The Great City of God
By: Erica Janine Henson
Tags: Church, Anger, Great Cities, Love Letters, Christianity

Follow series, Letters to the Church (2)

As a sinner seeking Truth, I have regularly returned to the story of Jonah…maybe as a matter of vain identification with a person who literally threw himself in the middle of a raging sea to avoid what he heard as a commandment from God. It is a stark account that God’s Will is greater than ours, no matter how far we may stray from the idea that our own wills are lesser. I’ve often read this story (more like skimmed thoroughly) to remind myself that God will save us when we endanger ourselves trying to escape that Will. I have taken great comfort in that idea — no matter how much I fight, I can be rescued (after being allowed to tiptoe up to certain harm) if I only will turn back to the path I am called to walk.

It’s imperative to confess here that I have never been as angry as a follower of Christ than I was over the past year. I became quite justified in pointing fingers at everything I saw around me falling apart. It won’t do to dive into all of the good things I had or had given to me, because (of course) that would mean I was in an unselfish and objective place to recognize True Good. Oh no, I took to just wallowing along indignant depths of despair because it was and is much easier to just react react react. Anger is a much easier emotion to grab and ride.

In a recent and less hostile moment, I returned to the habit of perusing Bible verses in the middle of sleepless nights. I’m a creature of semi-erratic habit, so I flipped over to the book of Jonah again…but this time, I read it a little more thoroughly.

The very abridged version of the story of Jonah is this: Jonah is commanded by God to go to the neighboring city of Nineveh and call its citizens (Gentiles) to repent in order to be saved by the Lord. Jonah had already prophesied Nineveh would be destroyed, so he willfully disobeys and decides another course of action. He believes the Lord’s command for them to repent is pointless because they don’t even know or respect God, and proudly believes them to be wicked. Jonah decides to skip town altogether, so he goes south to one town so he can board a ship and cross what is now the Mediterranean Sea to get to a town as far away as possible from Nineveh. He succeeds in boarding a ship and proceeds to sail across the sea to his destination. One night, a huge storm threatens to destroy the ship and all of its crew. After the terrified crew cries out to God and figures out Jonah is the one who brought on the storm, Jonah understands that his disobedience has led to this wrathful act of God. Jonah commands the crew to throw him overboard and into the sea so that the storm will abate and the ship and her crew will be spared. He is willing to die — and almost does — but no. God hears Jonah crying out in his moment of death and sends a large fish to swallow him. When Jonah confesses that God has spared him, the fish throws him up and he is washed back ashore, three full days from Nineveh. God then commands Jonah again to go to Nineveh and command their repentance. Jonah finally obeys and makes the days-long journey. To his surprise, Nineveh does indeed repent as the Lord commands and is spared the destruction first promised to them and all within the city are saved.

Instead of Jonah rejoicing, he is “exceedingly displeased” and angry. He prays to the Lord, and laments that it is because the Lord is so gracious, slow to anger, abounding in Love…Jonah justifies that’s exactly why he fled across the sea in the first place. Even then, Jonah still holds tightly to the notion he had to leave and disobey because he knew he did not have the love for Nineveh that the Lord did. He wanted to see Nineveh destroyed as he had prophesied before, believing it to be evil. Jonah still harbors uncharitable judgment against Nineveh in his heart…and he feels this conviction and anger throughout his entire being. In anguish, Jonah asks God to take his life because it would be better for him to die than to live. He gives into wallowing in despair.

(Somehow I missed what I now am convinced the entire book of Jonah really is about. It hit me hard, and I continue to feel the waves of conviction wash over me. It continues to break my hardened heart.)

God asks Jonah in his moment of suffering:

“Does it do you well to be angry?”

At this moment in my life, this is the most powerful question I think can be asked, and God asks it here with loving compassion. He knows that Jonah’s anger is blinding. After God asks him this question, Jonah leaves the city and sits upon a hill so he can view Nineveh from afar to see what will happen. Again in loving compassion, God grows a plant to shade him “to save him from his discomfort.”

Jonah becomes extremely happy with this gesture of the plant and falls asleep. But by the very next morning, worms eat the plant and it withers and dies. In the heat of the day, Jonah becomes faint from the sun and (again) asks God to die rather than live. He seems to view the gesture of the plant being provided for him then taken away as a punishment.

God isn’t done. He asks Jonah again: “Does it do you well to be angry for the plant?” Jonah replies he is, enough to burn in the sun and die.

Then God says, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

It’s a body blow to realize how shortsighted Jonah’s view of the world is, how selfish it is instead of looking at Nineveh and even simple things like plants and trees through God’s lens of Love.