I'm Like Jonah (an aside from Without Love)

If I am supposed to live a life of "a long obedience in the same direction," I fall miserably short.

Instead, I'm like Jonah: short spurts of obedience, mainly begrudgingly, couched by a series of disobediences, mainly involving self-righteous judgment.

"The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.' But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD."
Jonah 1:1-3

Not much of an introduction... pretty much straight to the point. God told Jonah not to be the deliverer of judgment, but to be a messenger of a merciful (yet stern) warning to Israel's sworn enemy, the violent empire Assyria. And Jonah responded immediately--not verbally, but with his posture--he ran the other way. No way. Not me. If it was a message of judgment, then yes, sign me up. Those people don't deserve anything but divine retribution for what they are doing. Let them reap the fruits of what those idiots continue to sow. Mercy and love be damned. What they need is a good punch in the face, not a slap on the wrist.

And that was my attitude, to a certain extent, toward those in my context. I came, I saw, I judged, and my posture reflected my attitude. To be honest, I'm still tempted to go there. Every time I see pure, unabashed copying of another church. Every time I see excellence held above authenticity. Every time I see strategy in front of relationship, the individual life above the common life, the churched life above the missional life, what we do in God's name above what God is already doing for his name.

And my self-righteousness swells within me. How dare they? Don't they understand? Ministry is serious! It must be protected! It must be pure! We must have a clear understanding of an order of things, lest we let the secondary reign supreme and derail us!

And, subtlely but intentionally, my message turns from a repentant invitation to a crushing (and arrogant) judgment: "If they don't listen to me, then let them be damned. Go ahead and wallow in your anxious drivenness. See where it gets you. See what God thinks of all that."

I'm Jonah. I've made God into an angry zealot, and when He comes to whisper to me that indeed He is not that (or, more accurately, he is not only that), and oh, by the way, go warn those folks to change, because I love them, I respond to him like Jonah--not with words, but with my posture: No.

Some make God into an angry zealot for the sake of religious rules--an easily challenged and discarded cause. But others make God into an angry zealot for the sake of "the glory of His name," or "authentic worship," or other such modern-day Puritanic aims--a cause that is much more difficult to challenge. We desperately seek to turn God's message to people--people whom God pursues to the grave--from a loving warning to a vengeful judgment. But a warning without love is really a judgment in disguise, for pride has yet to be eradicated.

And God knows this. God has been dealing with human pride as long as humans have walked his earth. He must root it out, lest his messengers and ministers deliver a respective message and ministry that proports to be in God's name... but is, in reality, devoid of His power, and even worse, deviated from His aim.

With pride, there is no room for love.

And without love, your message and ministry are worth nothing. Growing or shrinking, unified or fragmented, clear or muddy, without love, it has no eternal substance, becuase it is disconnected from the energizing and effective love of God.

Back to Jonah: God has chosen his messenger, and uses the necessary means (namely: a great fish) to bring Jonah into submission to what he already knew, and yet chose to run from. And when faced with this reality--that God was indeed giving him a second chance to obey, despite his brash disobedience--Jonah repents and embraces the loving warning. And so he goes.

And wouldn't you know it--those people who were beyond repenting, who would never change, who would never get it, who can only understand violence and its consquences--those people heeded God's loving warning. They actually apprehended God's love for them, understood that he chose to warn rather than to judge, saw their sin for what it was, and turned from it.

And Jonah hated that.

Again, I am like Jonah. I have experienced that initial repentance, and have seen my sin in my desire to deliver a judgment rather than a loving warning. And now that I've delievered the loving warning, and now that the recipients are heeding it... I'm a little mad. Maybe even disappointed.

Isn't that sick? It is! It's terrible--a blight on the very mercy on which I rely.

Continue to convict me, Lord. I am unworthy to spread your message. I am sinful beyond comprehension. Let my story not end like that of Jonah's.