Wicked Haman and Pedestal Ideology for Self-Idolatry
If you have yet to read my last meditation, ‘Lamech and Crossroads’, please do so before reading the following:
In the book of Esther, the righteous Jew Mordechai who is a prominent man serving in the king’s court refuses to bow down to wicked Haman, who serves King Ahasuerus as a very high-ranking official. After Mordechai refuses to bow down to Haman out of reverence towards his God, Haman states in a decree that “there is a certain people living apart. Their laws differ from those of every other people, and they do not obey the laws of the king; so it is not proper for the king to tolerate them.” Haman plots to destroy Mordechai and his people.
It is often said, “Unless we learn from history, we will continue to repeat it.” Sadly, many of the atrocities that have occurred throughout human history can be attributed to updated versions of the same persistent and ancient evils. Evils that societies and civilizations inevitably adopt after they feel they have fully “learned from,” conquered, or become immune to in the society’s arrogance and pride. This pride and arrogance develop once a certain level of “enlightenment”, technological advancement, or prosperity has been achieved within a society. Pride comes before the fall.
Wicked Haman’s self-serving motive can be boiled down to the fact that he himself feels uniquely entitled to all the honor, prestige, and glory. In this, he, in his self-righteous arrogance, has made of himself an idol, using the unspecified and arbitrary laws of “every other people” as the supposed self-evident justification as to why Mordechai and his people are not to be tolerated.
Haman is not bothered that Mordechai and his people are committing no injustice and doing no evil when he makes this decree. To the contrary, Mordechai shows himself a truly righteous man. On a familial level, he cares for and provides fatherly guidance to his orphaned niece, Esther. On a societal level, Mordechai reports and thereby foils a plot that had been hatched to assassinate King Ahasuerus (a plot which Haman himself had been a part of). Mordechai shows true compassion for his people and a sincere desire for them to be protected and saved after Haman’s evil decree is issued. On a spiritual level, Mordechai demonstrates sincerity towards his God.
Evil reinvents itself; this is how evil operates and manages to deceive people, generation after generation. If evil arrived as a serpent every time, people would more easily catch on and realize when they are being duped. Same evil, different day or face.
Be it Pharoah and the Egyptians who felt entitled to lord over and enslave the Israelites, certain Roman emperors who felt entitled to lord over and martyr early Christians, early European-American colonists who felt entitled to lord over and enslave early African-Americans, Nazi’s who felt entitled to lord over and exterminate peoples, namely Jews, as well as communist leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong who felt entitled to lord over and exterminate and/or imprison countless others, such as artists, writers, intellectuals, homosexuals, clergy, peasants, ethnic minorities, etc. -- sometimes entire social classes and political groups were targeted.
When we read of atrocities from the distant past, they almost read like fiction. However, when we see physical artifacts documenting the atrocities from more modern eras, it becomes an all too real reminder as to how societal evils can infiltrate and take hold of entire supposedly “enlightened”, not so distant cultures.
Artifacts such as an early twentieth-century photograph of ‘average citizens’ gathered to watch an innocent person lynched because of the color of their skin. Or early twentieth-century film footage of great numbers of happy ‘average citizens’ cheering for a dictator at a rally who is busy persecuting an entire people based on their religious beliefs.
Generations later, the repercussions of these atrocities can still be culturally felt, and in hindsight are often expressed societally with a certain confounded sense of shame and regret – “How did we (i.e., humanity, the human family, average normal ‘civilized’ modern ‘good’ well-meaning human beings) ever allow this to happen?”
(Sidenote: It is important to remember that not everyone partakes in these collective, ‘hive-mind’ societal evils against those who happen to be the oppressed group at any given historical moment. Those who do the right and just thing, even when it is contrary to what others may be doing, even when it is difficult, are often regarded as heroes in hindsight, as it should be. Harriet Tubman, a former enslaved person who had already escaped to freedom, as well as John Brown, a white abolitionist who was executed for the cause, sacrificed a great deal to help other human beings escape slavery to freedom and work towards bringing an end to a terrible injustice. Harriet and John could have far more easily lived out their lives peacefully somewhere unbothered by an injustice against someone else occurring someplace else in their country, but they didn’t. This goes for the others who organized and worked on the underground railroad, or the people who provided hiding to those seeking shelter from the Nazi’s. This is true love of thy neighbor. Those who love their neighbor are on the opposite end of the spectrum from those who would prefer to lord over thy neighbor. Here, ultimately, is what separates the righteous from the wicked. These people who love they neighbor also have the wisdom to fully understand why injustices need to be combatted by those who may not be personally affected by them -- “First they went after the _________, but I did not speak up because I was not a ________, and so on...”. “They” in this quote is unquestionably referring to a wicked Haman.)
Haman and those who desire to be ‘like gods’ through lordship over others have lost sight of the concept of an unchanging truth in how we are as humans, intended to love one another as valued human beings. They have also lost all fear of the idea of an unchanging, omnipotent god on some level, and they are okay with that. They insist that others follow suit in their own chosen worldview for the sake of their own self-serving priorities, as Haman had done. And because these people are not gods, they inevitably turn into wicked ‘gods,’ or idols, of their own making. They choose arbitrary evidence as to why their enemies should be persecuted or destroyed based on the same vague parameters and criteria that wicked Haman had used to condemn his own targeted enemies.
I have a theory that the more hateful someone is towards whomever they perceive the “other” to be, religiously, racially, politically, socially, culturally, etc., the more that person has become a type of Haman. They have made of themselves a false idol in their self-righteousness, using their ideology as a pedestal. If the fruits of someone’s ideology are to hate the perceived “other”, especially when the other has done no wrong or evil, such as Mordechai, the one doing the hating has sadly assuredly gone down an evil path in their worldview.
This division is sadly evident within the political and social climate of our present day, since certain social issues touch on people’s ethical belief systems. If one’s core beliefs lack any unchanging truth whatsoever, political ideology has shown its potential throughout history to become one of the ugliest and most hateful of false idols. This ideological type of idolatry is particularly exploited by those interested in dividing us as a human family so that we, the people, become more divided, thereby more malleable, while they, the ‘Haman’s’ of the world, can reap more vain glory.
We are not meant to be hateful towards one another; we are meant to hate what God hates, which is sin and idolatry.
When people concede to idolatrous thinking, they become easy prey to those who have already been deceived and are okay with deceiving others in exchange for what they wrongly perceive to be a personal gain – those who have sold their souls, so to speak. When people become religious or fanatic about what is not sacred, they inevitably become disciples of something false and/or ugly.
