“I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
Note: This was published by a friend of ours on Facebook and is used/annotated here with permission.
Because I am a Bible nerd, who was raised conservative, and can’t help stop myself from conducting arcane research to address modern problems, I present the following to my pro-life, Bible reading, evangelical, Christian friends, trying to figure out who to vote for, and everyone else listening in.
Remember the Book of Esther? That tiny book in the Bible with the beautiful heroine? The one at the heart of our Jewish brothers/sisters’ celebration of Purim?
Remember the villain of the story, Haman? Well, in case you need a refresher:
Haman was the Persian vizier under king Ahasuerus. Haman wanted to kill Mordechai-- the leader of the Jews and Esther’s cousin-- because Mordechai would not bow down to him. Haman, in a tiny-handed, juvenile rage, lashes out against not only Mordechai, but all Jews, convincing king Ahasuerus through dishonesty and fear tactics that the Jews were a threat, and that he should issue a decree to kill all the Jews on a certain day. Haman even goes so far as to construct a set of stakes upon which Jews, but Mordechai in particular, could be impaled.
[AGFGC sidenote: we have a Card Talk about this story.]
In the end Haman’s plan is thwarted, and he is impaled on his own device.
but his story is relevant the current election for Christians. Why?
Haman was pro-life.
(What? Yes. Strap in)
Unlike some other ancient world powers, the Persians of this time period were pro-life. How pro-life were they?
- They believed that the fetus was a person with equal rights to other persons.
- They established laws against abortion.
- They labelled it a type of murder.
- They did not excuse abortions in the case of rape.
- They punished the mother, father, and/or any person aiding in the abortion.
- They were about as pro-life as you can get.
[AGFGC sidenote: We verified this from this book, this journal article , and the ancient Zoroastrian scared text, The Vendidad.]
So, good evangelical Christian, would you vote for Haman?
Sure he gets thrown into an irrational rage when people oppose him, but that’s what you want in a leader.
Besides, targeting an entire group because of bad interactions with a subset is completely rational.
And he only threatened physical violence against the whole minority group, he didn’t carry it out, so that can be excused.
Yes, he never once acted in a manner consistent with God’s will, but that doesn’t matter because he supported pro-life legislation.
And as we all know, it only matters if a leader’s morality is sound in one instance, on one issue.
That is all God cares about.
Everything else is immaterial.