I found a fascinating book Friday night while visiting a friend. I held it in my hand.

Title: “Can Europe Keep The Peace? The New 1934 Revised Edition”

My daughter loves books and history so I took an iPhone photo and sent it to her. Her response?

“LOL! Looks like it’s time for another update.”

It’s interesting to think about. What could have been done five years before the beginning of the Second World War to keep the peace?

You could say that World War II could have been prevented if we had eliminated Adolph Hitler before he solved his “border problem” with Austria by taking over. Or maybe by being nicer to him while he was still a cute little dictator in art school.

But that doesn’t take into account the nation of German citizens that followed him. Or the Japanese hunger for conquest. Or Mussolini’s megalomania.

Or the fact that there had already been a World War I.

The need to number our planetary wars should tell us something about ourselves.

Mankind has a nearly unlimited capacity for evil.

Some will claim it is mental illness but that doesn’t bear scrutiny. Much evil is done by sane people.

Others will claim it’s all relative but mowing down innocents by one or by dozens or by the millions makes situation ethics a cruel and despicable joke.

Others will claim it is the availability of weapons that’s the problem. But you could take away every destructive weapon on the planet and mankind would invent them again. We invented them the first time.

At the same time a man in Connecticut was slaughtering kindergarteners, another man in China stabbed 22 children at an elementary school. And it’s not the first time. Labelled as “social revenge” attacks, they are being done as protests to the uneven development of China’s newfound economic boom. Children are thought to make the loudest statement.

Evil.

Such loss of shining potential can’t be described in lesser terms. But there is another term, a biblical one – sin.

While sin is very popular right now, the idea of calling it sin is not. Society prefers sex, drugs and rock and roll, or The New Normal, or merely Saturday night. We prefer to think that we are fine but a few select mental cases are in need of some therapy. Or that we need a new law.

But evil is already illegal. What we need is a solution to evil, a remedy for sin.

What we need is Christmas.

I don’t mean department store Santas or “holiday” trees. I mean God sending His son to us in a manger. I mean Jesus living with us and teaching us a better way.

But evil is a bigger problem than that. It’s ingrained in our very bones. Evil is a part of us. It will follow us to the next generation. Our children will face it. And our grandchildren. It is a vast problem, which is why it requires such a huge solution.

Someone has to pay.

Justice demands that someone is responsible and must be held accountable. Evil can’t be let off the hook by signing a peace treaty and hushing up the press. Evil demands more payment than a coward’s suicide bullet. Therapy sessions are no balance for the loss of innocents.

It required Jesus doing more than teaching. He had to take our place, to pay the price that justice demands. And the only payment large enough for such evil is death itself.

This is the story of Christmas.

Not that a good man was born in a manger, or a good teacher, or a prophet. But that God gave His Own in our place so that we might live. So that we might know the size of His love. So that we might stand before him as innocents reborn.

Our only requirement is to acknowledge our need and accept the gift, the greatest gift the world has ever known.