The Nativity

   With it being the Christmas season, people are bringing out their favorite Nativity Sets.  Every Nativity set I have seen have included Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the Wise Men (and no the Bible doesn't say there were three of them, just the three gifts).  There are two major players missing from every Nativity Set I have seen.  The first one is the inn keeper, and its probably because he was to busy making money and he didn't have time for a crying baby who happen to be the promised Messiah.  The second person who is missing from the set is King Herod.  He had an influential role in the Christmas story and he was the reason that the first family fled to Egypt (and fleeing to Egypt fulfilled Old Testament prophecy which is more important) and Herod was the main reason why a bunch of toddler boys lost their lives because the Wise Men chose to listen to God instead of a crazy king.  I think there are several reasons why King Herod gets left out of the Nativity set and if you want to read the Christmas story with King Herod's exploits, it can be found in Matthew 2.   

    The first reason why I think King Herod gets pushed to the back of the Christmas story is because he reminds us to much of ourselves.  He was a king who was temperamental, two faced who was a narcissist.    Herod built buildings, temples and a fortress for himself to show off his greatness.  How often are we just as narcissistic as Herod was.  We may not be building structures or temples to show off our greatness, or killing babies, to protect our greatness in a culture that values self promotion, we have outlets to encourage our narcissim. YouTube and other social media outlets are the perfect way for us to fulfill all of our narcissistic desires.  We can tell people how great we are and we can put out a certain persona that may not be holy or even true.  One of the traits of being a human, especially a narcissist is that there needs to be a façade that needs to put out or betrayed.  It is a particular story we stick to that we get some sort of sick gratification from because this façade is often filled with half truths at best, or are just flat out lies.  Facebook is great for promoting this façade and it allows us to blow things out of proportion and it allows us to portray a certain narrative that is not always healthy or holy. 

   The second idea why Herod gets left out is that just as he didn't like his authority challenged, we don't like our authority challenged either.  How often do we get our undergarments in a bind when we are told that we are dead wrong and there is actual proof that our thoughts, actions and speech are not right.  When you were a Roman king, you were a deity and had god like status.  So when the promised Messiah decides to be born and there was the rumor that His throne and authority will last forever, that made Herod uncomfortable and he felt threatened.  When people feel threatened, they often take matters into their own hands and try to fix things so they can preserve themselves.  It is really a classic flight or fight response. First we asses if the threat is fake or real, and then we either run in hoping to preserve ourselves, or respond with some sort of action.   For Herod it was fighting the threat and he decided to have all the males below a certain aged killed in order to preserve what he thought was important.  How many times has our attempt to preserve our way of life or comfort lead to really bad decisions with even worse consequences. 

    I think that there are two things that we can learn from King Herod.  The first one is that we can not serve two masters.  We see throughout Scripture that when we try and serve our won self interest and when we try to keep ourselves on our throne, it never ends well.  When we try and serve two masters, not only do we end up loving one and hating the other, but to be practical about it, serving two masters is like texting and driving because you end up failing doing both.  We become distracted at doing both and send texts that are poorly worded and we are putting our own lives and the lives others in danger.  Serving ourselves may be fun and fulfilling for a time, but in the end, we alienate people and we keep on chasing the next big thing because we can not be satisfied.  Serving God is the only way we can be satisfied.

   The second point is that sometimes we often fight the hardest the very thing we need the most.  Herod fought so hard for self preservation that in all reality, if he was interested in it, he would of let it go.  What I mean by this is that Jesus not only came with authority and power that will last forever, but to give us life abundantly.  Thy only way we can have this abundant life is by losing our own authority and personal right to be right (I know this is so un-American it hurts, because being an American is all bout being right no matter how wrong we are).  It is submitting to Gods authority and allowing Him to change us from the inside out and have Him rule our lives.  In Phillipians 2, the Apostle Paul reminds us that we can submit to Gods authority now and all will be well, or be forced to when He returns as the King and that will not be a good thing