Advent 11: Conflict ...

Wednesday, Dec 11, 2013. When we look into the birth of Jesus, it is not only a peaceful time! Right away, after the birth, there are difficulties and conflicts arising.

Cruelty arising …

We look into the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, where the flight of the Jesus family to Egypt and killing of infants is reported:

13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: 18 “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

How to deal with conflicts? …

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The conflicts which are described here are of a special nature. Josef was not responsible for the conflict. It just arose. He could not do anything. But he was strongly affected. There are also other conflicts, where you are part of the problem, where your behaviour or your mistakes caused at least a part of the conflict. But here, the family with the Jesus baby was not responsible for what Herod did. They had to suffer nevertheless.

It is not much said here, how Josef dealt with the problem. He fled to Egypt, yes. He did what he heard from an angel in a dream. And Herod becomes very cruel, he kills many little infants, trying to keep his kingdom protected. We observe a typical behaviour, when people with power feel threatened by something. They do not care very much about justice, they are just trying to keep their power active.

It is interesting, that the suffering was prophesized long ago. And one could ask: if God knew this, why did he not help and prevent Herod from doing so? But it is not God's role to prevent all evil. Evil is just showing what is inside of men and women. Cruel actions are only the tip of the iceberg. So God saw it coming, but had to let it happen, such that the injustice of Herod and his contemporaries would be clearly seen. We are touching a deep and difficult topic here, which we will need to talk about another time in more depth. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts