The Challenge of the Manger

Its humility rebukes our pride, and our will to power

nativity scene in front of stained glass in church
Nativity Scene at the Cathedral of Saint Paul, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA - stock photo

I’ve been a Christian my entire life. I was raised in a Christian home. I’ve attended church since I was born, and I’ve long been haunted by a simple question, one I ask myself every Christmas—how did so many people miss Jesus?

By “miss Jesus” I mean, how did the son of God come to Earth, live, die, and rise again largely anonymously? Why did so many who met him and heard him teach still not understand his identity and purpose? Why did so many of those who knew God’s word the best—the religious leaders of the day—debate him, oppose him, and ultimately conspire to kill him?

For the unbeliever, the answer is obvious. They didn’t “miss him”; they just didn’t believe him. They knew he wasn’t the Christ. For the believer, however, the answers are challenging and humbling, and one of them is particularly relevant for today—even the finest religious minds couldn’t separate God’s word from their desperate desires.

Jesus was born to an oppressed people who yearned to be free. He was born to a people who longed for a king. And just when they perceived the need for power, Christ came powerless. The son of God himself was born in a manger, a feeding trough for livestock.

And when the need for power persisted, so did Christ’s perceived weakness. He left the manger and fled to Egypt to escape certain death. He returned and toiled for years in total anonymity. When he finally launched his ministry, rather than rally the masses, he sometimes retreated from the crowd. He could even seem to intentionally drive them away.

And then he died, executed by the Roman state, mocked by the soldiers who killed him, with only the smallest fraction of followers by his side.

Even his resurrection rebuked the will to power. He conquered death and hell, but he left Rome alone. Instead he met with a few followers and ascended into heaven, leaving them isolated and uncertain—the entirety of the Christian Church was smaller than many small-town congregations and far more vulnerable.

And yet the Church endures and the Roman Empire does not. The name of Jesus is on billions of lips. The mighty Caesar Augustus—the emperor when Christ was born—is mostly forgotten. He’s just another ruler in a long line of rulers, an answer to a question on an AP History exam.

This last Sunday, when I watched a packed crowd at an immense congregation of America’s largest Protestant denomination leap to their feet to celebrate Donald Trump, to applaud, in part, Trump’s defense of Christmas, I’m reminded exactly of how desperate desires and profound fears can cause even Christians to miss Jesus, to forget that Christmas marks the time when God’s son slept in a trough. He needs no earthly power to preserve his name.

The American Church sits in a strange and uncertain place in our national life. It still possesses immense power and wealth, yet its numbers are declining and it feels under siege. But it’s a “siege” that few of the world’s believers would recognize as a crisis.

American Christians want liberty and prosperity and respect. That’s understandable. It’s deeply human. It’s even deeply American—but it’s not distinctly Christian. That is not the promised path.

Instead, the way of Christ is the way of the cross. He does not promise power or respect or prosperity. “If anyone would come after me,” Christ said, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

The cross, recall, was an instrument of execution, a symbol of the final triumph of the state over the individual. For Christians living in a peaceful and prosperous West, “take up your cross” has a symbolic meaning. We sometimes even use the phrase casually, to describe perseverance in moderately hard times. For a man or woman in the first century, by contrast, there was nothing symbolic about the cross. It was all too real.

Yet the wealth and power of the American Church is often oriented toward a particular goal—avoiding the cross. How can we make Christian life easier? we ask. How can we be Christian and not be canceled?

The manger rebukes our will to power and so does the cross. Yet neither the manger nor the cross symbolizes the acceptance of injustice, but rather a means of combatting it that defies the ways of the world. To use the words of countless wise Christian pastors, the kingdom that Christ established is “upside down.”

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

The manger and the cross remind us that, to transform this world, Christians don’t need a Caesar, or a president. To reject the will to power is not to forsake justice or to neglect mercy. It’s to follow the son of God himself and to recognize that his ways are not our ways, and his wisdom is not our wisdom—to trust him even (and especially) when the world feels strong, and we feel weak.

This Christmas, Christians should remember the most ancient of lessons. In a time of fear and uncertainty, our desperate desire for a leader who fights should not cause us to miss the Christ who died.

David French is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter The Third Rail.