Dear Herod,

Every December your shadow lengthens across the Christmas story. People hiss at the mention of your name–or ought to. You carry the role of the villain, the figure who stalks the edges of the manger scene, the embodiment of fear and cruelty in a story otherwise filled with angels and wonder and visions of peace.

But today I want to speak to you differently–not to excuse what you represent, but to understand it more deeply. Because when I speak to you, Herod, I am also speaking to the parts of ourselves and our world that tremble before change, grasp for control, and lash out when identity feels threatened. 

You are not simply a man lost in ancient history. You are an archetype that walks with us still.

The Gospel of Matthew says that when the Magi–those mysterious travelers from the East, following a star–came to you in Jerusalem, you were “frightened, and all Jerusalem with you.” They arrived asking a simple question, though they had no idea how explosive it was: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”

A new king. A rival. A different future than the one you sought to control. 

And when you heard their question, a shudder ran through the city. That detail has always struck me: “and all Jerusalem with him.” Not because they loved you; you were never a beloved king. But they knew what happened when fear seized your heart. You were unpredictable. Volatile. Capable of brutality. 

When the powerful panic, ordinary people pay the price. Fear radiates downward in every authoritarian system. 

It always has.

Herod, historians tell us something important here: the slaughter of the innocents–the mass killing of infants in Bethlehem–almost certainly never happened. You were ruthless, yes, but your ruthlessness tended toward targeted executions, not village-level slaughters. Matthew’s story is not historical reportage; it is theological interpretation. It casts you as a new Pharaoh in a retelling of the Moses story, to show that Jesus is a new Moses, and that liberation is once again stirring under the nose of empire.

But even if the details didn’t unfold as Matthew describes them, the spiritual truth remains. You were a man whose fear dictated the lives of everyone around you. And that pattern–your pattern–still lives today.

Let’s start with your fear, Herod. You were terrified of losing power. Terrified of being forgotten. Terrified of being displaced. Even though Rome propped you up, even though you built monumental cities, fortresses, palaces, and even rebuilt the Temple itself, still, you lived with a gnawing insecurity. You were Idumean by birth, not Jewish, ruling a people who knew you did not belong to the line of David. You married into the Hasmonean dynasty to try to legitimize yourself, but no amount of ceremony could silence the quiet accusation that you were an outsider, a pretender, a man perched on a throne that was not truly yours.

That kind of insecurity produces its own violence. It makes a person cling to control with white-knuckled desperation. It convinces a person that vulnerability equals annihilation. It persuades a person that any threat–even a rumor, even a child–must be crushed swiftly and without mercy.

This is why, when the Magi came to you in good faith, telling you they had seen a star signaling the birth of a new king, you could not hear it as good news. You could only hear it as catastrophe. You called the chief priests and scribes to interpret the prophecy. You sent the Magi on their way with false friendliness and secret malice. And when they saw through your ruse and never returned, your fear erupted into fury.

This is the tragic arc of fear when it is fused to power: curiosity dies first, then compassion, then discernment, and finally, innocent lives are swept up in the storm.

And yet, the most haunting part is this: your fear did not make you powerful. It made you fragile. Strong on the outside, yes. But hollowed on the inside, ruled not by sovereignty but by panic.

And here is where I must say it, Herod: you are not just someone who lived two thousand years ago. You are the archetype of the fearful ego, the rigid self that cannot bear to be displaced. You are the part of every human heart that believes control is the only path to survival. You are the voice that whispers, “If I am not on the throne, I am nothing.”

We all have a Herod inside us–the place that is terrified of change, even holy change. The place that would rather cling to familiar misery than risk unfamiliar freedom. The place that, when invited into a new possibility, reaches not for courage but for hostility.

This is how Herod survives in the modern psyche: not as a long-ago villain, but as the fear that kills possibility before it draws its first breath. 

But you also live in the world around us, Herod, not just within the private chambers of the soul. Every society generates its Herods: leaders who weaponize fear, who treat dissent as treason, who punish the vulnerable, who grasp for attention as though gasping for air. Leaders who cannot imagine a world that is not centered on themselves.

We see it in public life today. We see leaders who stir grievance like a simmering pot; who cultivate paranoia; who speak of enemies everywhere and, even in the face of public tragedy, refuse to acknowledge our common humanity and only double-down on meanness.

We see the breathless swirl of conspiracy; the threats against judges, journalists, and neighbors; the demonizing of entire groups; accusations against others meant to distract attention from the sad fact that the accusations are in truth direct admissions of guilt. 

We know the Herod pattern.

We know what it feels like when anxiety at the top spreads through a community like wildfire. We know how institutions buckle under the pressure of a leader’s insecurity. We know what it is like when someone’s private panic becomes everyone’s public problem.

