Esther and the Hazard of Inaction

Mordecai was convinced that Esther needed to speak to the king.

At the urging of his chief minister, the king had issued a decree that all Jews should be killed on a certain day. Mordecai, who had raised Esther from a young age, knew that Esther’s intervention was their best chance of survival. But Esther knew better than Mordecai the danger associated with her intervention.

All the king’s servants, and the people of the king’s provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden sceptre, that he may live: but I have not been called to come in unto the king these thirty days.

Esther 4:11

Approaching the king without being invited was putting her life on the line, and his treatment of her predecessor had clearly shown that he would not hesitate to punish his own wife (see Esther 1). The default would be death, and Esther would never have the opportunity to explain herself unless the king intervened in her behalf.

But Mordecai responded not with empathy or encouragement but with a warning of the dangers of doing nothing.

Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house, more than all the Jews.
For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

Esther 4:13-14

Mordecai makes three related arguments here:

1. You are also a Jew, and therefore you are not safe from this decree.
2. If you do nothing, God will still save your people some other way, but your family will be destroyed. In other words, if your empathy for the group is insufficient to motivate you, think about your own personal welfare.
3. You are where you are for a reason. It’s not by chance that you have been placed in this position.

The danger of action was no less than it had been before, but Mordecai had now emphasized the other side of the decision: the danger of inaction.

Near the end of the long Nephite-Lamanite war in the Book of Mormon, Captain Moroni wrote a letter to the chief judge, Pahoran, demanding to know why more provisions and reinforcements had not been sent to the front lines. In that letter, he made an argument similar to Mordecai’s, urging government leaders to take action on behalf of their people. But unlike Mordecai, who described only the probable outcomes of inaction, Moroni placed God in the center:

Could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain.

Alma 60:11

And Moroni doesn’t envision an escape hatch: another deliverer to compensate for the deficiencies of the people in authority. “The Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked,” he says, implicitly including Pahoran among the wicked (Alma 60:13). “For were it not for the wickedness which first commenced at our head, we could have withstood our enemies that they could have gained no power over us” (Alma 60:15).

President James E. Faust shared the following quotation: “When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice” (“Choices,” April 2004 general conference). And Elder D. Todd Christofferson reminded us, “Unduly delaying a choice can itself constitute a choice” (“Choice and Commitment,” Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults, Address, 12 January 2020). In other words, both inaction and action have consequences, and we are accountable for both.

Today I will take action when needed. I will remember that God places me in circumstances where I can do good, and that He expects me to take advantage of opportunities to help others.