Victim no More

 September 10, 2023

If you’ve ever felt that your life is out of control, or that others have more say in your life than you do, the story of queen Esther may prove helpful. 

Esther was a young Jewish girl who was born in exile when Persia was at the height of its empire ambitions. She was also an orphan who happened to be quite beautiful. As the story goes, the king, Ahasuerus by name (in secular writings known as Xerxes), was so displeased with his queen over her refusal to be paraded naked before hundreds of his guests at an alcohol-fueled banquet he had orchestrated that he removed her from her position, and was thus in the market for a new queen. 

From the beginning, it is evident that the king is lacking in morals and in wisdom. Whenever he is mentioned, it is in the context of drinking or being led by the nose at the hands of his fawning and scheming advisors. And now he needs a queen.

Young Esther’s beauty not having gone unnoticed, she was rounded up with who knows how many other young women, all of whom became part of the king’s harem. When it came time for the king to decide who would become the next queen, each of the girls would be summoned to his bed for the night and sent back to the harem in the morning. For a Jewish girl, this was not only a violation of her body, but also of her faith. The upside was, she became queen. The downside was that she could only enter the king’s presence at his request.

It gets worse. One of the king’s advisors, Haman by name, was miffed at not having received the deference he expected from a Jew named Mordecai, who happened to be Esther’s cousin and guardian. This Haman decided that Mordecai needed to be punished, but determined to not only teach Mordecai a lesson, but to exterminate the entire Jewish population of the empire for good measure.

To make a long story short, Mordecai told Esther that she needed to do something, but Esther reminded him that even she couldn’t enter the king’s presence uninvited. She risked death to do so. Mordecai was unmoved. His response to her objections is the stuff of legend.

 “Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?””

—Esther 4:13-14 

“For such a time as this.” These are fighting words! Esther took them to heart, stood unbidden before the king, and by her bravery, her people were spared. If you read the story carefully, you learn that there was very little in her life over which she had control, but she refused to let her vulnerability define her. 

We live in a culture that feeds on vulnerability. Everywhere you turn, people are clamoring for special treatment because they’ve been subject to unfair treatment at some time or other, and there are plenty of others ready to fan the flames of discontent by reminding them and the rest of us how victimized they have been. There is no question that people are treated unfairly, that inequality exists. But trading in victimhood only serves those who seek to profit off it by keeping the “victims” victim. 

Esther had few choices in life, but when faced with the big choice, the brave choice, she chose well. Even in her vulnerability, she chose not to be a victim. May we do the same.