Rather than celebrate God’s mercy and love during the Christmas season, a church in Illinois opted to reimagine the nativity this year. Mary and Joseph were stuffed into gas masks like they were fleeing Chernobyl. Baby Jesus was zip-tied as if Mary had just birthed a felon. The Roman soldiers make their debut Nativity appearance as ICE agents. It’s a profound and compelling piece of performance art if you’ve never actually heard the story of Jesus’ birth.

But if you are even a little bit familiar with the events surrounding Christ’s arrival on this planet then you know Joseph and Mary were NOT fugitives. They weren’t crossing a border illegally. They weren’t dodging border patrol. They weren’t hiding under bridges or tunneling out of Bethlehem. They were literally doing what the government told them to do. They were filling out census forms. Compliance. Bureaucracy. The least rebellious plotline in the history of humankind.

The entire trip to Bethlehem was the first-century equivalent of renewing your driver’s license. If you want modern parallels, the historically accurate version of this scene is Mary riding a donkey while Joseph sits on hold on a government help line listening to a recorded voice promising that his call is very important. Nobody was chasing them. Nobody was arresting them.

You know who would get arrested in ancient Judea? The anti-government demonstrators. Those angry folks chanting, “ABOLISH ICE,” blocking public roads, brawling with law enforcement officers, and putting up nativity scenes with gas masks and zip-tied baby Jesus . Rome had very little patience for anti-king sentiment. That group of unruly activists would be in shackles before the paint dried on their protest signs.

The fact that this church can display a gas-masked nativity without being hauled off in cuffs ought to be your first clue that the “America is fascist” crowd may be exaggerating a smidge. They can dial the hysteria down a couple of notches. Here, you can shout crazy things in public and the worst that happens is people start recognizing you as the person who shouts crazy things in public.

This display is not a prophetic warning or a courageous truth-telling moment. It’s just a political tantrum in sandals. Using the King of Kings to prop up your ideology is a Yuletide tradition you should probably retire. The birth of Christ doesn’t need our theatrical reinterpretation. It needs our reverence.

(Luke 2:1) In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea…”