Esther, Part 2 (A Short Essay): Laughing at our Tragedies
The Subtle Power of a Diaspora Novella
“Because ridiculing what enslaves us reduces its power, and when we come to a point where we can laugh at our tragedies, we’re probably encountering deep healing. If we cannot reverse our fate, we may at least try to reverse the effect it has had on us; we can rob tragedy and trauma of their sting by writing new endings to stories that seemed to already be set in concrete.”
One of my most remarkable memories from Seminary is my Introduction to the Old Testament class, where within less than a week, the professor was already being accused of not being a “true Christian” or “fit” to be teaching in an Evangelical space. As she began using words like “myth”, “folktale”, “historical fiction”, and “diaspora novella” – among others that describe genres within the Hebrew Bible – students protested, pushed back, and even got up and left in the middle of class (yes, that happened!). And please keep in mind that this woman, our professor, had a PhD in Old Testament studies, knew Hebrew and a few other ancient languages, and yes – was a self-professed Christian (and who were we to say otherwise?). Still, her qualifications mattered very little to those for whom faith was a hiding place; nothing more than a wall that protected them from having to encounter the messy humanity that permeates all our existence – including the very Bible they read.
These students couldn’t even entertain the notion that the Bible didn’t fall straight from the skies above or was written by the very finger of a God who is constantly watching how often and literally we read it. A God who, if we follow this simplistic logic, also undermines our intelligence by rewarding our inability – and unwillingness – to put the Bible in conversation with the sciences and discoveries surrounding its original historical context.
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