We can be thankful this Christmas that King Herod’s gruesome plan for mass infanticide missed the manger, his state-sanctioned killers coming too late, Joseph having been warned by an angel in a dream to flee Bethlehem. Would that we, as God’s messengers, would warn our culture of death to flee this murderous madness.

In a time when the ethical standards of Christianity are increasingly rejected, objections to the immorality of this scourge upon our culture are typically seen as mere moralising – the outdated values of social or political conservatives; little more than background noise. As such, Christian morality is often seen as judgmental, self-righteous, or even an expression of hatred. In such a context we need to re-learn to understand our faith and make our case as the early apologists did amongst the pagans – cosmologically, not simply pragmatically. Cosmology simply refers to order or structure. It is the way in which we look at and understand the order of our world. It considers the big picture of reality and the implications which flow from it. The one who ordered all reality, who called it into existence, hallowed the womb by his incarnation, and the implications which flow from this fact are profound indeed.