Therefore, I humbly present for your consideration:
REHUMANIZING JONAHWe all know the story of Jonah, right? Guy gets swallowed by a whale (let the "big fish" debate begin) and God gives him a second chance, blah blah blah. In case you haven't read the story in a while, it's conveniently located in the book of Jonah in the Bible. I'm not going to recount it here, because it's significantly more in depth than the summary I just gave and I'm going to be using some scrawny details for this.
I'm going to assume you've read it and press forward.
When God tells Jonah to go to Ninevah and preach against them, he had a vast and complicated run of emotions. The Bible jumps immediately to Jonah running away, but let's think about it. As best we can tell, Jonah was a prophet. God telling him to go tell people that he wasn't happy with them was no big deal, so what was special about this one? God was talking to someone other than the Israelites!
This meant a lot of things for Jonah.
Firstly, as many scholars have pointed out, the Ninevites were probably not on good terms with the Israelites. Like any true patriot, in Jonah's mind, the world was better off without those pagans! Jonah likely felt more than a twinge of excitement at the prospect of God being angry with Ninevah. Finally, something would be done about those fish-slappers! (Because VeggieTales is the most accurate portrayal of every Bible story ever told!)
Secondly, he would have to venture into a land where God was not recognized for the god that he is. This message would be a lot harder to explain, because he would, in essence, have to explain God as well. Have you ever had to explain God to someone? It's not as easy of a thing to do as you might think. Where do you start? Do you jump straight to God is angry with you or do you start way back with "In the Beginning"? Moreover, how would they react to the condemnation of a foreign God? Would Jonah make it out alive?
Thirdly, we must combine these first two prospects. Jonah would have to travel into foreign land and share God's message with those foreigners every self-respecting Israelite despised. Go into an extremely fundamentalist Christian church and tell them that Muslims are going to heaven. You're now in less than half as much danger as Jonah was in. Imagine if someone found out where he had been told to go. He would be shot down and chastised in so many ways for even considering sharing their God with gentiles. It is possible he would even be cast out of society if he completed his task.
When you consider these last two, it's no wonder Jonah ran! This wasn't a simple decision to run away. It was a calculated move. He thought it was his best shot. His fear not only of the Ninevites, but of his own people far outweighed his desire to be obedient to God or his dark excitement about their condemnation.
I'm going to skip the part of the story that they taught you in Sunday School, because I think the VeggieTales version does an excellent job with this middle part. Watch it. It's worth it.
I'm going to skip to the end of the story. This was actually my main inspiration for writing about Jonah.
After going into Ninevah and giving them a message that, interestingly enough, says nothing about God or his divine wrath, Ninevah repents. Jonah, however, is angry. All my life I was told that this was simply because Ninevah was Israel's enemy and Jonah wanted them destroyed (which is all he said in his message), but I was hit on Sunday with a powerful word that has caused people to become angrier over sillier things than Jonah:
Embarrassment.Jonah had to have been embarrassed. He had just spent three days going through the city telling everyone that it would be destroyed, and now God was changing him mind. He did not say in his message that Ninevah would be destroyed unless they repent. He simply said they would be destroyed. How would it look if Ninevah was not destroyed? Would he simply be a crazy person to the Ninevites?
Furthermore, he couldn't easily go back to the Israelites and tell them that God had spared Ninevah. Then he would sound like a crazy person to them too. Our vengeful, all-powerful God forgave a city full of sinful gentiles? Preposterous! You've been in the sun way too long!
He was now a crazy person by the accounts of both nations. Where was he to go? He had lost any sense of self-identity and dignity he had left. What did he have left to live for?
The last straw came when God tried to teach Jonah a lesson. After giving Jonah a plant to keep him comfortable, he took it away and made the conditions around Jonah even worse. From Jonah's perspective, God teased him with a small taste of the comforts he had given up in obeying God's command to him and then pulled the rug out from under him.
Jonah's reaction of wanting to die was over more than just a plant. He had given up his country and would not exactly be welcomed with open arms because he decided to share God with Ninevah. He had been made out to be a fool when Ninevah was not destroyed. Because he obeyed God, he was left alone and miserable in the middle of the desert, and now that very same God that was the cause of all his suffering had taken away the last blessing he had ever gotten from him! After all this torment from following God's command, God had taken away what Jonah perceived to be his last bit of hope.
Jonah may have been wrong to say that it would be better for him to die, but can you say you would do differently if God ripped away your last shred of hope?
It's not such a simple story, now. Is it?
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