Perspective: Extreme Love

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Extreme Love

Scripture:

You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.

Jonah 4:2

That You simply love
Despite all the stupid things I've done
It's hard to remember
That You simply love
Even though I know not what I've done
It's hard to remember
That You simply love

From "Simply" by Pillar

Many of us know the story of the prophet Jonah very well. God calls Jonah to warn the people of the city Nineveh about their impending destruction. Jonah tries to run away from his calling and ends up being swallowed by a whale. Jonah cries out to God from inside the whale, and the whale hurls him up onto dry land. Jonah is then given a second chance. Recently, this has become one of my favorite stories in the Bible - not because Jonah is a great hero in the faith but because of the opposite. Though, like many, I aspire for spiritual heroism, I find that I am more able to relate to stories of spiritual failure.

The message that many of us end up taking from Jonah's story is that we had better be good or else God will be out to get us. I want to tell this story in a different light. I want to take the focus off of Jonah's failures and "punishments" and put the focus back on God's grace, mercy, and love. In the end, I hope that we will stop looking at this story as a story of extreme punishment and start looking at it as a story of God's extreme love.

Chapter 1

The story begins with God calling Jonah to go to the large city of Nineveh to speak out against the violence and other evils of the people. Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria,¹ an empire with whom the Northern Kingdom of Israel had been at war. In fact, Jonah had been the prophet who advised King Jeroboam II to reclaim captured territories from the Assyrians.²

Jonah, Instead of obeying his calling, flees and boards a boat heading in the opposite direction. God then creates a violent storm which tosses the boat about on the sea. The people on the boat, fearing for their lives, begin calling out to their various deities. The crew begins to suspect that Jonah may be the responsible for the storm, so he tells them that God created the storm because he tried to run away from the mission which God had given him. Jonah suggests that he be thrown overboard so that God will calm the storm. At first, the crew will not do it because they do not want to be responsible for Jonah's death, but, when their rowing proves to be in vain, they pray that God will have mercy on them, and then they proceed throw Jonah overboard. The storm dies down.

What is ironic is that, though Jonah is trying to run away from his calling to preach God's message, all of the people on the boat become believers in God because of the ordeal. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, God can bring something good out of everything, even our failures.³

While Jonah is in the water, God sends a whale to swallow Jonah alive. While we typically think of this as an act of punishment on God's part, it is actually an act of God's providence.⁴ Remember that Jonah is far out at sea at this time, so Jonah would have drown had it not been for the whale. Punishing Jonah is not the extent of God's intentions. I believe that God has a much greater purpose in bringing both the storm and the whale.

Chapter 2

Jonah spends three days within the the whale. Finally, he cries out to God for deliverance. God hears Jonah's prayer and causes the whale to spew Jonah out upon dry land. This goes to illustrate that no matter what kind of messes we get ourselves into, our God, mighty to save, is always ready to come to our rescue if we will just call on Him. I can personally attest to this fact, and I know that many of you who are reading this can as well.

We might consider God's actions to be harsh, but just imagine how much worse it would have been for Jonah had God simply given up on him. As noted above, God's plan is not just to dole out punishment upon Jonah. God is acting not to retaliate but to reconcile. He is using the trials Jonah is going through, the storm and the whale, to bring Jonah closer to Himself. This entire ordeal shows us the lengths to which God will go in order to bring us back to Him. Often it is in times of distress that we find ourselves drawing closer to God.⁵ Sometimes we have to go through the wilderness in order to reach the Promised Land.

Chapter 3

Thankfully, our God is a God of second chances. God once again calls Jonah to travel to Nineveh to speak out against the wickedness of the people. This time, Jonah follows his calling and begins preaching throughout the city, warning the people of the their impending doom. The people believe Jonah, and word eventually reaches the king. In response, the king calls for all the people to change their ways and to fast and pray in the hopes that God will have mercy on them. God sees the repentance of the Ninevites and decides to spare them from the disaster to come.

The story only includes eight words of what Jonah said to the people of Nineveh: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” While we don't know if this is all he said to the people, these words probably sum up the tone of his message, given Jonah's history with the Assyrians. Like Jonah, it is easy for us to focus on the negative. Some of us have this image of an angry God sitting up in Heaven, scrutinizing our every move, waiting for us to mess up so that he can hurl down fire and brimstone upon us.

Our sins, like the sins of the Assyrians, have disastrous consequences, but God never wants us to meet with disaster. Our God is not just “a kid with an ant farm”⁶: He loves us all as His children. Our God is full of grace and mercy, and this is why he sent Jonah to Nineveh. He only wanted what was best for the Assyrians, and He only wants what is best for us. Maybe the negative image of God that so many of us have comes from our own unwillingness to forgive. Unlike humans, God is always ready to forgive.

Chapter 4

It is at this point in the story that we see Jonah at his worst. The people of Nineveh have put aside their violence and their iniquity, and God has forgiven them. The Ninevites are spared from destruction, and Jonah becomes angry. He admits that the reason that he tried to run from his calling is that he knew that God would forgive the people when they repented. Jonah hated the Assyrians. Why shouldn't he? Those barbarians were the enemies of Israel, and Jonah himself had even advised his king in the campaign against them.⁷ God asks Jonah if it right for him to be angry.

Jonah asks God to end his life, but, instead, God provides him with a bush to give him shade as he watches the city. This makes him feel better; the next day, however, Jonah comes back to the bush and finds that it has rotten away because it has been attacked by a worm. To make matters worse, it is a particularly hot, windy day. Enraged, Jonah again wishes for death. Again, God asks Jonah if he is right to be angry. When Jonah says that he is right, God responds with the following:
You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left,⁸ and also many animals?⁹

There exist so-called Christians who are more than happy to tell you that God hates you because of your sin and that He is just itching to send you to hell. In my opinion, these people know nothing about God. They use their preaching as an outlet for their own hatred of others. Apparently, Jonah has had a similar attitude as he preached to the people of Nineveh.

Even though Jonah has completed his mission, God continues to work to bring Jonah closer to Himself. He uses the incident with the bush to illustrate an important truth. If Jonah was concerned about a bush that he didn't plant or nurture, then so much more God should be concerned about the many human beings in the city whom He created. God does not only want us to be obedient, He wants us to share in His own love and concern for all of His children.

Conclusion

The story abruptly ends at this point. We don't know if Jonah has finally gotten the picture or if he continues to wrestle with God. We are left to imagine what happens next as we live out Jonah's story in our own lives. What I hope we learn from this story is that God loves all of us in spite of our faults and failures. He loves us so much that He is willing to go to incredible lengths to draw us closer to Him. This is God's extreme love.


Notes:
1 - Wikipedia article: Nineveh
2 - II Kings 14:25
3 - Romans 8:28
4 - Wesley Study Bible: notes on Jonah 1:17.
5 - See also: Rob Bell. Nooma Rain | 001. Flannel.
6 - A reference to the 2005 film Constantine
7 - Wesley Study Bible: notes on Jonah 4:1-11.
8 - Signifies ignorance of right and wrong. See The Message translation.
9 - Jonah 4:10-11


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