By Mark Grace, CCCNZ Ambassador
A, no te kitenga o Hamana kihai a Mororekai i tuohu, kihai i piko ki a ia, na ki tonu a Hamana i te riri.
Ua iloa e Hamanu ua le punou Moretekai, ua le ifo foi ia te ia; ona matuā ita ai lea o Hamanu.
When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged.
Esther 3:5
For hundreds of years, Susa was the military, political, and cultural centre of the ancient world. It was the beating heart of the Persian empire, made up of 127 states across the Middle East.
The book of Esther recounts a story that took place in the palace of the king of Persia. A nobleman, Haman, had been given the most significant position in the empire. He was the second most powerful man in the entire known world.
Thousands of nobles, regional representatives, and military leaders bowed before him and honoured him in the streets. But one man didn’t. Mordecai refused to bow before him.
Haman responded in fury. He was apoplectic, implacably angry. He flew into an uncontrollable rage. The incident burned in his mind and consumed his thoughts.
Why did Haman, the second most important man in the world, respond like this to one man’s refusal to pay homage?
An overinflated idea of who he was led to overreaction. His overblown idea of his self-importance leads to an outsized response.
That’s what pride does. It enlarges our desire for and dependence on whatever we have pride in. And that overinflation leads to overreaction when it’s threatened.
Maybe it’s not the point of the whole story, but as I read about Haman’s reaction, I’m left with a hard-hitting question. Do I have a heart like Haman’s?
Tim Keller suggests that you can identify where your pride resides in your heart by examining your reactions to certain situations, particularly those that provoke anger, anxiety, or feelings of inferiority.
What things in your life, when threatened, lead you to respond like Haman? Instead of reacting like him, we can look to Christ as our example. We can look to the one who “also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness (1 Peter 2:21–22).”
