 Postmodernity's innocent saints By Diane Knippers © 2000 United Press International Monday, January 8, 2001 (Editor's note: This is the fourth installment of the UPI series, "Christ and postmodernity," where authors propose theological solutions for this era's most daunting problem: the profusion of subjective "truths").
It is the Feast of Holy Innocents. It commemorates the "massacre of the innocents" – an attempt by a wicked king to rid himself of a presumed threat to his sovereignty. Perhaps understandably, we often omit this gruesome tale in our repetitions of the Christmas story. Our nativity scenes – filled with the infant Jesus and his parents, gentle animals, wondering shepherds, generous wise men, stars and angels – do not include Roman soldiers eviscerating babies. And, besides, what does this tale of ancient Roman brutality have to do with us as we march boldly into a new millennium? Perhaps more than we care to admit. The terrible story is told in the second chapter of Matthew. At the time Jesus was born, magi or "wise men from the East," noted an unusual astrological event. Taking this as a sign, they traveled westward to Palestine seeking the "King of the Jews." Not surprisingly, the travelers went first to the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem. From there, they were directed a few miles south to Bethlehem, from whence according to prophecy the Messiah was to come. King Herod alerted Tragically, their stop in Jerusalem alerted the paranoid King Herod to their quest. Herod was not a Jew. The Roman Senate had appointed him as King of Judea. His reign was noted for its splendid building campaigns and its ruthlessness. Among those he had murdered were his wife and three sons. For Herod, power was the end that justified any means. Herod instructed the magi to search for the new baby king and asked them to report back to him, "so that I too may go and worship him." The magi were successful in finding the infant Jesus. But the Gospel tells that they were warned of Herod's duplicity in a dream and took another route home. The execution order Similarly, in a dream, an angel instructed Jesus' parents to flee with him to Egypt. Then came the horror: "When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under...." Matthew does not give a count of how many youngsters were killed, asserting only that Jeremiah's prophecy was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more" (Jeremiah 31-15). There are places today where mothers mourn their missing children. Too often, the lives of innocent children are sacrificed to the political plans of the powerful. The blood may not run in the streets and the mothers may be counseled to stifle their unseemly wailing, but the numbers who silently perish are all the greater. In Bethlehem, a few years after the massacre, perhaps only the demographics would have hinted at the horror that had occurred. A naïve visitor might have asked, "Why are there so few little boys?" China's 'one-child' policy Five years ago when visiting China, my impressions confirmed the grim demographics of that nation. I saw more boys than girls. Why the discrepancy? It was a confluence of the state's "one-child policy" and the traditional Chinese preference for boys. Little girls are expendable. They are aborted by the millions. In the United States we do not target baby girls as they do in China, but the logic that drives the abortion industry here is similar. The babies that die are the ones who are "not wanted." They are the ones who do not fit the expectations and plans of their parents and society. Their continued existence would be a challenge to the claimed sovereignty of a woman over "her own body." And the unborn children often lose that challenge because they are powerless and innocent. Food a weapon of war The logic of Herod also operates in many political conflicts today. In Sudan, the government uses food as a weapon of war, stopping deliveries of food to rebel-controlled areas. This policy is estimated to have produced 2 million deaths in the past 20 years. Most of these are children, who succumb more quickly when nutrition is lacking. The government in Khartoum is more concerned with vindicating its own claims to sovereignty. The analogy between Herod and modern rulers is disturbingly comprehensible. Herod's carefully targeted killings cannot be dismissed as an emotional over-reaction – epitomizing ancient Roman extravagance and decadence. No, they were highly logical acts, illustrative of modern rationalism. Herod killed only boys, only those two and under, only near Bethlehem. The modern massacres The modern era has seen such carefully calibrated massacres as well. The communists marked the bourgeoisie and the Church. The Nazis performed their precise scientific experiments on the handicapped and then employed efficient technology to kill millions of Jews. The scientific rationality of modernity allows us to make calculated decisions about who lives and who dies. As the techniques of genetic analysis become more sophisticated, we may see abortions targeted even more specifically at the "undesirables." In a few decades, perhaps a visitor to the United States might ask, "Why are your children all so light-skinned? Why are they all so tall and nimble-minded?" Gradually, as we move into the 21st century, modernism is giving way to postmodernism. The move is partly a reaction to the cold computations of scientific rationalism. Postmodernism leaves room for spirituality and for intuition. Postmodernism resists the rational calculation of which lives are "worthy to be lived." But will postmodernism save the babies? Relativism is the fatal flaw Postmodernism's fatal flaw is moral relativism. "Don't impose your rigid ethics on me," we protest. "I'm inventing my own identity," we boast. "I'm the sovereign of my own life." I can hear wily old Herod pontificating, "What matters is what's right for me." He still would have the power to command the slaughter and his postmodern subjects would lack the moral fortitude to resist. Neither modernism, nor postmodernism, will protect the babies. Two thousand years later, the best hope for the little ones is the other Baby from Bethlehem. Contrary to Herod's expectations, Jesus did not come to claim a throne by force. He did not compel others to yield to his sovereignty. Instead, he "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Having escaped Herod's massacre of the innocents, he later offered his own life as the ultimate innocent victim of human ambition and jealousy. Jesus' resurrection from the dead opened an alternative to the "culture of death" represented by Herod and his modern equivalents. Jesus promised "abundant life" to all, especially to the powerless and the oppressed. And he proclaimed this with an extraordinary authority and conviction of the truth: "I am the way and the truth and the life." This assurance can give his followers courage to challenge every false, life-suppressing claim to sovereignty – ancient, modern or postmodern. Jesus was born to die The Feast of the Holy Innocents is a grim specter at a birthday party. It confronts us with the evil of which we humans are capable. It reminds us that Jesus was born to die. It portends the shadow of the cross. It enjoins us to celebrate Christmas with more than saccharine songs to the famous Babe of Bethlehem. That Baby would have us remember all the other unwanted but precious babies, in Bethlehem and in our towns. Diane Knippers, an Episcopalian lay person, is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an evangelical think tank in Washington, D.C. |
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