Jonah: A Challenge to Recognize that Everyone Is Worthy of Mercy

Although there is more to learn from the books of Kings and Chronicles, the book of Jonah is as well considered here as anywhere else, since it is set during the reign of Jeroboam II, in the 8th century BCE. This fictional book was probably written much later, in the 5th or 4th century BCE, given the subject matter of this short tale, which in part asserts that God cares about Gentiles too.

The summary of this familiar tale is as follows: Yahweh asks Jonah to go proclaim judgment on the Assyrian capital, Ninevah. Jonah runs away and gets on a boat headed as far away from Ninevah as possible. The boat gets caught in a bad storm (because Yahweh is angry at Jonah), and the unwilling prophet gets thrown overboard and swallowed by an immense sea creature. After Jonah’s prayer (which may have been inserted into the story later), Yahweh tells the beast to vomit Jonah up on a beach, and it does. Then Yahweh sends Jonah to Ninevah again, and this time Jonah goes. He preaches hellfire and brimstone to the people of Ninevah so effectively that they become a repentant population. This really pisses Jonah off, because he was at least hoping to see the city get destroyed and all the evil-doers punished. Yahweh has mercy on Ninevah, and Jonah goes outside the city to sulk. Yahweh then teaches Jonah a little lesson about how the prophet’s selfish anger contrasts with the merciful and active Yahweh.

Jonah is one of those biblical stories that doesn’t need a whole lot of interpretation. If we translate the text into a new way of defining divinity, we might say that Jonah was a man who was compelled by a deep desire to create a better world, but that he allowed fear of how he would be received by others guide him 180 degrees from where he most wanted to be. Even when he stopped running, he interpreted his vision of a better world as requiring that some people (and even some animals) be destroyed—another layer of irrational fear that still kept him from seeing clearly. When other people responded with receptivity toward Jonah’s vision, he became angry because he had prepared for a fight.

He wanted people who were different from him to suffer—to be annihilated—and his narcissistic attitude wasn’t eager to find creative ways to coexist with others, even when they were willing to adapt a new way of being because of his message. Jonah had a narrow way of viewing the world. One might say he had limiting mental models. He wanted justice for other people, but he was quite happy with claiming grace for himself. He let his fear and anger control him rather than digging into those emotions to discover something he could work on within himself. But in the end, the story affirms that everyone is worthy of mercy. Everyone is worthy of grace.

We can probably find a lot of points of comparison with Jonah. Perhaps when someone goes speeding past us recklessly on the road, we hope they get into an accident, or at least that a cop is waiting around the next curve for them. When people behave differently than we want them to, we make them our enemies in our minds. We are often eager to speak judgmental words against things we don’t like, but we rarely take the time to speak inspiring words about the lives we most want to create. We are tempted to rejoice when people we don’t like suffer, and we are loathe to celebrate with people we don’t like, even when it wouldn’t cost us a thing to do so. We draw lines of Us and Them, just like Jonah did with the people of Ninevah.

However, Jonah did a few admirable things, too. He took the blame when the ship was having trouble, and even though we know that doing something bad won’t bring foul weather your way, in the context of the story Jonah was clearly at fault. Jonah also overcame his initial fear of how he would be received by people in Ninevah. He didn’t keep digging beyond that, but it took courage for him to make the first step out of his comfort zone. We also don’t know if Jonah learned anything in the end. It might be that he realized how unsatisfying his selfish perspective was, and he might have started to look with fresh eyes at people who were different from him.

Even though we don’t know how Jonah’s story truly ends, though, we have the great opportunity and responsibility of determining whether we will learn something from his story. If we are willing to dig into our fears and our anger and get to the root of what holds us back in life, we may find that our way of seeing the world is not very helpful to us. If we are willing to recognize how people are similar to us—that there really is no Them except in our own minds—we may find that our inherent creativity is as useful for building connections as it is for destroying them. If we are willing to articulate the kind of world we want, and if we are willing to ask ourselves the difficult questions that dig into why we want what we want, we might discover for ourselves a compelling vision that we just cannot run away from. It requires a level of honesty and insight that Jonah wasn’t prepared for, but there’s no reason for us to be ruled by our irrational fears and our anger. Underneath all of our judgments and fears about other people, we know that human beings have a lot more in common with each other than they have differences. Sometimes the differences seem huge, but often that is just because our minds make the differences more important than they actually are.

