The story of Jonah is well known and widespread. Last month I walked into an elementary school classroom in a seemingly remote village in Rwanda and when I asked who had heard the story of Jonah before the majority of the children's hands shot up. It was one of the few stories that I learned in Sunday school that really stuck and it is one of the first stories that comes to mind when I'm asked to teach a group of children. What child is going to forget a story about a man who gets swallowed by a whale? For the application aspect, I usually explain to the children how important it is to listen to God and follow his plan for our lives. I also focus on the part when Jonah cries out to God and God hears him and forgives his disobedience. Most times I glaze over the last two chapters because I have a difficult time explaining to children why Jonah was angry and what significance the vine has.
This morning as I was reading the book The Ragamuffin Gospel (which I highly recommend), I came across a paragraph that made me want to read Jonah again. It made me realize that up until now I had been focusing on all the wrong parts of the story and furthermore, that I had almost missed the point altogether.
“But trust in a God who loves consistently and faithfully nurtures confident free disciples. A loving God fosters loving people. The fact that our view of God shapes our lives to a great extent may be one of the reasons scripture ascribes such importance to seeking to know Him. This truth is illustrated in the prophet Jonah's view of God. Jonah is so outraged when the Ninevites repent after his preaching that he wants to die. He didn't want God to forgive Nineveh; he wanted judgment. His narrow nationalism made it impossible for him to grasp the all-embracing love of God. But the message of this prophetic book transcends the limits of the prophet. It proclaims how good God is, how his passion extends to every creature in His universe, even to the animals. All men and women are people of His caring. All are called to accept the extravagant gift of His grace, for acceptance means simply to turn to God.”
When we tell the story of Jonah we can't leave out his anger. His anger reveals to us that he is not serving the God of grace. It reveals to us that though he followed the one true God, he completely overlooked the fact that GOD IS LOVE. He throws a fit over a vine dying that he neither planted nor cared for but expects God to overturn a city with a hundred and twenty thousand people that He created and loved deeply. The God that Jonah had created in his mind valued justice and judgment more than he valued his children.
The story of Jonah isn't really about Jonah at all. Like many Bible stories, it is about God and His character. The imagery in Bible stories is supposed to be a learning tool but so often we make the story the most important part and occasionally we leave the true meaning out altogether. We are meant to walk away from the story of Jonah marveling at the unbelievable God that we serve. This story is meant to teach us that we can't mold God into the God that we want Him to be- if we could, He wouldn't be God. We should walk away with a deeper desire to seek Him and know Him because it is better to die than to live a life serving a God allows us to pick and choose the qualities of His character.
