrants and terrorists. We live in a world of death and, even in celebrating Christ’s birth, the scriptures don’t let us look past the acts of Herod as he killed all males under a certain age in the region of Bethlehem.

It was ISIS and state sponsored abortion all wrapped into one.

Had Jesus grown up in Bethlehem, had his parents settled and he attended school there he would have been without peers. EVERY male near his age was killed.

As we know, God warned Joseph and Jesus was spared, fleeing with his parents as refugees.

How do you explain such loss and bloodshed? How torn Jesus’ heart must have been as an adult when he looked into the eyes of women his mother’s age, knowing their sons were killed because of him. What sense can be made of the evil of Herod?

The only way to make any sense of it is to look to the cross. Without redemption and hope for resurrection, without an ultimate hope, the birth of Christ only seems to bring sorrow and suffering.

The cross is that crucial for us. Our evil is that big. Not just the world’s evil but our own.

Those little boys’ lives snuffed out by unspeakable evil make no sense apart from the other end of Jesus life. The cross shows us a world where judgement and justice are fully meted out and the wrath of God is absorbed by Jesus Christ.

Without the cross, it makes no difference whether we or those boys lived to a ripe old age or not. Sin has us and them dead in judgment with no Jesus. If we can’t see the line from Mary’s womb to the empty tomb we will never be able to live, as Paul says, “as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”

We rightly celebrate Jesus birth. However, Herod’s atrocities are just one reminder of the horrible evil in this world that required Christ’s birth in the first place. We as Christians live in the land between horror and hope. It is the work of faith to see that our lives are more defined by the hope than by the horror.

At the same time, sin and death and the horror they create are real and heavy upon our lives.This Christmas, don’t let festivities force you to pretend the world, including your own, isn’t hurting. It’s ok for things to be hard. Lament and sorrow can be very appropriate parts of Advent waiting.

In the midst of that let the manger point you to that far greater celebration of resurrection. We are not without hope, least of all when we are celebrating the One who gives new life, and second life to all of us who trust in Him.