· Jonah 3:1-5, 10
· Psalm 62:5-12 (6)
· 1 Corinthians 7:29-31
· Mark 1:14-20
I love Jonah. He reminds me of Eeyore. Remember Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh? He was the only character I ever liked. Eeyore lives under a perpetual cloud, and so does Jonah. Nothing ever goes right for Jonah. He's the worst prophet. He doesn't even want to be a prophet, and he never gets the will of God right. Finally he goes to Nineveh and prophesies against it, and his prophecy doesn't even come true, and then he's even more miserable. Even God can't make Jonah stop wallowing in misery.
Seriously though, from a theological point of view, I like Jonah because he's completely missing the same point that most Christians are missing. The reality is, God wants to forgive us. I hear Christians going on and on about what a huge, hideous, unforgivable debt of sin we owe the Lord, and only Jesus could pay for it. And then almost always, they go on to say that we have to do X or Y to get that forgiveness that Jesus paid for.
What?
What sense does that make? Either Jesus paid the price or he didn't. If he did, we don't have to do anything more to get the forgiveness; if he didn't, then there is nothing we can do that will achieve what he couldn't. We're already forgiven. For the sins we did, the ones we haven't done yet, the ones we don't even realise are sins, sins of commission, sins of omission, deadly sins, venial sins, fornication, homosexuality, rancor, blah blah, etc, whatever. All sins are forgiven. Done deal. Since two thousand years ago. You don't have to do anything about it, and you couldn't do anything about it if you tried. All you have to do is follow the Lord. So it's the same thing as in the Old Testament, really. If you read any of the historical books, it's the same story: God forgives anything, except worshipping the Baals. Same thing now: if you follow Christ, you're forgiven; if you don't follow Christ, you're not forgiven. But then if you don't follow Christ, you don't believe God is gonna smite you anyway, so it's all the same to you.
I was going to say "most Christians talk about forgiveness a lot", but then I remembered, that's not true. A lot of Christians only talk about the loot. I was praying with the clergy of an Anglican parish one day, and all of them went on and on about all the loot they had and all the extra loot the Lord was gonna give them, all around the circle. I was last to go, so I said "thank you for our salvation." The others said "oh, right!"
Right. So we have the "loot" version of Christianity, which is actually worshipping other gods. But besides them, we have the "unforgiven" version of Christianity, which are the people who go on and on about how impossible it is that God would forgive us, and what all we have to do to get forgiven.
Now if that's your bend, first of all I'd like to know, what exactly have you done that would matter that much to God? Have you killed someone? I bet not. I know a lot of guys who have done time. I know a guy who did 19 years at a stretch. Nineteen years. That's one bad dude. But even he didn't kill anybody. In fact, what he did was in retaliation, so it's not even that far wrong, biblically speaking. Now 19 years is a lot to us, but to God it's nothing. Suppose you even kill someone. Suppose you get convicted for murder one. So, you get [SQG] "life", which is actually imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 25 years, and no guarantee of ever being released. "Life" means "somewhere between 25 years and the rest of your life." That's not bad, for having killed someone. And that's in human terms. Humans will let you walk after 25 years for killing someone. So how long do you think God will hold it against you? God is more forgiving than people, not less. So even without Jesus, how bad would God really smite you for killing someone?
I like to think that in many ways, I am to God as my dog is to me. I like my dog, but she's not at all obedient. She rarely comes when called, unless I have cheese in my hand. She picks fights with smaller dogs. When the weather is nice, she wakes me up in the middle of the night to go for a walk, and when it's cold I have to carry her around the block for her bathroom break. She loves to tear fabric, particularly bedding. She's oppositional on the leash. She doesn't eat perfectly good food I give her, then wants to eat garbage outside. You could say my dog sins against my commandments quite a bit. Several times a day, most days. But do I want my dog to spend eternity in the outer darkness wailing and gnashing her teeth? No. I'm not even mad at her. I think the longest I've ever been mad at her was twenty minutes. Because I like my dog, her [SQG] "sins" are minor, and overall I greatly enjoy her company.
I figure God is like that with us. What's the worst sin I ever did against the Lord? I was disrespectful to my parents as a teenager, I've worked on the Sabbath, and I've taken the Lord's name in vain. Is that really such a huge deal to God? Or is it like my dog shredding my pillow? How many years do you think God would stay mad at me for swearing, if I don't stay mad at my dog more than twenty minutes? And what would God actually do to me? You know what I do to my dog? I give her the cold shoulder. You think God is gonna send me to eternal torture? No. Didn't Jesus say "Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7:9-11)
That's what Jonah missed, and what many Christians still miss: God wants to forgive us. God does not want to make a big deal out of everything and hold it against us forever. God likes us. So when the people of Nineveh dressed in sackcloth, fasted and sat in heaps of ashes, God was like "hey, that's good enough for me." God wanted to forgive Nineveh. That's actually why he sent Jonah: to give Nineveh a chance to repent. Jonah totally missed that part. And that's why God sent us Yeshua. Because he wanted to forgive us, so he tried to make it as easy as possible for us to do the right thing. Really, he's saying "ok, now this guy here is gonna do all the atoning, and all you have to do is agree with me that this dude is making amends for whatever you've ever done wrong, and we're cool." And we're like "oh yeah, sure, now can I have more loot?"
Praise be to God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
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