When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He relented and did not bring on them the destruction He had threatened. But to Jonah this seemed very wrong and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life for it is better for me to die than to live.”. But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah went out and sat down in a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade, and waited to see what would happen to the city.
–The Book of Jonah–
Jonah is not one of Israel’s most noble prophets. He is a disobedient and pouty man who would love nothing more than to see God rain fire and brimstone upon a city of over 120,000 people. Indeed, after God says He will relent from destroying the city, Jonah goes a little distance outside the city to see what would happen (I’m pretty sure he was still hoping that God would devastate Nineveh). Now, Jonah is human, and you can’t hardly blame him for wanting to destroy the capital city of Israel’s archenemies, the Assyrian Empire…
But I think that we, the Church, have a little bit of Jonah inside us.
Jonah just sat by and watched, half hoping for the destruction to come to pass so that he and his fellow Israelites would be safe, happy, and victorious. Today I hear so many discussions and arguments and theories on the “end times” and Christ’s victorious return, and that we will all be taken up in the air to Heaven to bask in God’s glory for all eternity in a city made of gold. It is kind of frustrating. For one thing, Jesus himself said that He did not know the day or the hour, and that it would come like a thief in the night. But secondly, what about the people who aren’t Christians? If we believe in any kind of hell, we are essentially consigning millions to the depths of damnation on that day. Yet most people seem to have a blatant disregard for that, or – this is even worse – seem to take a kind of joy in the fact that all the atheists and nonbelievers will end up in hell. [“We’ll show them!”]
So here we are like Jonah, sitting a small distance away from this lost and broken world right around us, watching and waiting, hoping to see the King of Glory riding on the clouds of fire with the whole earth shaking. We want that victory, that joyous and happy moment, that show of power and might to prove that we are on the winning side.
And apparently it’s worth the cost.
I say we need to rethink our strategy, rethink our theology, or rethink our God.
