The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil

Scripture: Matthew 2:13-23; Isaiah 63:7-9; Romans 3:10-12; Psalm 14:1-3; Philippians 2:5-8 Series: Christmas Season

Because all humanity is bound under original sin, no one deserves death and no one stands outside the need for grace; the slaughter of the Holy Innocents is an unjustified consequence of the world’s brokenness, yet those deaths are not lost to God, whose Easter hope—not optimism—promises to raise the dead and make all things new.

Illustrations: brothers-karamazov-ivan-alyosha, william-temple-original-sin-empirical, dresden-tokyo-firebombings, augustine-curvatus-curved-inward, passover-death-of-egyptian-firstborn, future-hitlers-thought-experiment, hart-doors-of-the-sea

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December 28, 2025

Isaiah 63:7-9

Matthew 2:13-23

I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord,
 the praiseworthy acts of the Lord,
because of all that the Lord has done for us
 and the great favor to the house of Israel
that he has shown them according to his mercy,
 according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
For he said, “Surely they are my people,
 children who will not act deceitfully,”
and he became their savior
 in all their distress.
It was no messenger or angel
 but his presence that saved them;
in his love and pity it was he who redeemed them;
 he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
- Isaiah 63:7-9

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
 wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
 she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene.”
- Matthew 2:13-23

Since I was 21 years old, if anyone asked me what my favorite book was, my answer would be the same: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I’ve read it multiple times and discovered something unique in it each time. I think about it still today, and that is why it’s my favorite. It stays with me.

One of the most poignant moments in the book is near the middle of the novel. The main character, Alexei, is talking to his older brother, Ivan. Alexei is a novice monk by trade. He is talking to his brother about faith. In this section of the novel, his brother, Ivan, tells Alexei why he doesn’t believe in God.

Ivan talks about some of the practical matters for why he doesn’t believe in God. It has to do with suffering, especially the suffering of innocent children. How could a good God allow innocent children to suffer. I can’t believe in a god that lets that take place I can’t call a god good. that lets that take place. Later philosophers and theologians would call this problem of evil. Which is a very light way to talk about a heavy topic.

The problem is: how do we think about evil in this world? Can we think about evil in this world and still hold on to ideas about the divine?

Our reading for today is about what Catholics would call the holy innocents. When Joseph, Mary, and Baby Jesus fled Egypt, the children are killed throughout Israel. They didn’t deserve to die.

This event is a recapitulation of what happened during the Exodus. As the Hebrew people fled slavery in Egypt, the spirit of God passed over the houses of the Hebrew people, but did not pass over the houses of the Egyptians. Their sons died, including Pharaoh’s son. How is that worthwhile? How is that justified? Why would a good God allow that to take place?

For Jews and for Christians, the events of Passover are often taken at a distance, even though the stories are told and retold and retold. The innocent death of the children of Egypt is not the part in which people focus.

What the death of the Holy Innocents points out, though, is that we still have this lingering notion that some people deserve to die. When we imagine that children are innocent, we also claim that some people are not. Are there people who deserve to live? Are there are people who deserve to die?

It’s one thing to kill 1000s of nameless babies. Its another thing if we thought, “oh, it’s 1000s of future Hitlers.”

Does that make the event less horrendous?

This passage should jar us out of the complacency that anyone deserves death. But this is the state of the world. The way Christians understand this reality is through this doctrine called Original Sin. William Temple once said that Original Sin is the only empirical Christian doctrine. He said this in the midst of World War II, looking at the actions of the Nazis and the Japanese, but also at the British and Americans; the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, for example. Original sin is not a claim that each one of us constantly lies or sins in another way, but we are born dispositionally turned away from God. We are curvatos, curved inward, in language of Augustine. Grace through baptism and following the path of Jesus Christ straightens us out so that we can see the world as it is and see God.

Original Sin has gotten a bad rap over the years. But this bad rap has more to do with the word sin and how people understand the sin than with the doctrine itself. This is what Paul is getting to in Romans 3 when he quotes Psalm 14

None is righteous, no, not one;
 no one understands;
 no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
 no one does good,
 not even one.”

That is original sin. No one is above the soul-distorting power of the brokenness of this world. It can seem harsh if our own self-understanding is that we are the good guys and gals. In that world, Original Sin is a major downer. I find a lot of hope here in that it helps us to understand that there’s not a class of deserving people and undeserving people. Nor is there a class of people in need of grace and people not in need of grace. There is not a class of people who need redemption and people who don’t need redemption.

It flattens all of humanity into people who need God to intervene on our behalf. There is no one outside of the need for God. There is no one outside the need for mercy. Original sin humbly reminds us of our need because the idol of self-sufficiency is toxic to our souls. The idea that history will save us is toxic. The mechanisms of this world will not lead us closer to God. We can’t save ourselves. And when we try, there are vast consequences.

The reading from today, the tragic loss of life as the holy family feels is one such consequence. Herod tries to clean the slate. Herod tries to maintain power and authority and people suffer. Lives are lost. Innocent lives are lost.

There deaths are not justified but they are not lost to God. God sees them and receives them. That is our hope at Christmas. The brokenness of the world spits out the young and the old. As Jesus says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust. If we look for justice in this world, we will be disappointed. Our justice comes from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth. As Paul says in Philippians:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

In the Brothers Karamazov, Alexei’s response to his brother Ivan is not another argument. Instead, he embraces his brother. The full response to the consequences of brokenness will not be fully realized until Christ is fully revealed to us. We can only believe this by faith.

At such times that we strain to understand God’s presence among the tragedies of this world], to see the goodness indwelling all creation requires a labor of vision that only a faith in Easter can sustain; but it is there, effulgent, unfading, innocent, but languishing in bondage to corruption, groaning in anticipation of a glory yet to be revealed, both a promise of the Kingdom yet to come and a portent of its beauty. Until that final glory, however, the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is love], and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy. Such faith might never seem credible to someone like Ivan Karamazov, or still the disquiet of his conscience, or give him peace in place of rebellion, but neither is it a faith that his arguments can defeat: for it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead. Now we are able to rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that . sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new:’¹

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Footnotes

1. David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea, 103-104. ↩