So, what’s really important?

No…

            what’s really important?

2 Kings 1-4: Being Vessels of Judgment or Vessels of Grace

The stories of Elijah and Elisha are delightful bits of folklore. These two characters have much in common with magicians or sorcerers from the legends of other cultures. Even though Israelite religion forbade witchcraft and the like, simple recontextualization places the actual power in the hands of Yahweh while the men themselves are mere subservient vessels. In 2 Kings 1-4, Elijah predicts the death of an Israelite king, kills 102 soldiers, and passes on his mantle of authentic power to Elisha before catching a ride up to Heaven in a flaming chariot. Elisha sets to work purifying water, summoning bears to eat unruly children, and performing miracles large and small. He increases apparent amounts of olive oil and bread, makes stew safe to eat, and brings a boy back from the dead -- a fairly impressive resume. One significant event is the battle between the king of Moab and the united forces of Israel, Judah, and Edom, in which Elisha proclaims that Yahweh will fill in the gaps in the planning of these three kings in order to give them victory over Moab.

These stories fall into two larger categories: stories of judgment and stories of grace. The judgment stories are obvious, but the origin of the judgment isn't always clear. Ahaziah is obviously being punished by Yahweh, but in the folktale, he doesn't die until Elijah is standing there in front of him. In the meantime, Elijah is justified in calling down fire to consume dozens of soldiers, presumably because they were in the service of a wicked king. Elisha's judgment of the jeering boys is even more clearly the prophet's own decision. The boys say something he doesn't like, so the prophet curses them (in the name of Yahweh), and bears come out of the woods and eat the boys!

Life does not work like this. Even though there are people who commit what we might consider wicked acts, we cannot expect that they will be judged and removed from the world as a result. People die. Sometimes death is a result of personal decisions, but sometimes people die for reasons completely unrelated to how they lived their lives. No matter what a person does in life, death is an eventuality, not divine punishment. Even when we choose to kill someone as a society through capital punishment or military action, these are human decisions carried out by people. While we might like to curse certain people from time to time, our curses do not actually have any power over reality, even if we curse people in the name of our favorite deity.

And let's consider that for just a moment. Elisha curses these boys in the name of his god, and as a result, bears come out of the woods and eat the boys. This is slightly different from the folktale about Elijah taming the wolf, but it still suggests that these folk heroes had influence over nature. More accurately, it suggests that the prophets had influence over Yahweh, who had power over nature. What kind of deity is this, though? When I say, "Those boys are making fun of me, God! Send some bears to eat them!" I would not expect a wise and loving deity to respond, "You got it. Two hungry bears, coming up." I would expect a wise and loving deity to respond with something more like, "They're kids. It's what they do. They'll grow into responsible members of society if you teach them to be wise instead of enforcing a brutal 'one-strike' policy. And you are getting a bit thin on top, baldy."

Obviously the ancient Israelites thought about things differently, but just because they wrote their beliefs down over two millenia ago doesn't mean that their version of divinity was in any way accurate or useful. God does not punish the wicked. The wicked punish themselves. God does not respond to curses, even if the curses are pronounced "in his name," as ridiculous as that seems. This is once again witchcraft by a different name. Even if you believe in a supreme being who watches over human beings and actively responds to prayers, there has to be some limit to your god's willingness to harm people in order for you to have meaningful participation in the world. If there existed a god who was responsive and willing to go along with our momentary emotional reactivity, humanity would no longer exist; we would have cursed one another into early graves a long time ago.

No, even if there is an external divine being trying to guide human activity, the message of our reality is that we must learn the hard lesson of seeing one another more clearly as human beings worthy of respect. Our acts of greed, violence, and oppression (and fear in all its forms) only lead to more problems. We enact our own curses on one another and ourselves by failing to manage our own fearfulness and irrational beliefs. We can lift those curses, too. It just takes commitment to doing things better. Calling down a curse is a quick solution that doesn't require any real investment of our own time and energy. Dismantling our false beliefs about ourselves and other people takes a bit more work, but the end result could be far more impressive than getting a couple of hungry bears to show up and eat our problems.

Every story in these chapters wasn't about divine retribution, though. Some of them were about divine grace. A town has bad water, and the prophet makes it potable (through magic). A widow is in danger of losing her home, and the prophet works a bit of magic and makes her olive oil jar incredibly prodigious for a short time. The prophet makes a woman conceive (we won't ask how), and when the boy dies prematurely, the prophet brings him back to life. The prophet makes poisoned food safe to eat and feeds a hundred people with a little bit of bread. He also brings prediction of God's impressive provenance for a trio of armies that rode out to battle so ill prepared that they ran out of water on the way. This was a little more tricky, and it was obviously done on God's initiative in the story, even though most of the predictions were carried out by people.

We like the idea of grace. If one cannot pay one's bills, unexpected money seems like a miracle from on high. When we think we have a scarcity and reality shows us our abundance, grace makes a lot of sense. In fact, whenever we are expecting bad things to happen and our expectations are shown to be overly pessimistic, it can seem that something outside of ourselves has intervened on our behalf. Grace is the opposite of a curse. But things we don't like still happen. Tragic and devastating things even. We are sometimes woefully unprepared for the challenges we face. Sometimes it's our own irresponsibility that does us it, and sometimes events are so unexpected that we are simply caught off guard. Children (and other people we love) die, often before we are really ready to let them go. This is sad, and it is reality. Medical professionals can sometimes pull off what seems like a miracle (although it's actually human skill), but sooner or later we have to face the death of  someone we care about. It's comforting perhaps to think that there is a god who has the power to intervene and restore a dead person to life, like the Shunammite woman's son or Lazarus coming out of the grave. Yet, can we accept those stories without wondering why no one in our lives has ever been the recipient of such grace?

Despite the rabbit trails of "miraculous" stories that people may tell, the facts are clear on the matter, and my purpose here is not to refute miracles. In fact, judgment and grace are very real. They just aren't in the hands of a supreme being outside of ourselves. Judgment and grace are human endeavors, and we carry them out every day. We know how to punish people, sometimes subtly and sometimes very directly. It may not be fire from the sky or hungry bears, but we all have our ways of letting people know that they've done something wrong and we aren't going to let them get away with it. Curses. Divine retribution. Our international conflicts are no different; they are just symptoms of the same kind of thinking on a larger scale. We can be vessels for our own violent gods of vengeance, and we often are.

We also know about grace. We know how to forgive. We know the benefits of letting go of grudges. We know how to forget about a debt owed to us. We know how to show empathy and compassion, even when we aren't getting what we want from somebody. We know how to show grace. The question is: Do we? We cannot bring back anyone from the dead, but we can have compassion for people who grieve. We cannot stop conflict in the world or decide who will "win" any given battle, but we can put a stop to conflict in our own lives. Grace. Divine blessing. We can do these things just as easily as we curse. Spewing curses just may be more our habit. We can be vessels for our own gods of peace and compassion.

The thing is, whatever you happen to believe, our true beliefs show up in our actions. Whatever we may claim to think about the real nature of humanity and divinity, our behavior tells the truth about our beliefs -- especially when we aren't being particularly intentional. If one were to suggest that every moment is an act of worship, then one would have to admit that people are often idolatrous. We want to claim belief in one thing, but our lives reflect a completely different view of reality. Whether we assert the existence of any sort of god, life makes more sense when our actions line up with what we believe about ourselves, other people, and the world we share. We choose whether we want to be vessels of retribution and punishment or vessels of peace and compassion. I would like to suggest that grace is the preferable option.

1 Kings 20-22: Bad People and the Prophets Who Harrass Them

Based on the stories we have about Ahab, this king was apparently not well-liked by the Israelites. These three Ahab stories reflect a common human desire to see bad things happen to bad people. First, Ahab forms a treaty with a foreign king after a victory (which had been proclaimed to him ahead of time by a prophet), but God had wanted Ahab to kill the enemy king (although the prophet never said as much). This unnamed prophet then enacts what is meant to be a clever message to Ahab, that God would claim Ahab's life because he set the enemy free. It isn't clear how prophets are once more running about freely, or why it is acceptable for a prophet to call up lions to kill people who refuse to strike them, but this is not the sort of story where such things are expected to be questioned. 

The second story is reminiscent of the tale of David and Bathsheba. Ahab lusts after Naboth's property. Jezebel reminds Ahab that he is king and can do more than pout about not getting what he wants. Ahab has Naboth killed and claims the vineyard. Suddenly, Elijah shows up in a melodramatic scene, proclaiming vivid and humiliating destruction on Ahab's family.

Finally, Ahab's final story depicts him requesting aid from Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, to go to war with Ramoth Gilead. Ahab consults all of his prophets, who are all Yes Men without any real power. Jehoshaphat insists that a prophet of Yahweh is consulted, and this prophet Micaiah (with whom Ahab apparently has had dealings in the past) predicts Ahab's death. Despite a clever ruse on Ahab's part to get the forces of Ramoth Gilead to target Jehoshaphat, by the end of the day, Ahab is dead. Because of Jehoshaphat's involvement, this tale also appears in 2 Chronicles with only slight differences. (Recall that the Chronicler is not really interested in Israel, but focuses instead on Judah.) 

These stories make a great deal of sense to us. Perhaps not every cultural detail is clearly understood, but the sentiments are certainly familiar. We still want bad things to happen to bad people, possibly more than we want good things to happen to good people. Even the ancient Israelites realized that there was a disconnection between this desire for harsh justice and the realities of life, however. Their wisdom literature reflects it, and even the later gospel writers address it through the character of Jesus when they write of the sun rising on evil and good alike and the rain falling equally on the righteous and the unrighteous. This is a challenge to our sense of how a fair and just world ought to look.

Categorizing people comes easily to us. We see a little bit of a person, and we might believe we are justified in making generalizations about whether they are a good person or an evil person. The more we know about a person, the more difficult this becomes. Most people are not two-dimensional caricatures. Aside from a small percentage of people who have a chemical imbalance, everyone is capable of love; everyone is capable of doing some good in the world. We don't necessarily want to look favorably upon those who have more power than we have, though. If we humanize them too much, we might not find it as easy to blame them for the things we don't like about our lives.

There is an alternative, if you're looking for one. We can decide to see people as capable, creative, and inherently good. This means that when a person does something that seems evil or unjust or "sinful," we have to look to something other than a person's inherent nature to explain such actions. If people cannot be inherently evil or broken, then why do people act the way they so often do? You probably already know what I think, but I hope you will consider it anew:

Fear. Unmanaged, irrational fear is the underlying cause of those actions we quickly judge as wicked or evil or unjust. You might prefer the term anxiety. We succumb to fear or anxiety ourselves. We know what that feels like, and we know that when we do, we often wind up apologizing for something later, once we have our anxiety or fear under control again. People are inherently worthy and powerfully capable and incredibly creative, but we are rarely adequately equipped to manage our fear gracefully. Fear catapults us out of the realms of authenticity and integrity. When we are in the midst of our anxiety, our actions fail to represent our deepest beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the world we share. Fear leads us to betray ourselves in a desperate attempt to protect ourselves -- usually from something for which we don't need protection.

What can we possibly do with this perspective? How can we confront the Ahabs of our day any more effectively? How does this better equip us to deal with the big injustices we see in the world? As admirable as such questions may be, I believe our impact must begin in our own lives. Even as I write this, I am mindful of how easily I slip from authentically expressing my beliefs into "defending myself" when I allow fear about a perceived (and unreal) threat to govern my actions. What we do in our own lives has an impact on the people around us. Managing our own irrational fear is where change begins, and this requires us to boldly tell the truth to ourselves. When we feel threatened, it behooves us to examine that feeling. Is there actually a threat, or are we letting our imaginations create something out of our anxiety? Brutal honesty in the face of our defensiveness is crucial. When we choose to manage our anxiety, we maintain a more honest perspective and we create a different environment for the people around us.

There will still be people who do not manage their fears, who hurt themselves and other people, who wallow in the role of victim. If we are willing to believe that people are inherently worthy and capable, our questions might be: What is this person afraid of? What is the perceived threat? What am I doing to feed that fear? When we take personal responsibility for our own irrational fear, we create new possibilities for how we interact with other people. This may not mean that we single-handedly transform large-scale injustices, but it certainly means that we have a better chance of making a meaningful impact where we are able. The reality is that we will never fully grasp the extent of our impact on the world. We influence people who influence people who influence other people we don't even know, and we can control none of that. What we can control is our own direct contribution to the world we inhabit. We can control whether we will offer fear or hope, anxiety or peace.

Ahab did some things that led the writer(s) of Kings to have a pretty dim view of him. We can relate to that in our own world. But regardless of our beliefs and actions, rain will fall on all of us, the sun will rise for everyone, and at the end of our lives we will all die. It makes no sense for us to spend our precious time and energy deciding who is deserving of a horrible fate and who is worthy of honor. Even if you believe in an afterlife, surely you do not get to determine eternity for anyone but yourself. Yet we are all prophets. We cannot call lions out of the brush to eat people when we are angry (thankfully!), but we are prophets none the less. Rather than pronouncing doom and destruction (which would say more about our own anxiety than anything else really), we truly do have the potential to spread a message of good news. The good news we can proclaim is that our lives need not be governed by anxiety and fear, and we proclaim it first and foremost to ourselves.

Natural Disasters and Wickedness: Viewing the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as the Wrath of God

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah suggests some very interesting and disturbing ideas about natural disasters, or really any sort of disaster in life. For the mind that wants to see the universe as ordered under the control of some higher authority, stories like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah help to make sense of events that seem chaotic, with a footnote that cleverly insults certain groups of people. Briefly: God (for whatever reason) mentions to Abraham that he’s going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, because the people there are wicked beyond redemption. Abraham pleads with him and says, “You can’t kill innocent people! Spare the cities if there are at least 10 righteous men.” God promises to look into the matter, and swears that he’ll spare the cities if even a handful of people are worth saving. As it turns out, Abraham’s nephew, Lot, is the only one worth saving, so God just warns Lot to get out of town with his family. In a striking reflection of Orpheus and Eurydice, Lot’s wife looks back at the city as they are fleeing and is transformed into a pillar of salt. Then, Lot’s two daughters get him drunk and sleep with him, becoming pregnant with children that would found two nations that were enemies of the very Israelites telling the story.

There are a lot of things one could latch onto in a story like this.  To our culture, it may seem odd for a "righteous" man to offer his virgin daughters to a crowd of would-be rapists.  It may also seem like a pretty low blow to make up an incestuous story about a group’s origins just to have another reason to hate or insult them, but human beings haven’t outgrown that tactic yet. There will be plenty of opportunities to explore relationships and how we see other people, though. The lesson of not focusing on or longing for the past seems fairly obvious in the story of Lot’s wife. This may be worth coming back to at a later time. For now, let’s concentrate on the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the cities.

In recent years, there have been some pretty destructive natural disasters. Just since the turn of the 21st century, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis have had devastating effects on cities, have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and have disrupted the lives of millions of people. It seems natural to ask, “Why?” Some people even claim to know why these events have occurred, and they capitalize on the emotional and psychological devastation in the wake of destructive events for a personal agenda. Many people who claim to know why natural disasters occur hearken back to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Some claim (with varying degrees of subtlety) that the wickedness of people is the reason for the destruction. There have been exhortations to turn from sinfulness, lest we continue to encourage God’s wrath. The natural disasters we see in our lifetime are even likened to warnings of a divine parent’s growing impatience with disobedient children. In other words, we still struggle to understand why these chaotic events take place, and we instinctively turn to our understanding of the world to fit natural disasters into our existing premises. If the premise is flawed, however, any understanding of the world based upon it is going to create more problems than it solves.

First, let’s have a little perspective about natural disasters. Recent events have been devastating, but to any student of history, they are likely not surprising. Throughout recorded history, there have been floods and earthquakes and storms that have wreaked devastation. Looking back across time, there has not really been a remarkable increase in catastrophic events, even though we may hear about things and see footage much more easily than ever before.

