Re: Gary Horton’s column, “The Christmas Story: Be Men of Good Will,” Dec. 24.
Though Gary makes some good points about Joseph that I 100% agree with, there is much to dispute in his take on the Christmas story. I’m only going to address a couple of these points.
Gary says that, “A large portion of the story is about poor, vulnerable people facing power and real danger.” I would argue that this is actually a smaller part of an even larger story.
The larger story of Christmas is that God became a human being, led a sinless life, and became the sacrifice to take our place, taking the penalty that we deserved upon himself to reconcile us to God. In this act, Jesus satisfied both the justice of a holy God and the mercy of a loving God. To try to stop God’s provision, the powerful, malevolent, evil being known as the Satan tried his best to kill Jesus as a baby. If you want to read a more realistic Christmas story I suggest the book of Revelations, chapter 12.
Gary says that, in fleeing to Egypt, Mary and Joseph had to depend entirely on the good will of strangers. I would say that in fleeing to Egypt, God made sure that Mary and Joseph were fully funded by the Magi. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh, given just days before Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, would have provided for their needs and perhaps given Joseph a start in the carpentry business.
But the statement I really take exception to is, “No one is killing babies in our time.” Between 1973 and 2023 based on Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control numbers, there have been 65,464,760 abortions of unborn human beings. To quote Gary Horton, “Herod would have approved of this tactic.” I would really like to see Mr. Horton address this “moral boundary.” These children have been so dehumanized in our culture that it seems it didn’t occur to Mr. Horton to include them in the category of human babies at an early stage of development that all humans have to go through. To quote a different Horton (“Horton Hears a Who”), “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Michael Sandeen
Canyon Country
