What was God thinking?
The world was as broken 2,024 years ago as it is now. Climate change wasn’t an issue then, of course, but what is now called Israel was an occupied territory ruled by imperial Rome, and society had slid so far into the ethical pit that Romans would leave unwanted babies on the side of the road.
According to St. Luke, the way God responded to the brokenness was to leave the serenity of heaven, come to Earth as a vulnerable baby and die on a cross.
What good does/did that do? How does that mend anything?
Imagine President Biden sending Benjamin Netanyahu a Christmas card with the baby Jesus in a manger on the cover and on the inside writing, “Dear Bibi, the way to resolve the conflict in Gaza is to start loving Hamas and the Palestinian people.”
How do you think that would go down with the Israeli premier’s ruling, hard-right coalition?
I think Bibi would respond with something like, “Dear Joe, what are you smoking? Can’t you see that Hamas is an evil terrorist organization that wants to remove Israel from the face of the earth? The only way to respond to evil like that is to completely eliminate them!”
You see the irony in that response, of course.
Does a baby in a manger bring any light into the darkness of the world? Were Christians who sang “Silent Night” while holding flickering candles a few weeks ago escaping into a fantasy world?
Is It’s a Wonderful Life, so popular at Christmastime, merely a fantasy, a sentimental escape from reality?
What is really real, profoundly real, after all?
Let me respond to that question by using the metaphor of kidney failure and dialysis.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, “Dialysis is a very effective treatment option for clearing waste products and extra fluid from your blood. However, it does not fully replace all the kidney’s functions, so it is not considered a cure for kidney disease or kidney failure.”
Dialysis mitigates the effects of kidney failure but only a new kidney cures the problem.
The IDF’s military might and Iron Dome have been fairly effective in mitigating the effect of violence perpetrated by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, but at what cost to civilians? And will the military approach cure the underlying issue?
Dialysis mitigates the effects of kidney failure, but only a new kidney cures the problem.
The Civil War in this country eliminated one kind of slavery and preserved the union, at least to a degree, but it didn’t mend the brokenness, nor did it cure the underlying disease.
We can mitigate the effects of heart disease with medication, diet, lifestyle changes and surgical interventions but only a new heart will cure the underlying problem.
Legislation and education have mitigated the effects of racism, antisemitism, gun violence, dependence on fossil fuels, hate, etc., but those remedies have not cured the disease.
The Christmas story, as Luke tells it, is that God decided to address evil in the world by leaving the security of the lifestyle enclave we call heaven and taking up residence in the crime-infested, poverty-ridden, hate-filled, victimized neighborhood we call the world.
And so we ask, “How does a baby in a manger address the pain, hate, violence and suffering in the world?”
Perhaps Dionne Warwick was channeling the Christmas story when she sang, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”
To cure one disease we need a new kidney. To cure others we need new hearts and minds, a new reality which is more profoundly real and lasting than the one to which we’ve become accustomed.
The metaphor implies that until we get a new heart, military force and legislation may be necessary, but we dare not delude ourselves that therein lies the cure.
Abraham Lincoln was willing to sacrifice 600,000 lives in order to preserve the union, but what he said in his Second Inaugural Address reveals, at least to me, that he understood a military victory was not a cure.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Maybe God, in the long run, knew what he was doing after all.
Tom Holmes is a Forest Park resident who writes a regular column in the Forest Park Review, a Growing Community Media publication.
