The Slaughter of the Innocents: The Dark Side of Christmas Brian Zahnd edit

The Slaughter of the Innocents: The Dark Side of Christmas
Brian Zahnd

most of civilization has been lived in the time of kings like Herod — that is, in the time of tyrant kings.💔.

It seems that the strain of constant political intrigue had made Herod a pathologically paranoid king.💔

 Matthew tells the story of a child born in the time of tyrant kings owing tyrant kings nothing. This is the glad tidings of good politics brought to us at Christmas.💔

 And Jerusalem was afraid too. The citizens of Jerusalem were well aware of how dangerous life can be when a powerful ruler with a fragile ego is afraid. 💔

So all of Jerusalem was on edge — anxious about what the paranoid king might do.💔

The church has called this horror the Slaughter of the Innocents, but modern day kings and kingdoms have sanitized it with the Orwellian term “collateral damage.”💔

So we let the dark side of Christmas speak to us. When contemporary superpowers adopt the ways of ancient tyrant kings, no matter how pragmatic the motives, we need to be honest about the fact that innocent people, even children, will be killed. 💔

We should always remember that the ends never justify the means; rather, 

the means are the ends in the process of becoming.💔

 If the means are death-dealing, the ends aren’t going to be life-affirming. 💔

 In the flight to Egypt we see the Holy Family as refugees, and once we have seen the Holy Family as refugees fleeing a violent Middle East despot, it must forever influence how Christians view modern-day refugees in similar situations — in the eyes of God, they too are a kind of holy family.💔

These acts of prophetic imagination (to borrow a phrase from Walter Brueggemann) are necessary for those who would read the biblical Christmas story with contemporary relevance and not just romanticized sentimentality.💔

One of the remarkable things about the Bible is that it doesn’t paper over atrocity or shy away from giving vivid depictions of the brutality of life in the time of tyrant kings. 💔

Are we shocked by Herod’s crime? Of course. But though we are horrified, we should not be surprised. 💔

Stanley Hauerwas says, “Rome knew how to deal with enemies; you kill them or co-opt them.”
Usually the rich get co-opted and the poor get killed. The Temple elite of Jerusalem are bought off while the peasant babies of Bethlehem are killed.💔

Jesus’ invasion by birth into the dark time of tyrant kings gives us a choice: we can trust in the armed brutality of violent power or we can trust in the naked vulnerability of love. 💔



We have to choose between the old way of Caesar and the new way of Christ. 💔