Enter the villain

After these events, King Xerxes honored Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, elevating him and giving him a seat of honor higher than that of all the other nobles.
- Esther 3:1

Enter the villain. While King Xerxes has proven himself to be a bit of a bumbler, Haman will turn out to be truly and remarkably evil. Selfish. Proud. Arrogant. Cruel.

Haman-like characters appear again and again throughout literature and film: Wormtongue, Voldemort, Iago, Darth Vader, Cruella de Vil, Khan, Blofeld, Hans Gruber, Unferth … this list could go on forever.

Who are the villains in your own life story? Maybe you had a bad boss or a big bully. Maybe the villain is an organization or a system that’s done you wrong. Maybe your heart starts racing a little faster when you call them to mind.

Throughout the Scriptures, we see two things about enemies. Firstly, we see that villains are real. There really are forces at work in the world to bring harm to God’s people and to oppose God’s cause. Some want to believe that villains only exist in fiction, that all claims of persecution or opposition are overblown. But that story doesn’t stack up against God’s big story that we read in the pages of the Bible. Real villains cause real problem that require real intervention on God’s behalf.

The second thing we see about enemies is that not everyone is an enemy. Haman is just one character in the story. The people and systems that have hurt and harassed you don’t represent all of humanity. In Jesus, we have a God who is sovereign even over the villains in the world. And therefore, even for that small slice of villainous humans, we’re called to show them love. “Love your enemies,” said Jesus. And then he modeled it through his life and death.

Today, take a moment to identify the villains in your life story. Once you’ve done that, declare that God is bigger than them, that they don’t get to have the ultimate say over your life. And then, take the bold step of asking that God would bless your enemies.

The greatest tragedy in the Esther story is to see Haman consumed by his pride, scheming and hate. If only his story were different!

Let’s pray that God in his mercy would work miracles in the lives of the villains we know, see and hear about … that they would turn from their painful patterns of behavior and be transformed by God’s love.

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