At Christmastime, writers have in recent years labored to make the Nativity into a story about immigrants or refugees. After all, the holy family did seek refuge in Egypt.

But there’s little beyond that to justify such a facile comparison. There are biblical passages about the treatment of strangers and foreigners that fit that topic much better (“for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt”). But the story of Jesus’ birth, if it has any political analog, looks less like a story of migration than a story of political and religious repression by bad governments. It does not resemble America’s civilized politics at all, but sadly it looks a lot like what we see today in the region of the world where Jesus was born.

In the time of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the various secular powers refused to leave them alone. The Romans first saddled the holy family with a census designed to maximize tax revenue from their empire. Added to their bureaucratic indifference was the psychopathic, paranoid behavior of the local ruler, who sought to kill the baby Jesus.

Is there any comparison to draw today? Not precisely. But between religious fanatics and brutal, dictatorial secular authorities in the Middle East, today’s Christians still living there have found themselves nearly squeezed out. According to a 2017 study, Christians are "the most widely targeted religious community, suffering terrible persecution globally."

In the Middle East specifically, roughly half of Syrian Christians have been forced to flee that country since 2011. An estimated 80 percent of Christians have been forced to flee Iraq since 2003. Smaller communities of Christians in Egypt and Libya have been ground between the same two millstones — the violence of fanatics and the indifference or hostility of secular authorities.

Nor are Christians the only religious group suffering persecution in that region. The Islamic State has been especially murderous toward their fellow Muslims (either those of the wrong sect or those not sufficiently observant) and toward Yazidis. And closer to the vicinity of Jesus’ birth, the visceral hatred of Jews and the total destruction of Israel have become institutionalized as a form of nationalism, to which even some Americans try to lend legitimacy with boycotts and sanctions.

As if that wasn’t enough bad news, the secular powers of Turkey and Syria, with help from Russia, are prepared to fall upon and destroy all of their religious and ethnic enemies as the U.S. withdraws from the region again.

So what do the world’s Christians and its other religious minorities need this Christmas? They need all kinds of help, certainly, and there are all kinds of organizations to which you can give. But you could start with your prayers.

Christians do not believe that Jesus triumphed by seeking or obtaining revenge over the authorities of his day. They are not supposed to make their faith an excuse to harbor resentments, either toward those who wronged Jesus or those who wrong them today.

As an adult, Jesus called it insufficient even to love one’s friends and do good to one’s benefactors. He told his followers they must also love their enemies, bless those who curse them, pray for those who mistreat them, go the extra mile for those who press them, turn the other cheek for those who strike them.

To celebrate Jesus’ birth today, take his advice. Pray for and help the persecuted, and pray for their tormentors to change their hearts.