In the afterdays of the first Christmas, brutal septuagenarian King Herod grew ever more evil as he developed a number of painful diseases. His polarized legacy included credit for vast building projects, alongside the murder of his favorite wife (of ten) and two sons who were judged insufficiently loyal. Ethnically Arab, culturally Greek, religiously Jewish and politically Roman; Herod could play to any needed constituency and accomplish even the most wicked goals. Ascertaining a new threat from the betrayal of the Magi, Herod ordered the murder of the (as yet) unidentified infant savior through a massacre* of all the boys under two in Bethlehem and the surrounding region. Today we know this part of the Christmas story as the “slaughter of the innocents.”
Of course we don’t include Herod’s murder of infant boys from Matthew 2 on our Christmas cards or in our pageants. It’s rated MA, for mature audiences only due to scenes of violence and death. But at least one reason Matthew included this part of the story of the first Christmas, is so that no follower of Christ would ever be caught unawares by the potential for human evil.
The next four years seem fraught with such potential. In this chapter of wickedness, capacity for evil knows no bounds. Norms and values delineating noble human behavior and communal thriving hold no recognized worth. This kind of narcissism doesn’t have temper tantrums. It practices intentional violence.
At the commencement of DJT’s second presidency, four years lurks like communal capital punishment when our possible losses are considered. Anticipated mental and physical decline will, like Herod, only serve to magnify the possibilities for unanticipated malevolence. No, children will not be slaughtered outright, but they stand in line to be relegated to the slaughter, along with seniors and the poor, and all that holds human value.
On this day, it’s our innocence standing on the gallows. Here’s what I mean…
A lesser-known definition of innocence features the phrase “lack of guile or corruption.” The murderous risk we bear involves the innocence of our presumptions – that all people hold equal value, that truth can be discerned, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere (thank you Dr. King) – and so many more core values we treasured in common, before malevolence moved into the White House. Finding innocence of this sort to be a profound threat, Donald Trump continues to implement its long slow execution. Given the nature of human evil in the White House, the prospect of four long years led by an emboldened malignant narcissist ought to alarm even the most non-anxious among us.
It’s going to get worse.
So what might we do in this season? Scripture presents a profound paradoxical challenge: to hold fast the high competing values of truth and love. Most of us lean toward one or the other. Truth-tellers may hurt you – their growth edge is love. Lovers may shield you – their growth edge is truth. Embracing their duality is high human art and the mark of maturity. Like Herod, Trump tilts away from both. In his White House, truth remains a shape-shifter while love inhabits weakness. So…
- Stand against guile and corruption. Evil thrives not in the absence of culpability but in the effort to escape it. The wicked hate the light that exposes them – the light of truth that pierces their duplicity, the light of love that demonstrates their hate. You’ll recognize them by their murder of truth and their whole lack of love for the margins. They turn on their allies, endorse invented conspiracies, ignore that which imperils humanity, and disrupt the good works of others. They pad their fortunes and laugh at the gullible. They do violence to goodness.
- Lean in to truth and love. Push nearer the one you know least. You’ll know you’re growing when you surprise yourself doing the negligible noble things that make community thrive.
- Wage peace over against the violence of wickedness, for peace is the plow for guileless innocence to emerge from the icy soil of inauguration 2025.
Bethlehem’s first Christmas afterdays were dreadful in the wake of Herod’s disintegration – a nightmare of wailing and heartbreak from which one could hardly recover. A lot like 2025 perhaps, as Trump and his minions slaughter what remains of our innocence.
But we know the rest of the story when it comes to the life of our baby Savior. He grew up. And as we grow up in Him, we practice His way of peace. What does that look like? It is, as Bonhoeffer said, the spoke driven into the wheel of injustice. And innocence may yet again occupy our land.
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*Don’t spend too much time doubting whether Herod was capable of such a thing. Correlating histories document this last order (5 days before his death in 4 AD) included the imprisonment of thousands of officials in a stadium in Jericho – to be executed upon his death. Herod, knowing that no one would weep for him, he wanted to make sure there would be mourning across the region on the day he died. Mercifully, his command was not carried out. (“Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, Kenneth Bailey, 2008)
The Gathering 
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