King Herod in the Oval Office
Today we’re sharing a guest devotional from our friend Rich Villodas who pastors in Queens. He wrote this on his substack this week - it was bold and helpful and reminds us where true peace comes from.
In this Advent season, President Donald Trump is playing the role of King Herod.
Advent presents us with two ways of being in the world.
The way of the infant Messiah, Jesus, and the way of the armed and fearful leader, Herod. Make no mistake about God’s approach to rescuing the world. When Jesus is born into this world, the gospel writers make a point to contrast these polar opposite approaches to securing peace.
Herod is the fearful leader, anxiously using his power to take up arms to defend his position and preserve his security. He was trained to see others—especially vulnerable people—as threats, whether they were or not. The infant Jesus takes a different approach to peace. Jesus comes to disarm Herod and the ways of his violent kingdom.
When God entered the world in the person of Jesus, he came in the most surprising and subversive way possible. In coming as an infant (unarmed, vulnerable, dependent) he establishes the way of the kingdom from the onset. The kingdom will not be characterized by fearful, self-protective, violent strategies.
Herod only sees enemies to be defeated. In his insecure and fearful mindset, he preemptively wipes out those who serve as possible threats to his throne. Herod essentially said, “Let’s rid ourselves of these imminent threats before they rise up against us.” His is a way of life that refuses to see the image of God in others, only the shadow of imagined danger.
And here is where Advent presses close to our present moment.
When leaders today speak with disdain about Somali communities, immigrants, and refugees—when they use the language of “garbage,” “threat,” or “infestation”—they are not walking in the way of Jesus; they are walking in the way of Herod.
When Donald Trump leverages fear, targets entire communities for punishment, and uses political power to stir suspicion toward the stranger, the refugee, the foreigner, we see a modern picture of Herod: a leader shaped not by peace, but by anxiety; not by love, but by domination; not by welcome, but by exclusion.
Herod’s spirit is alive whenever leaders weaponize fear to strengthen their throne.
Herod’s spirit is alive whenever vulnerable people—like the Somali community in Minnesota, or immigrants at the southern border, or Muslims scapegoated after tragedies—are treated as threats rather than neighbors.
Herod’s spirit is alive whenever political power is used to crush rather than protect, to intimidate rather than uplift, to sow division rather than foster belonging.
The infant Jesus unmasks all of this. He reveals the profound insecurity behind every Herodian heart. As long as we cling to fear, we will cling to violence. And as long as we cling to violence, we will be incapable of recognizing Christ in the face of the immigrant, the refugee, or the stranger.
Herod and his violent ways know nothing about the way to peace. His way produces a false peace—an anxious, temporary quiet that hides the deep wounds inflicted along the way. It is Jesus, the unarmed and unthreatening one, who shows us the path to true shalom.
In Advent we learn again:
True peace never comes from fear.
True peace never comes from force.
True peace never comes from treating the vulnerable as threats.
True peace comes from the God who enters the world as a child—disarming us with love, calling us out of fear, and inviting us to see every person, including the Somali immigrant and the refugee on the move, as bearers of God’s image.