Day 3573 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Esther 6:6 NIV

The singular vision of all prideful assumption is gathered together against a person, all without their being able to ever believe in the coming backfire that all undertaking undertaken by pride is bound to bring about.

For just below the surface it seems that pride’s but a choice to once more involve our voice rather than absolve our choice as chosen often to return our resolve to dissolve into an insistence that life revolve around our preference and pretense, creating then only problems alone that we cannot then alone solve. And this revolving dissolving has us all but absolved from the resolve to live upright and responsibly, reasonably. Simply because pride cannot see from such heights the necessity of such things as patience or reconsideration.

No, pride again knows only a singular vision in which every outcome is so desperately certain that none of what we’re doing, nor any of what we imagine done unto us could in any way alter, object or oppose our stance so solidified upon the outermost limits of our inability to see anything but what we’ve come to assume.

And we all know this well because, well, we’ve lived it. We’ve all listened to an arrogance that’s convinced that something will go a certain way, always to our delight and never our demise, simply because we’ve cooked it up into a cacophony of confusion in which we’ve designed a delusion that has us seeing that there’s no way we’re losing. Simply because we prefer the win, and well, when a soul is left to its own preferences for so long as we tend to pursue ours, there wouldn’t matter how many hours within a day as all of them would be spent writing these stories about our glories.

Without any real ability to ensure them beyond our ego’s certainty.

This all hit me quite impressively as I’ve read through Esther here lately. Often times, as I’ve and I too imagine others have as well, I’ve read through the book of Esther focused upon the titular character. Because let’s face, nobody reads Robin Hood because they’re just big fans of Nottingham’s Sheriff. No, we always enter an experience with a bias toward what we consider the main point as painted upon the marquee or the rush to get in line at the matinee.

We want to see the star of the show, and we trust heavily upon the writers, producers, puppets and actors to help us figure out rather quickly where our focus is to be best focused.

But for some reason within this most recent reading of Esther, it was the nemesis that caught my attention most. I suppose that perhaps it’s something of an evidencing of this possibly now antiquated suggestion in that a person will glean from a matter whatever they need it to bring. In other words, perhaps my perspective was drawn to the prideful in this prose as I suppose that perhaps my own pride has been on the loose for some time.

And thus maybe it’s meant to be that this time through I was supposed to see what God knew I needed to, the lambasting of the arrogant as opposed to the common focus upon courage of the queen.

Anyway, onto the point for today.

And that is that there is a blindness to our arrogance that all but completely closes us off to anything that may run counter to our most cherished considerations. That there might be a hidden danger, an unseen warning, a will waging war against our own that we simply cannot see from here inside these lives so often lived looking to our wins and assuming both within them and too along the way to them next to nothing of struggle, strife, threat to life or even the feasibility of any lie lying in plain sight.

And truth is that we wouldn’t see it if it weren’t as sadly our pride does enough lying that we needn’t look to anyone else to begin this blame game that comes around every time that our insistences don’t end up being as consistent as we’d, well, insist.

That’s the danger with pride, it loves to imagine into certainty one particular promise, prize, purpose or passion which is found, felt or favored along one specific path that is paved with again as little pain or problem as possible. Indeed, pride tells us that things will go exactly to plan simply because we cannot fathom being so let down as to again be proven that our plans are not actually all that much a part of this story as we’ve so foolishly insisted they be.

You’d think we’d have learned having built things up a bit too high in the past only to see them detonated, decimated, destroyed or in some other way emaciated. But, learning lessons isn’t exactly all that high upon pride’s preferences.

In fact, it’s not on the list at all as pride knows only to believe that we’ve gotten everything figured out in just the right way, thanks to our always knowing everything of course, so that nothing could ever possibly go wrong. Yes, for in all its often unrealized idiocy, it seems as though pride, in the end, is really nothing more than a mind lying to itself seeking to build up into magnificent perfection that which is otherwise fairly unimpressive. And that all to the most unexpected of outcomes due to our expectations never imagining anything other than our will being done at pride’s insistence.

Hence the backfire mentioned at today’s start.

An example perhaps?

