21st Century Herods

This is the twenty-first century. We have no Herods—or have we? We have no massacres of children—or have we?

Herod ordered the massacre of the innocent children of Bethlehem in an attempt to suppress Christianity (literally, since he would not have understood the term in exactly the way we understand it). In the twenty-first century no one would kill to suppress Christianity, except, perhaps, in the Sudan, or Nigeria, or Pakistan, or India, or Indonesia, or Red China. Actually, Christians are being martyred today in many countries all around the world.

Not in North America, of course. We’re being persecuted in many ways, to be sure—but not martyred per se. But what does that mean other than that the Christians of North America are not seen as a threat to the powerful of the earth?

Still, in North America, there is an ongoing massacre of children. There is an Eastern Orthodox tradition that says that Herod killed fourteen thousand children in a few days; but the number was almost certainly lower than that. In the United States alone, there are three thousand babies killed every day. And they are killed because, like the infants of Bethlehem, they are inconvenient. They are a threat, not to a king’s grasp on power, but to their parents’ convenience—or to willfulness, masquerading as “choice.”

And, within the last few years, there has arisen the threat of a new massacre. Children will be sacrificed for the good of that most powerful king of the twenty-first century, Science. Children will be killed so their “stem cells” can be harvested and used for experiments or as medicine for their elders.

So the twenty-first century is at least as barbaric as the first century. But the saddest truth of the twenty-first century is that, unlike Herod, we have known the Christ-child. But he has not come to rule in us, or in our country. Other kings (or pretend kings) rule in his place: money, power, prestige, greed, envy, jealousy, and hatred. The true king has come into his world, and the wise men have seen his sign and have come to worship him, but the pretend kings wage ruthless war to keep him from his throne.

And so even today, in Ramah, the voice of Rachel is still heard, still weeping for her children, because they are no more. Yet, the Christmas message is still there, still calling to us: “The Lord says, stop your lamenting, dry your eyes. . . . For the Lord is creating something new on earth.” And He will see that it is good.