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Redstate
Here
By Erick Erickson
December 21st, 2012
On
Christmas Day of 1863, Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow penned the poem “I Heard the Bells on Christmas
Day.” His
oldest son had been badly wounded in the Civil War the prior month and
Longfellow’s
wife had died in an accidental fire. Among the lines were these:
And
in despair I bowed my head;
”There
is no peace on earth,” I said;
”For
hate is strong,
And
mocks the song
Of
peace on earth, good-will to men!”
One
week ago in Connecticut,
innocent children were gunned down.
It
is not a far leap to wonder if
Longfellow was right. Many have asked loudly to Christians this week
“Where is
your God” and “How could Jesus let this happen?”
Young
men storming the beaches of
Normandy in World War II, as they lay dying in the sand, would gasp,
crying out
for their mothers. We should not dare even try to imagine the cries of
those
children that terrible day — the cries left unanswered; moms and dads
not
coming to rescue and to comfort.
At
Christmas, those who demand to
know where God was must be met with compassion, but also clearly with
the word
“Here.” Christ did not abandon those children. He met many that day
with open
arms. He comforts now where parents cannot. He shines even now as a
light in the
darkness for those who are willing to see him.
We
have become accustomed in our
vernacular to treat evil as the opposite of good or the opposite of
God. Evil
is not an opposite; it is an absence — the absence of good, the absence
of God.
The act in Connecticut was evil.
God
and good exist. The devil and
evil do as well — the incarnation of the absolute void left in the
absence of
God. The existence of a Risen Lord does not exempt the world, even
Christians,
from evil in the world. We are all born sinners and sin affects the
world as
much as sun and rain and air. Bad things do happen to good people and
to
innocent children still unaware of the extent of human evil. It is the
nature
of this world and why so many long for the next.
Two
thousand years ago Christ was
born in Bethlehem. We focus on angels, shepherds, wise men, and the
virgin
birth. We focus on the miracle. We ignore the rest of the story. King
Herod
sent soldiers to Bethlehem where they slaughtered every boy under the
age of
two. The world greeted the birth of the Savior with the slaughter of
innocents.
Two
thousand years later, in a
small town in Connecticut, the cries of children and the sounds of gun
fire
bring us to reflection and prayer.
And
“Jesus wept.”
He
weeps now. He welcomes home the
little children and calls for us to persevere and, if we will, to turn
back
toward him and bring our society with us. But our society must be
prepared to
have larger conversations than whether or not we should regulate guns
or
bullets. We must discuss mental health. We should discuss the real
nature of
evil. We should know that in this fallen world sometimes there is
nothing we
can do.
Longfellow,
his wife dead and
thinking his son dying, concluded his poem that Christmas Day 149 years
ago
thusly:
Then
pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God
is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The
Wrong shall fail,
The
Right prevail,
With
peace on earth, good-will to men.”
As
you head out today for the
Christmas holiday, we here at RedState would like to wish you a blessed
and
merry Christmas. May we all have peace on earth and goodwill to men.
Read
this and other articles at
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