Well, again, having just recently read through Esther, I’ve come upon what’s if not amongst the best of possible examples, at least the one that’s as of now freshest within my mind. Indeed, perhaps the best example of this blindsided betrayal that our pride knows only to bet against is that of Haman from the story of Esther.

This man, Haman, he was an official that had been promoted to a higher position within the court of the king. And, well, this is the perfect opening to a story about a person’s ego being given all reason needed to begin the swelling we’ve all felt ourselves having been found being honored or recognized. It just feels good, this acknowledgement, so good in fact that we can become somewhat addicted to it. We begin seeking it, craving it, perhaps even expecting it. It’s what society refers to as something “going to someone’s head”. It becomes all we can think about, this elevation and recognition and our elation at the idea of it continuing.

And so this Haman has found himself being given a higher role within the king’s kingdom, and this sets off a series of events that comes to backfire in, at least from our perspective here upon the side of Esther within this story, what is one of the most beautiful examples of the danger of pride and just how much it cannot agree to see as it simply refuses to see anything but our point of view.

As the story unfolds, we find that the king has issued a command that this Haman should be honored by the people of the kingdom to the very point of bowing down in awe at his presence. And, well, this led to issues with a man in the area named Mordecai. Mordecai was a Jew, and as such, unwilling to entertain this Haman’s ideas as to his need for such social adoration. Mordecai revered God and this wouldn’t agree with this edict demanding he also honor another, another human in this case. This, as you’d expect, infuriated Haman who all of the sudden wasn’t getting all the adoration and acknowledgement that his pride so craved.

And this, for obvious reasons, really rubs Haman wrong.

In fact, this most blatant affront to his personal opinion of himself, something confronted, confounded and basically all but rejected by Mordecai, it incensed him so that he inspired the king to issue a degree that would wipe out this people, these Jews who refused to honor him. Yeah, he’s so angry over not being honored in the way he feels he should by one guy that he can no longer stop at simply killing the man who has apparently wronged him.

He wants to kill them all, all these Jews to whom this Mordecai belongs.

And the king, as again having elevated Haman to a high position in the kingdom, well, he listens. He agrees. He gets the kings permission and then sends out this decree into all corners of the kingdom that the people were given the right, authority, permission, whatever you want to call it to “destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and children—on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods.”

Problem then is that this edict is also issued where Mordecai is, and well, issue is that ol Mordecai’s niece is the kings wife, this Esther as you may have heard mention. Well Esther gets word of this deal that Haman has gotten issued that will lead to the murder of her people and she eventually gathers up the courage to enter the king’s presence in which she then falls upon the king’s mercy to try and help stop this horrible injustice borne out of one man’s prideful retribution.

And it’s such a pride retribution that it seems to be unassuageable.

Right up to the point that even when he’s later honored by Esther at a banquet she’s throwing for the king, even despite this experience of being the only other invited by the queen to this banquet, while Haman initially leaves happy and in high spirits, the moment he sees Mordecai, he’s leveled all over again. So much so that he goes back home just in complete disarray over the whole deal. He gathers up some friends along with his wife and goes over with them how great he is, and just this whole spiel about his wealth and honor and how even the queen invited him to her special party.

Anyway, Haman’s wife and friends, wanting to help somehow, help him cook up this plan in which to get his revenge upon this Jew who refuses to do as he’s now all but become used to everyone else doing. Because again, this whole ordeal was began by the issuing of a public expectation that everyone would honor him. Which is again an utterly perfect backdrop for the rise of pride helping someone think more highly of themselves than they should.

And this in fact left Haman so high on himself that he felt as though he needed to seek vengeance upon this man now seen as his mortal enemy, simply because Mordecai refused to play into his pride’s need for adoration. And so, at the inspiration of his wife and friends, Haman sets up a pole upon which he fully intended to impale Mordecai.

