It is the holiday season. Christmas for most of the country. A time when we repeat familiar words about peace, kindness and goodwill. Words we hear so often that we rarely stop to consider what they actually demand of us.
The traditional Christmas story is not sentimental. The overarching story is not soft, and aspects of it are certainly not comfortable.
A large portion of the story is about poor, vulnerable people facing power and real danger. About government violence and infanticide. About exile forced under pain of death. And about the quiet courage of a man who accepts responsibility when the world becomes dangerous.
Joseph does not seek attention for his actions. He doesn’t argue with God. He makes no bargains later to be ignored. Warned of the irrational actions of a ruler terrified of losing power, he takes Mary and the infant Jesus and flees to Egypt. A foreign land with a completely different culture. A place where they are strangers and depend entirely on the goodwill of others.
Joseph, Mary and Jesus are refugees from a government order to murder all male children under the age of 2.
Joseph does not wait for conditions to improve. He does not demand certainty. He acts decisively, protectively, imperfectly.
Joseph is a man of courage. A godly man. Both brave and humble.
Herod, on the other hand, is a familiar figure. A ruler so afraid of losing power that fear overtakes judgment. His response is irrational, cruel and horrific. Not because he is insane, but because absolute power mixed with fear nearly always produces brutality.
We recoil at the murder of innocents in the ancient story. But cruelty evolves. It modernizes. It learns how to harm without blood.
These days, our own government has barred citizens of roughly 40 countries from entering the United States at all. Not case by case or by individual review. Entire nations and peoples simply cut off, regardless of family ties, marriages, or children already living here.
The consequences are not theoretical. Families will be separated for years. Husbands stranded from wives. Children growing up with one parent present and the other trapped overseas. All of it intentional. All of it justified to project strength and decisiveness.
What it truly represents is political theater replacing sound policy.
I see this firsthand. A close family member is married to a woman from Iran. She is educated, lawful and loving. Yet she cannot be with him in his own country of his birth. A basic human bond denied by blanket policy. The suffering is arbitrary, bureaucratic and entirely unnecessary.
No one is killing babies in our time. But countless thousands, perhaps millions, are being stranded and separated. And the suffering is real.
Herod would have approved the tactic.
Now place this next to Joseph. His humility. His restraint. His refusal to indulge anger or ego. Compare Joseph’s example to our culture today in which insult has become routine, vulgarity is excused as authenticity, and displays of greed or domination are treated as strength. Where women are too often spoken of dismissively. Where moral boundaries once considered obvious are increasingly treated as optional.
Culture follows leadership. Always has.
Against all this stands the Holy Family. Poor. Displaced. Dependent on the mercy of strangers. Egypt accepts them. No prisons. No cruelty for effect. No spectacle.
The angels of the Christmas story pronounce peace on Earth toward men of good will. Not to men of force. Not to men of violence. Not to men manipulating fear. Peace on Earth is promised toward men of good will, toward those with whom God is pleased. You can ignore it, but that is what the text says.
That phrase is not passive. It demands humility. It demands kindness. It demands that we see strangers as human beings rather than threats. It demands that power be restrained by morality.
America has long called itself a beacon of freedom. But freedom without compassion is hollow. Strength without humility becomes meanness. And power without restraint injures the innocent, even when it does so quietly and bureaucratically.
To be clear, the Christmas story does not ask us to abandon law or security. It asks something harder:
It asks us to grow up. To live as men and women of moral conviction backed by moral action. And if you do not believe the story itself, the lesson still holds. Moral conviction without action is empty. And action without moral grounding is dangerous.
If this creates discomfort, that may be the still, small voice of conscience suggesting a much-needed course correction in our national conduct. These Bible stories are not offered for entertainment. They exist to change hearts, minds and behavior for the better.
The angels did not declare peace to the world as it was. They declared peace toward the kind of people willing to become something better.
To be men of good will.
May grace, kindness, and wisdom guide us as we work to strengthen a society that reflects our good will through how we live and act.
Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