So what do we do, Herod? How do we live with clarity and courage in a time when modern Herods seek not only thrones but also residency in our heads and hearts?

First, we do not deny the danger. Advent is not sentimental. It is a quiet revolution whispered in a dangerous world. Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt because danger is real. The Magi go home “by another road” because danger is real. Even the child you feared is born into vulnerability, not privilege.

But danger is not the whole story. And fear is not the deepest truth.

Second, we protect our inner Bethlehem–the vulnerable place where something new, hopeful, and divine is being born within us. We do not allow tyrants, ancient or modern, to determine our imagination. We do not give them the power to define our emotional landscape. We do not let them live rent-free in our minds.

Herod, your fear was contagious. But hope can be contagious too. Courage can be contagious. Sanity can be contagious. Resilience can be contagious. Communities can build a different emotional climate than the one offered by those who cling to power through fear.

This does not mean disengaging from public life. It means engaging from a grounded center rather than a reactive one. It means anchoring ourselves in values rather than panic. It means recognizing that although Herods rise in every generation, the world is always and forever on the brink of Bethlehem.

And now, Herod, we must turn to something people may not want to hear: the psychological power of your role. Stories need villains. Not to glorify evil, but because human beings grow through complication, crisis, and resolution. 

Neuroscientists tell us that our dreams rehearse danger thousands of times over a lifetime–tens of thousands of threatening episodes, while we sleep, preparing us to wake up to the real world with adaptive courage. 

Children, when they first begin telling stories, fill them with danger: being lost, chased, stolen, bitten, falling. It is as though the human soul knows instinctively that adversity is the furnace of growth.

Our best stories–the ones that endure–understand this. If fiction were mere escapism, as some say, then stories would be filled with wish fulfillment, ease, pleasure, and comfort. But they aren’t. They are often horrorscapes of suffering, risk, betrayal, and courage. Fiction does not remove us from trouble; it plunges us into trouble in order to enlarge us.

Herod, this is your role.

You are the crisis that sharpens the contours of the story. You are the pressure that reveals character. You are the threat that summons bravery. You are the darkness that makes the star shine all the brighter.

Without you, the Magi are just travelers, Joseph is just a quiet man, and Mary is simply a young mother rather than a figure of extraordinary trust.

Without you, Jesus is born into comfort–and comfort smothers the call to become a hero.

You are not the heart of the story, Herod. But you are the antagonist that makes the heart visible.

It makes me wonder how the hearts of people today, facing contemporary Herods, are being made visible….

And yet–and I must acknowledge this–you did not have to be this way.

You were not doomed to be the villain, Herod. You were simply unwilling to imagine yourself any other way. Your role as antagonist was not chosen for you; it was chosen by you.

Another Herod might have heard the Magi’s question with curiosity rather than terror. Another Herod might have wondered whether God was doing something new that did not require his destruction. Another Herod might have asked, “What if this child is not my rival, but my teacher?” Power in itself is not bad. Power used ethically stabilizes life. So much of life is like a fire that will go out unless it is carefully and faithfully tended. 

Power used like this is life-affirming, not life-negating. 

But you could not imagine a world in which your throne was not the center. Your imagination was too small for the divine possibilities unfolding around you. 

From you we learn: this is what happens when power forgets why it exists. 

Herod, this is your great tragedy–not the violence you inflicted, horrible as it was, but the life you refused to imagine. You lived as a prisoner of your own fear. You ruled an empire but never ruled your heart. You are a missed opportunity, a tragedy. 

So let me end by saying this, Herod, in the hope that those listening may hear it more clearly than you ever could:

You spent your life defending a throne that was never really yours.
You surrounded yourself with walls and weapons and whispered plots.
You mistook control for security.
You mistook fear for wisdom.
You mistook violence for strength.

But the child you feared–the one who slipped through your grasp–grew into a man who said again and again, “Do not be afraid.” Not because danger disappears. But because fear does not have to be the master of our lives.

Because Herods come and go, but hope keeps being born.
Because tyrants fall, but courage rises.
Because even in a world trembling with uncertainty, love can still take flesh in the smallest, most unexpected places.

So, Herod, thank you for your warning. Thank you for showing us what happens when fear governs the heart. Thank you for reminding us that every age has its Herods and that we must decide whether we live in their shadow or under the light of a star.

And may all who hear this letter today remember: You do not have to let the Herods of the world define your imagination. You do not have to let fear dictate your story. You do not have to give your mind or your heart or your hope over to those who thrive on panic.

Something new is being born–always. Guard that place. Nurture that place. Protect that place. For the world is always standing on the brink of Bethlehem, and the light Herod tried to kill keeps rising.

Always rising. 

Sincerely yours, 

Anthony