But, along the way we see some signs of Haman’s wicked plan unraveling. For instance, the king is having trouble sleeping one night and asks for the record of his rule to be read, sort of a royal bedtime story if you will. Well, within this story it’s recalled that Mordecai had played a part in saving the king’s life some time earlier. King Xerxes then asks what was ever done for this man who’d come to his aid, only to discover that nothing had up until that point. And well, the king’s looking for ideas as to what he might do to honor this noble gesture by Mordecai for helping save his life.

Just so happens that Haman is the nearest person the king’s assistant can find and so he is brought before the king, as we read here in today’s verse, and asked what should be done to honor someone the king wishes to honor. Well Haman, thinking all about himself as usual, as such is the point for today in regard to pride’s singular focus, he comes up with all these ego-stoking ideas and the king bites. We’re talking wearing the king’s robes, sitting on the king’s horse, being led around town with someone explaining to the people that this person is being honored by the king.

I mean Haman goes in with both barrels blazing coming up with everything he’d love to have done for himself, again, as we read here, thinking to himself, “who is there that the king would rather honor than me?” Because he was so used to his pride soaking up every semblance of selfish glory that he just couldn’t imagine anyone else being as special as he thought himself to be.

Anyway, king loves it. Do it, he says, the robes, the horses, the parade through town, get it done. Yes, go get Mordecai and do all this stuff you’ve suggested while thinking it was you who the king was talking about. So now Haman has to go and do to Mordecai what he inspired the king to do, all because he, again thinking vainly as pride can only see in that one direction, thought the king was going to do it all for him and not Mordecai.

And yet, this isn’t even the biggest backfire!

No, as the story goes on, there’s another banquet that the queen has organized. And at this next banquet Esther blows the whole plot wide open. I mean she lays it all out there talking about how Haman has coordinated the annihilation of her people. As he hears about the finer details, obviously all conveniently left out during Haman’s requesting this whole idea, the king gets ticked and goes to cool off only to come back and find that Haman is all over the queen begging for his life now that he knows he done messed up.

King sees him all but molesting his wife and has Haman impaled on, get this, the very pole that he had set up to have Mordecai impaled on! Yeah, now we’re talking something among the list of your all-time greatest backfires!

But wait, there’s more! Yep, we ain’t even done!

So Haman is dead, Mordecai ends up honored, Esther helped saved the day, but the most beautiful part is that despite the edict that was issued granting the people the permission to destroy and plunder the Jews, another is then issued in which the Jews got to lawfully protect themselves to the tune of unaliving a few thousand who tried to make ol Haman proud.

And, what may indeed be the best part, other people who weren’t Jews came to so fear these Jews that some of them became Jews! So this guy, this Haman, acting always out of pride, tried to kill one guy who wouldn't honor him, takes it so far as to incite the nation to wipe out the Jews, ends up getting himself killed in the process and the Jewish population actually grows!

Backfire completed.

Because, well, that’s the point for today’s post. It’s that pride does that. It just has a way of backfiring when all we can think about is ourselves and too, and even further in fact, when then all we see is red when someone else dares not share our lofty opinion of ourselves. Pride convinces us that we’re all that matters and that, as such, our desires are all that matter. And when we become so convinced that the way we see it is the only way it can happen, we become completely blind to any other possible outcome.

Just like Haman. His pride told him both that he deserved to be honored, but it also in that inspired him to hatred when he wasn’t given what he expected or demanded. And this hatred, it began what became the fatal undoing of all that his pride had tried to do.

So be careful my friends, for as we just discussed yesterday, pride comes before a fall. And as we see here in this story of Haman, that fall may well prove fatal!

And if you really think about it, just doesn’t seem worth it. Because while pride might make us feel good with all these lofty opinions and high esteems and overall haughty perspectives of ourselves, our lives, our plans, our dreams, truth is that we can live just fine without any of them going our way.

But if we follow them too closely and a bit too insistent upon our getting our way, we may find that our way didn’t account for the risks we didn’t want to see.

So again, just be careful how far you follow your pride. Because while it may look nice, feel nice, truth is that pride only sees things one way, our way. But that doesn’t mean that our way is the only way things can go.

As the Word says, let another honor you rather trying to insist upon yourself honored. For it's better to lifted up by another than to be brought low by false impressions in regard to our own importance.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold