Think Nineveh is the Bad Guy? God's Trying To Convert Jonah.

The people who know this story of Jonah understand that Jonah is called to Nineveh, that “great city”. Jonah does not want to go to that city and he runs only to end up being spit up on the shores of Nineveh. However, I think this is a misreading the story.

God is not trying to convert Nineveh.

God is trying to convert Jonah. And for us reading the story, God is trying to convert the reader.

When Jonah arrives to the city, he walks one day into it and tells the people God is going to destroy the city. Upon hearing this message the people repent. The king hears about the people repenting then the king repents and makes a city wide declaration. It is as thought the people of Nineveh had already heard about this God Jonah is talking about and the people in the city repent right away. Jonah does not have to convince people about this God at all, just one day’s worth of work and the people get the message.

The people of God in the Hebrew bible and the followers of Jesus did not even get this message that quickly.

Then after the city repents, Jonah could have gone back home as the greatest evangelist of all time. This could have been the most effective and remarkable sermon of all time by getting the entire city of Nineveh - including the King - to repent. Instead of celebrating that all of these people repent and turn toward the very God Jonah says he follows, Jonah gets mad.

The name Jonah means ‘dove’. Among the many different thoughts on what this means, one of the thoughts is that Jonah knew the Bible so well that when he prayed he “cooed” like a dove.

He knew the Bible but he did not know God. Perhaps Jonah was never really following God to begin with.

Today, many of us know the Bible. We are convinced that we know what is a sin and who the bad guys are. We are confident that we are already converted to God. We are convinced that our sin is not as bad as the other person’s sin and that our repenting is somehow more complete than the one we think is not repenting. We are convinced that we have a pure soul.

So did Jonah.

And yet, the book of Jonah ends with a question - is it right for Jonah to be angry that destruction did not come upon the very people who repented and turned their heart? It has been said that if you look up on the hill you can still see Jonah sitting there. Sulking in his distain of the other. Convinced that he knows the Bible and he knows that he is right.

So many of us in the Christian tradition are like Jonah. We think that God is using us to convert others, when in fact God is using the other (the evil and insincere sinner) to convert us. If I leave the church because there is a sinner in the church and that I only will attend the church if all the sinners repent and have as pure of a soul as me, then I might as well join Jonah on that hill.

In his Church of one pure, angry and bitter soul.

Christianity is less a journey and more unrest

In college I had a notebook that I kept with questions and quotes. The blue ink contrasts with the yellowing paper and in college I had legible enough handwriting to make out the following question:

I am tired of the metaphor of a journey. Is there any other metaphor that can be used to describe the life of faith?

Even then I found the idea of Christianity as a journey to be somewhat accurate but also boring and overused. Clearly the metaphor works, but it also is limited. It suggests that we are always moving in our life of faith. I have not experienced. I have experienced long bouts of stagnation and even moving backwards. The journey metaphor not only suggests that forward or deeper is better, but also that the journey is a means to an end. It suggests the destination is more important or valuable than the journey itself. Who goes on a trip and talks about the journey unless the journey to get there was fraught with trouble, delays or mishaps.

We want to “arrive” and “get there”, and when there is a delay, it is something to bemoan. No one beholds a delay in a journey.

I just about gave up on the searching for an alternate metaphor when I came across a gem from Soren Kierkegaard who said:

The Celtic Christian tradition imagines the Holy Spirt like a wild goose. Talk about unrest!

“Christianity is the most intensive and strongest form of unrest thinkable. Christ’s coming is intended to disturb life. Where one want to become Christian, there will be unrest; and where one has become a Christian, there unrest follows.”

Christianity is unrest. That sounds more true to me than a journey.

Often times people turn to religion when they experience unrest. The idea is that religion will provide a sense of control or comfort. If I say the right prayers or go to worship then things will work out better for me. The reality is that in Christianity, unrest is a feature and not a bug. It is the unrest that follows Christian conversion that is key and different from other religions.

Other religions (and even shallow Christianity) suggests that the faithful will be able to remove unrest from their life. But authentic Christianity puts unrest at the center of the tradition. It is the unrest that drives us to reach out into the world to care for others. If we were content and “rested” we would not go out into the world and possibly upset our ease and comfort. Unrest comes with Christianity because Christianity forces us to confront the internal and external sin in our lives.

The unrest of Christianity is the itch. It is the very thing that pulls us to our knees in confession that we are not God and that we are in need. As the Amma Synkletike said, “Just as a vessel cannot be built without nails, so it is impossible to be saved without humble-mindedness.” The gift of unrest provides access to humility.

And so, if you are among the unrested of the world, give thanks for this gift from God. And if you are rested, then let us pray that God may give us the gift of unrest. As the desert story goes:

Abba Poemen told a story of Abba John the Short that he asked God for his passions [struggles] to be removed from him. God granted this prayer and Abba John became one without a care. Going to a teacher, John said, “I see myself satiated, with no battle to fight.” The teacher said to John “Go and beseech God for the struggles to come upon you because it is through struggling that the soul makes progress.” The struggle returned, and John no longer prayed for it to be taken away. Instead Abba John prayed, “Lord, give me patience in the struggles.”

What is the training of a Christian?

When I was younger I played soccer. I was above average, but no Messi. Becoming a soccer player required training: first I had to learn to dribble, then pass, then trap the ball, then pass with accuracy, then shoot, then learn to play with others, read the field, see the space, formations, timing, etc. This training took years to get decent at. Countless hours a week with coaches and others in practice and games.

And that was just something as simple as soccer.

Becoming a Christian requires more training than we are want to believe. (We forget that the disciple were with Jesus all the time for three years and they still did not get it.)

What is the training of a Christian?

John Cassian suggests that there is a training process that one engages to develop into a Christian. In the the fourth book of The Institutes he describes this process:

First it begins with the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10).  What this means is that one must come first to see they are in need. To put it another way, the fear of the Lord means that we admit that the current models of our lives are leading us poorly and we need a new model to guide our lives.

We cannot adopt a new model while holding onto our original model. We cannot worship two gods (Matthew 6:24). This is why we must renounce our first models/gods. We must repent. This repentance is total. It is a repentance of all the objects, values, teachings and ways of the original model. It is impossible to learn a new life while holding onto the “way we used to do it”. It would be like learning to play basketball while still using a soccer players mindset, skills, tools and techniques. It does not work that way.

When we renounce our previous ways/models we are like a beginner. And there is nothing more humbling than being a beginner at anything. Which may be why we do not repent or renounce totally. We hold on to some things so we are not tossed into beginner status. However, when we are able to renounce/repent our previous life, dreams and desires fall away and die.

As Jesus said that a seed must fall to the ground and die in order to grow (John 12:24). When our old ways and models have died, then we are able to receive what the new model has for us. This new model, Christ, trains us in virtues that produce the fruits of the spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The person who produces such fruits of the spirit has an altogether new heart, what we might call the purity of heart. It is, as Jesus says, the pure in heart that see God (Matthew 5:8).

This training takes a lifetime and it is not easy. It breaks us down into being a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). In this training, you may see that this does not begin by training people to just be better humans. It does not start with behavior modification to be more loving or kind or forgiving. It understands that we are unable to be loving, kind and forgiving as long as we living out of a sense of self and without seeing that we are in need. Without seeing that we are in fact in need we will reserve our love, mercy and forgiveness for only those who “deserve” or “earn” or who are “worthy”. Until we repent and renounce this way of living, we will not see God.

We will just see ourselves as god.