Haman, Jesus, and Charlottesville

Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose words saved the king, stands at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." - Esther 7.9

The legend that Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, inventor of the eponymous device, died by that very method, is fake news; in fact he died in bed of natural causes. The myth arose because the Jacobin revolutionaries did indeed imprison the good doctor at one point; it persists because it would be such a delicious piece of historical irony if it were true. There is indeed a horrible yet satisfying symmetry to the idea of disasters "fall'n on the inventors' heads," as Shakespeare phrased it, something deeply human in Mahalia Jackson's warning that "If you dig one ditch you better dig two/Cause the trap you set just may be for you."

Satisfying, deeply human - and solidly biblical:

Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on the one who starts it rolling. - Proverbs 26.7 

For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. - Matthew 26.52

You reap whatever you sow. - Galatians 6.7

The story of Esther warns us that the gun of action kicks as hard as it shoots. Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them (Matthew 7.12) is a sentiment as practical as a balanced checkbook. It should not be stitched into samplers or slapped on bumper stickers, but printed on the opening page of textbooks on accounting.

Haman built the gibbet on which he himself died. He hung at the end of a rope woven from the twisted strands his own hatred. I couldn't help but remember this story when I read about racist mobs marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting, "Jews will not replace us." Indeed they will not; if Scripture and history mean anything, those protestors themselves will be pushed to the margins of society or to extinction - the very place they intend for the descendants of Israel: They will replace the Jews.

If my words and deeds invite others to stand meekly on the margins of injustice, I had better put my own ego on a diet. If my choices instruct the outcasts to get comfortable in their ghettos, I would do well to develop a taste for poverty. If I seek to silence dissent, I should buy myself a comfortable gag.

Many that are first shall be last, our Master has taught us, and the last shall be first. "They" will not replace "us;" we will replace each other, and the only exit from this moral maze is to look long and hard to the One who replaced us all.