Incidentally, this goes for disease as well, although some have suggested that certain diseases exist as divine warnings against immorality. Tuberculosis, measles, small pox, and the bubonic plague claimed more lives than any disease connected with immorality in today’s society. The Spanish Flu claimed over 50,000,000 deaths in just two years between 1918 and 1920. Malaria continues to kill over 750,000 people each year, primarily the poorest people in the poorest African countries. While people may not be willing to equate poverty with immorality, dealing with that poverty and disease has not really become a worldwide concern. So, it obviously would take a lot for a disease to catch our attention enough to incite a widespread change in lifestyle.

But to some, this does not diminish the impression that someone more powerful is punishing humanity, or some sector of the population. This mindset extends to all sorts of unwanted events from car accidents to disease to lightning strikes. If something bad has happened, some people want there to be a reason, and the easiest reason of all is to believe that the person or people did something wrong to bring hardship upon themselves. Sometimes, hardship may certainly be the result of personal decisions, but in the case of natural disasters, this rationale simply cannot apply. Why is there suffering? Why would there not be?

Archaeologists don’t have any clear evidence to shed light on the story itself. Although the story was certainly written after the fact, and the specific names of Sodom and Gomorrah were not recorded in other sources, there could easily have been sites in the region destroyed by earthquakes, volcanic activity, or even a meteor. Whether or not the story is completely factual in the historical details, we can relate to such events, because we still see cities destroyed by earthquakes, floods, mudslides, avalanches, and storms. These things are part of our ecosystem. They are natural events which occur because of natural reasons. Sometimes people get caught in the destruction, but the natural events are not specifically targeting anyone. We don’t always understand why something has happened, but that doesn’t mean a rational and natural explanation doesn’t exist. There is no reason to assume that some person or community is being punished when natural disaster strikes. They are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

To suggest otherwise should concern those who believe in an intelligent divine being who causes things to happen in the world. If we are truly able to change our behavior and thus avert further catastrophe, this is a kind of magic. Our actions should not be able to alter the decisions of an omniscient and omnipotent entity, since that would actually mean that the external divine being is at the mercy of believers instead of the other way around. It also ignores the fact that there are people who live wholesome lives, who even believe the things they are “supposed” to believe, who are struck down by natural disasters or disease.

Alternatively, it makes just as little sense to claim that people are simply wicked at the core of their being, and thus are deserving of whatever punishment a divine being may choose to dish out. Aside from being a very hopeless perspective that fails to acknowledge the deep beauty and value of humankind, it also doesn’t allow grounds for much to change. People cannot honestly be expected to change their immoral ways if they are intrinsically wicked, thus we would always be deserving of punishment from natural disasters at the whim of the almighty. Some would point out that this is the whole purpose of grace, which is a fine perspective, except that the application of grace would seem to contradict the concept of punishment through natural disaster. What purpose is there in extending grace and then deciding to send a tsunami or an earthquake anyway?

A simpler perspective is to assume that the natural world is neither tame nor intelligent. Natural disasters will happen, and sometimes people and communities will be within a dangerous proximity. There’s no reason to see those people as wicked or worthless, and honestly I don’t believe many people do. We have an opportunity in those moments to reassert our connection to one another, to do something to acknowledge the beauty and value of all people. It is not a divine warning message (or as powerful a fear-inducing morality lesson), but it does open an opportunity for our awareness to shift toward our ability to care for one another, an opportunity to be reminded of the things that are most important to us.

While whatever happened to those ancient cities was certainly tragic, there is no reason to attribute any more wickedness to them than any other concentration of people, and there is no reason to assume that they deserved to be destroyed. It may be simpler to see people who suffer from unexplainable catastrophe as lesser people, people deserving of what happened, wicked people. We don’t have to care as much about what happens to people like that, and we certainly don’t feel obligated to do much to help them. Perhaps it isn’t that much more difficult in times of such devastation to allow ourselves to be awakened to our commonalities as human beings, to recognize the preciousness of life and the beauty and power of human connection, and to act in accord.