Thought of the Day: Away in a Manger

Greetings in Christ Jesus, Fellow Soldiers.

Someone responded to my last post on Jesus being born in an animal latrine and thought it to be a fairly offensive concept. This person helpfully noted that "latrine" might not be the best term, since it typically refers to a structure or specific place to dump waste, whereas animals tend to go everywhere. Point taken. Instead of latrine, this of a place where animals roll in their own filth, like a pig sty. Here's what I wrote with regard to this concept of a manger being offensive:

Thanks for interacting with the post. Your visceral response is exactly as it should be--it is offensive. But that's what Christ entered into.

There were three possible structures that might've been considered a "manger" in that day: a room housing animals within a house, a detached room/structure, or a cave. Yet all three of these descriptions merely describe the frame, not what occurred in a manger. A manger was a chicken coop/pig pen/cow pasture. It is where animals lived, fed, grazed, pooped, and peed.

For what it's worth, most of our church fathers--those most closely connected with the event--believed it to have occurred in a cave. Feeding troughs also were not in existence at the time. Animals would have fed from the ground, and there was likely no elevated place to put baby Jesus.

We know that the paintings we have of a pretty, well-constructed, ordered, and clean manger are 100% wrong, even if we don't have the exact structure/holdings of the historical manger. And this depiction of the nativity is vital to our understanding of Jesus Christ's humanity.

Odds are, this is what unfolded the night of Jesus' birth: A panicked Joseph and Mary desperately sought hospitality in a home, but were rejected (highlighting Jesus' rejection by mankind, even in birth. Mankind never had room in his heart for Jesus.) They stumbled through the pitch-black darkness into a nearby manger--either shabby wooden frame or hole/cave in a hillside. The loneliness was likely as painful as the birth--an utterly forsaken scene (again, prefiguring the cross). Mary would've been lying in the dirt and feces (hopefully shielded in part by her clothing), and delivered a crying baby Jesus in a bloody mess into the trembling arms of Joseph. That Mary had to wrap her own baby too demonstrates the poverty and utter abandonment at this moment. The scene--darkness, the stench of birth and animal waste, the cries, the desperate prayers for this baby--is part and parcel of what Jesus' humiliation would entail. He traded his crown of glory to be born of a woman under the law (Gal. 4:4). He was despised and rejected by men, and it started here, in swaddling clothes, literally experiencing this crappy world it all of its wretchedness from the beginning of His earthly life.

Is it offensive? Absolutely. That's why the humanity and humiliation of Christ offends a great many--that God Himself would be reduced to such a level. And that's when we begin to understand how much we truly needed a Savior and what God was willing to do for our salvation. Ugly, nasty, offensive, and literally, crappy.

 

Praise be to the almighty God who would do this for a sinner like me!