The Jonah Question: Do you care? (…what God cares about)

A Sunday School teacher read a passage from the Old Testament book of Jonah to her class: "And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying 'I called to the Lord out of my distress and He answered me.' ... and the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land." (Jonah 1:17 -- 2:2, 10) When she had finished reading, the teacher said, "Now, children, you have heard the Bible story of Jonah and the whale. “What does this story teach us?" Ten-year-old Mark shouted out: "You can't keep a good man down!"

Sometimes, we can become so familiar with a Bible story we stay in the shallow end. We, like young Mark, know what the story is about (A good man is swallowed by a big fish), but we never really answer the question: What does this story teach us? That requires fishing in deeper waters where self-examination is swallowed up by divine revelation of who God is, and what is spewed out is what is required of us. Let’s go deeper into the story of Jonah and the Great Fish.

Jonah, a prophet of God, was sent by God to the enemies of Jonah, to give the gospel of God’s compassion, the good news that God forgives no matter how bad we behave. Jonah didn’t want this news to reach the Assyrians—a cruel, pagan people—an enemy of Israel. So, Jonah ran from his assignment, hopping on a ship to Tarshish. But God—sovereign over all creation, even men like Jonah and nations like Assyria—sent a storm, a fish, sun, wind, and a withered plant to show the good man to himself, that our care must line up with what God cares about.

10 Then the LORD said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work, and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 11 "And should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?" Jonah 4:10-11

God cares about the unforgiving people like the 120,000 Ninevites of the capitol city of the ignorant, uninformed Assyrians, known for their weaponry of barbed arrows, siege machines and cruelty that had no end except death, of flayings, beheadings and impalings that would make a Roman crucifixion a blush, yet they didn’t know their right hand from their left.

Why did God extend repentance to them? Because that is who He is. His care is His prerogative. It makes no more human sense than forgiving a young man who walked into a bible study and shot and killed nine. Yet many of the family members of the 2017 shooting victims have forgiven Dylann Roof who walked in Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and opened fire on their prayer meeting.

At a bond hearing, one by one, those who chose to speak did not turn to anger.

“I forgive you. You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.” Nadine Collier, the daughter of 70-year-old victim Ethel Lance

This week, the families of the victims won a $88 million settlement with the Department of Justice, claiming that authorities should have stopped Dylan Roof from purchasing a pistol. The money is little consolation. Caring what God cares about—forgiveness—is.

That is what the “Jonah and the Fish” story teaches me.