The Slaughter
of the Innocents is celebrated by the Church on December 28th. Celebration
is not something you would associate with slaughtering innocent children,
and the story behind the event is unpleasant as well. Herod the Great
suspected that the infant Jesus might pose a challenge to him and
so he sent soldiers to kill all the babies in the Bethlehem area to
make sure that Jesus had been killed.
No doubt
if war starts up soon in the Middle East, we will again hear about
innocent women and children being killed, and the people guilty of
doing the killing will probably be men. It is a nice simple stereotype,
and it has some foundation in reality. Throughout history, with the
exception of curiosities like the Amazons, it has usually been men
who have been in the forefront doing the fighting and killing, and
it has often been the civilians, the women and children, who have
suffered.
But while
the basic picture has some truth in it, it is also a simplification.
In most fighting the women support their menfolk, and while they may
not all be like Helen of Troy in starting a war, they play an equal
part as adult members of their country, and are far from innocent
in sharing responsibility for the horrors of war.
Surely,
though, children are innocent, even if their mothers aren't? After
all, they are too young to fight, or to decide to start wars or to
urge their families to back war. What had the babies killed by Herod
done to deserve such a death?
On one
level, the answer has to be Nothing. But if one analyses the situation
more closely, there are other angles we need to consider. Just because
children are vulnerable does not mean they are all nice. Just as old
people in residential homes may be dependent but may still be pretty
unpleasant as people, so there are little children who are bad-tempered,
who put stress on their parents, or who are nasty to other children.
It is surprising how young children may start showing traits one would
condemn in an older person.
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Whether
it is in the genes or whether it is a response to parenting and
our environment, we begin to show a mixture of behaviour from
an early age. As Wordsworth put it, the child is father of the
man. We decide how we want to behave from an early age. If naughty
behaviour will get what we want for us, we indulge in it. We yowl,
we mess things up, we break things, we take things from other
people, we fight - even when we are little. |
At another
level, we are all members of our tribe, our community or our nation,
as much when we are little people as when we are big ones. As little
ones, we may not be able to fight actively as adults, but as members
of our tribe or nation we pose a threat to our people's enemies. It
was no accident that Herod saw the babies as a threat. To him they
were far from innocent; they were a challenge to him and were therefore
guilty of treason.
It is
not only Herod who has seen things that way. In the animal world,
a male lion taking over a female will destroy her cubs as they carry
another lion's genes. The same with chimps, who are much closer to
us. The first observers who noted this behaviour were horrified to
see the infanticide practised by such an advanced species.
Should
we expect humans to be any different? We are just as ruthless when
we see people as enemies. We are prepared to attack and destroy them,
in thousands and millions. It may be mainly the men who do the fighting
but we are all equally liable to want to destroy our enemies, happily
zapping them in our computer games from an early age.
Civilisation
is a thin veneer on top of our basic instincts. In a crowded world,
we need to make the maximum of education to foster tolerance and understanding
or the world will be a ruthless place for adults and children alike.
That is why we have to work hard to create peace. To give way to anger,
to destroy, to treat fellow humans as enemies when they threaten us
is natural, but it is something we must overcome.
To be
innocent means literally that we do not hurt or harm people, and it
is possible for anyone to be innocent in this sense. Indeed, we could
do with a lot more innocent people.
We need to bring up our children in a world where they can feel safe,
where there are ways for everyone to get on with others - whatever
their race and religion, where we can resolve differences peaceably,
where the innocent do not suffer.
