When people go against God, there is always collateral damage. Matthew’s account of the birth of Christ includes the shocking detail that after Herod realized the Magi had outwitted him, he “gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under” (Matt. 2:16). Sometimes referred to as the “slaughter of the innocents,” it is only one biblical example of the catastrophic fallout caused by those who oppose God.

Today’s reading in Lamentations 2 offers another tragic example. In verse 11, Jeremiah speaks of torment and tears “because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.” The prophet describes heart-rending pleas muttered as “their lives ebb away in their mothers’ arms” (v. 12). It is not merely the fact of children dying that torments Jeremiah, causing him to weep until his heart “is poured out on the ground” (v. 11), it is the bitter fact that these mothers had to watch their children suffer. They “faint like the wounded in the streets of the city.” In every war, there are the civilian casualties, a harsh reality often obscured by the cold euphemism “collateral damage.”

Their pitiful cry is a stern reminder to us that all forms of sin bring pain. Sin may indeed be a personal choice, but it always has a communal effect. The excuse that those who choose to sin are only hurting themselves is a myth designed to keep sinners from seeing the plain evidence of personal experience. Sin has a permeating effect. Its consequences spread across generations and communities. It works its way into our lives, families, and churches the same way that yeast multiplies in a batch of dough (1 Cor. 5:6). Our actions draw others into the consequences of the choices we make.

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