The news of recent days gives yet more evidence that too many in our world have given up the low bar of common decency in favor of sheer disregard for one another.

The irony is the horrible events of the last few days occurred during a season we associate with … increased acts of common decency.

These horrific acts began long before they happened. They each began as a thought, with disregard for the life of another. They serve as evidence of a world in need of the redemption to which Christmas points.

As we become further inured to indecency through regular violent actions—often spurred on or followed by violent rhetoric—we become less able to reach the higher bar signaled by Christmas.

Amid the indecency of our day, Christmas points us beyond acts of kindness to laying down the whole of our lives as Jesus did for us. May we be so bold.

Horrific news

The following events depict what can happen when we do not lay down our lives for others but, contrary to Christ, assert our superiority over others. The result is horrific.

The killing of two students and injuring of nine in a Brown University classroom Dec. 13 shows the depth of disregard for life. Despite Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee’s asserting “the unthinkable has happened,” such occurrences are all too thinkable, even in a place called Providence.

The slaughter of 15 people celebrating Hanukkah, Dec. 14, at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, shows the persistent disregard for particular lives—Jewish lives. Fifteen lights were extinguished during this Festival of Lights.

That same day, Dec. 14, we received news Rob and Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their home. Rob and his father Carl being giants of American entertainment, this news hit many particularly hard. Harder still is that the Reiners’ son Nick has been charged with their murder.

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As we were coming to grips with these three horrific events occurring in short order, a further indecency was launched into the news: Donald Trump’s Truth Social post blaming Rob Reiner for his own death. I won’t link to the despicable post or Trump’s shrugging it off the next day.

Decency—common or otherwise—seems in short supply these days. If we could reach even that bar, we would do well. Yet, Christmas points us further. Christmas points us to laying down the whole of our lives for those with whom we differ, disagree or worse.

As much as I’d prefer to write a warm, fuzzy Christmas editorial, I cannot turn away so easily from our troubled times and what Christmas points to amid them.

Where Christmas points

Christmas is our celebration of God the Son being born as a human baby in fulfilment of centuries of prophecy and longing. Jesus didn’t have to go through with it. Jesus didn’t have to be born into this world, much less at the time of his birth. Neither Rome nor Herod were known for their decency, and the Jewish people had their own challenges.

And yet.

Jesus looked at this world and may have said: “Those are some messed up people. I’m going to go live with them.”

Jesus didn’t just live with us; he committed to the bit. He started as an embryo, then grew inside his mother, was born, went through childhood and puberty, became an adult, and experienced ridicule, misunderstanding, brutality and death—not vicariously, but firsthand. He took our indecency. All of it.

While he was facing ridicule and misunderstanding, he told us to love those who revile us, to bless those who persecute us, to lay down our lives even for those who hate us. Jesus commanded us not to meet indecency with indecency, but to lay down our lives in the face of it.

Anyone who says we should do any different is a false witness.

Jesus’ choice to live among us, despite knowing how messed up we are—because he knows how messed up we are—is our call to surpass the low bar of common decency associated with Christmas, a bar too many of us find too hard to meet, and to lay down our lives even for those who disregard us to the point of brutalizing us, who just as soon would see us dead.

A bracing truth

How’s that for a “Merry Christmas?” But isn’t that the truth within the warm fuzzies of the season?

I’d rather write a feel-good editorial, but I can’t make us feel good about the times we’re in. So, instead, I’m calling us to protest the way of this world by following how Jesus lived and told us to live in it. And that is to lay down the whole of our lives like Jesus did so others may be redeemed.

We live in a troubled world during troubled times. If I was old enough, I might say it feels like 2,000 years ago. In a general sense. The details are different.

If I was old enough, I definitely would look like I carried the immense weight of two millennia of disappointment and disillusionment about the state of the world. Trouble, terror and turmoil are a recurring theme in our history books.

If I was a Christian all that time, I probably would be overcome by our collective and consistent inability as Christians to live up to what Jesus called us to do.

But one thing I could not and cannot deny: Jesus knew all about the state of this troubled world and chose to live in it with us anyway.

Think about that as you read the news today—the heart-breaking, stomach-churning news of today so often devoid of even common decency.

While you mull that over, keep in mind it gets better than Jesus choosing to live with us. Christmas is part and parcel of Good Friday, which is part and parcel of Easter, which is part and parcel of where all of this is going—the redemption and restoration of all things.

Christmas is just the beginning, pointing us far beyond. May we be so bold.

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Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.