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Christmas Story Offers Civic Lesson
...What is missed is a side of the story that doesn’t serve well with easy conversation over eggnog. It’s about political power and civic dissent.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the Christmas story records a journey from the East--most likely Persia--to Jerusalem by wise men, alternatively called kings or magi. They were really astrologers: the inquisitive, the intellectuals, the scientists of their day...

...While the broad strokes of this story may be recalled, it is the wise men’s civic engagement that deserves recovery, for they offer us a much-needed model.

The wise men refused the seduction of political power. They listened respectfully to Herod but kept their objectivity. They discerned the signs of the times and practiced daring dissent in the face of distortive power. They remained faithful to their religious mission.

Today we also need discerning people of faith, who engage but keep their distance from political power, deflecting its inherent manipulation and dissenting from its use of religion for the exercise of malignant power.

Those who bore gifts for the messiah also bear a gift for our society—the need for discernment and dissent.