Today Pastor finally got around to preaching on Chapter 3 of Esther in which Haman plots genocide against the Jews because Mordecai wouldn't bow down to him. And yes, he did bring up, in passing, the incident where King Saul was ordered by the prophet Samuel (presumably speaking for God) to kill all of the Agagites but of course Saul didn't and because of this now the Jews are facing genocide because Haman is a descendant of these people. I wrote about that in more detail a couple of weeks ago and won't rehash that.
Naturally Pastor's take on this chapter is quite different from mine. He went into great detail about Mordecai taking a stand for his beliefs and suffering the consequences and how we ought to do the same except that in today's society it can often be difficult to know where and when to draw the line. But then he did say--and I quietly applauded him for that--that we are not to do as Haman did and judge an entire people based on just one or two examples.
Unfortunately that is as far as he went. Because the passage in Esther 3 where Haman goes to the king and complains about the Jews has a disturbingly familiar ring. There is a people scattered around your kingdom, he says, who have their own culture and their own laws and their own language and they refuse to assimilate. No kidding. And this situation is not to be tolerated.
Now, I waited in vain to for Pastor to say that we all have the potential to be like Haman. That what he said about the Jews in 500 BC sounds a whole lot like things I've heard about Mexicans and immigrants in general. About blacks. About Muslims. About . . . about anyone who isn't white-bread middle class. What about all the nail salons springing up everywhere that are run by Vietnamese? They cheerfully chatter away in their language while buffing nails and waxing eyebrows--hey, you are in America now, speak English! And that goes for you, Muslim women--you are in the land of the free now, take off those scarves and dress like the rest of us! Yes, the spirit of Haman is alive and well in the good old U.S. of A.
Instead, Pastor betrayed his naivety and misunderstanding of human nature (even though the depravity and wickedness of such is one of his favorite topics) when he said he did not understand what would have motivated the neighbors of said Jews to just start massacring them. Although he did think that in a subsistence economy, greed would have been a powerful motivating factor. Well, excuse me, Pastor, I don't mean to contradict, but Nazi Germany in the 1930's and 40's was not a "subsistence economy" and the people there and in surrounding countries had no problem either betraying or turning their backs as their neighbors were rounded up and taken away--and many of them gleefully participated in the Nazi pogrom. May I also add that 99% of those who participated were all "good Christians" and that the Church itself (both Catholic and Protestant) turned a blind eye to what was going on. Even when Jews were being deported right under the windows of the Vatican the Pope said nothing.
According to the Bible, immediately after the decree of extermination was issued, Haman and King Ahaseurus sat down and got gloriously drunk together while the Persian capital of Susa was thrown into confusion. Because, you see, the Persians were asking themselves, who's next? Or at least that's Pastor's take on it. Well, again, I don't know that anyone in Nazi Germany had any such worries. Oh, there was one pastor whose name escapes me right now who said something like "First they came for the trade unionists, but I wasn't one, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the communists and again I didn't speak up. And they came for the Jews, etc. Finally they came for me but by that time there was nobody left to speak up." You see, everybody knows who the in groups are and who the out groups are, it's that silent consensus thing again, and anyone who's ever been bullied knows all about how this works too.
The other night I took part in a murder mystery. I'd never been in one before so it was very interesting to see how it works. Even though the organizers kept saying that anyone could be the murderer--even you--once the "murder" had been committed, it quickly became apparent that that was not the case, that within minutes the suspect list was narrowed down to 3 or 4 possibilities. In other words, most of the participants didn't have to worry about being accused. And I suspect that was the case back in the Persian empire. And even in Nazi Germany many Jews refused to believe what was going on until too late. They simply didn't believe that civilized people were capable of mass murder. Some people still don't believe it and say that the Holocaust was all a myth. I am not one of them. I learned at a very early age that people can and will turn on you and that yes, what happened in Germany could happen in America. Indeed, I am afraid that it might. There are enough demagogues out there stirring up hatred in these economic times that it is downright scary.
Naturally Pastor's take on this chapter is quite different from mine. He went into great detail about Mordecai taking a stand for his beliefs and suffering the consequences and how we ought to do the same except that in today's society it can often be difficult to know where and when to draw the line. But then he did say--and I quietly applauded him for that--that we are not to do as Haman did and judge an entire people based on just one or two examples.
Unfortunately that is as far as he went. Because the passage in Esther 3 where Haman goes to the king and complains about the Jews has a disturbingly familiar ring. There is a people scattered around your kingdom, he says, who have their own culture and their own laws and their own language and they refuse to assimilate. No kidding. And this situation is not to be tolerated.
Now, I waited in vain to for Pastor to say that we all have the potential to be like Haman. That what he said about the Jews in 500 BC sounds a whole lot like things I've heard about Mexicans and immigrants in general. About blacks. About Muslims. About . . . about anyone who isn't white-bread middle class. What about all the nail salons springing up everywhere that are run by Vietnamese? They cheerfully chatter away in their language while buffing nails and waxing eyebrows--hey, you are in America now, speak English! And that goes for you, Muslim women--you are in the land of the free now, take off those scarves and dress like the rest of us! Yes, the spirit of Haman is alive and well in the good old U.S. of A.
Instead, Pastor betrayed his naivety and misunderstanding of human nature (even though the depravity and wickedness of such is one of his favorite topics) when he said he did not understand what would have motivated the neighbors of said Jews to just start massacring them. Although he did think that in a subsistence economy, greed would have been a powerful motivating factor. Well, excuse me, Pastor, I don't mean to contradict, but Nazi Germany in the 1930's and 40's was not a "subsistence economy" and the people there and in surrounding countries had no problem either betraying or turning their backs as their neighbors were rounded up and taken away--and many of them gleefully participated in the Nazi pogrom. May I also add that 99% of those who participated were all "good Christians" and that the Church itself (both Catholic and Protestant) turned a blind eye to what was going on. Even when Jews were being deported right under the windows of the Vatican the Pope said nothing.
According to the Bible, immediately after the decree of extermination was issued, Haman and King Ahaseurus sat down and got gloriously drunk together while the Persian capital of Susa was thrown into confusion. Because, you see, the Persians were asking themselves, who's next? Or at least that's Pastor's take on it. Well, again, I don't know that anyone in Nazi Germany had any such worries. Oh, there was one pastor whose name escapes me right now who said something like "First they came for the trade unionists, but I wasn't one, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the communists and again I didn't speak up. And they came for the Jews, etc. Finally they came for me but by that time there was nobody left to speak up." You see, everybody knows who the in groups are and who the out groups are, it's that silent consensus thing again, and anyone who's ever been bullied knows all about how this works too.
The other night I took part in a murder mystery. I'd never been in one before so it was very interesting to see how it works. Even though the organizers kept saying that anyone could be the murderer--even you--once the "murder" had been committed, it quickly became apparent that that was not the case, that within minutes the suspect list was narrowed down to 3 or 4 possibilities. In other words, most of the participants didn't have to worry about being accused. And I suspect that was the case back in the Persian empire. And even in Nazi Germany many Jews refused to believe what was going on until too late. They simply didn't believe that civilized people were capable of mass murder. Some people still don't believe it and say that the Holocaust was all a myth. I am not one of them. I learned at a very early age that people can and will turn on you and that yes, what happened in Germany could happen in America. Indeed, I am afraid that it might. There are enough demagogues out there stirring up hatred in these economic times that it is downright scary.
