Scandalous, Damnable Divine Love: Jonah Takes God to Task

Dear God,

Leave me alone. Please, just Leave. Me. Alone. Got it? Have you not poured enough grief into my life already? Just kill me and be done with it.

I didn’t sign up for this preaching gig. My name is Jonah, not Isaiah. He was the one all gung-ho with his “Send me! Send me!” attitude. Not me. I was perfectly happy back in the land of milk and honey. This swamp of ilk and money repulses me.

Nineveh. The very name makes me throw up in my mouth. A hovel of hate, that’s what this city is. Need I remind you that these pagans find sadistic joy in knifing open the bellies of pregnant women? Ripping the skin off their enemies and draping it over their walls? Beheading, mutilating, and impaling the bodies of their victims high on poles to make the world cower in fear? These people, why they’re not even people; they’re animals. Subhuman. The devil’s spawn. They play at evil. And, to top it all off, they’re the enemies of your own chosen people.

But as if none of that matters, as if somehow even these people are the objects of your care and compassion, you have the audacity to tell me to go preach to them. Cry out against this city, you say. Warn them that if they don’t repent they’ll be destroyed in forty days, you say. So of course I ran away. And of course, you chased me. Onto the sea, into the fish, out of the fish, you chased me. Until finally I walked through the streets of Nineveh and preached. I did your bidding.

I hoped like mad they’d spit in my face and laugh me all the way out of town. I wouldn’t have even cared if a mob of them had beat me to death in a back alley. But heavens no, I couldn’t be that lucky. They believed in you, the whole lot of them. From the lowest slave to the king himself, they just had to repent. And they went all out: fasting, wearing sackcloth, praying for mercy. They went so repentance-crazy that they wouldn’t even let their beasts eat or drink; made farm animals fast. My Lord, they even dressed their cows in sackcloth!

I’m watching this spectacle and thinking, “Oh, no. Dear God, don’t you dare…don’t you dare…don’t you….” Then you do. Of course you do. As if their bloody, prideful, despicable past means nothing; as if their gargantuan mountain of evil weighs not an ounce on the scales of justice; you let them off the hook. They repent and you relent. Just like that.

I saw it all coming, long before today, while I was still back in my hometown. I even told you so. That’s why I ran away—not because I was scared to preach, or frightened of these lowlifes, but to delay this evil day of mercy as long as possible. I just knew it. You and your grace. You and your compassion. You and your slowness to anger. You and your scandalous, damnable, exasperating love!

Where is justice in this, God? You can’t keep on letting evil men off scot-free. Know what you're like? You’re like a judge who, every time a criminal apologizes in court, takes off his robe, lays down his gavel, and walks up to the felon to hug him, kiss him, and ask him to come live with him and eat at his table. It’s beyond ludicrous. It’s shameful, downright embarrassing the way you let mercy triumph over judgment. Listen, when a man sins, he’s got to pay. It’s as simple as that. But you act as if someone has already paid for his crime, as if someone has already been executed in his stead. I simply cannot wrap my mind around it.

If you want to know why I’m so ticked off, well, there’s your answer. You’ve gone and did your God thing again. It’s not too late to change your mind, so I’m going to sit here and watch the city. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll come to your senses, decide there needs to be more fairness and justice in this world, and you’ll afflict them with plagues, or throw fire and brimstone on at least part of the city, or something, anything, that makes them realize how wrong they’ve been.

I tremble to think of what message this sends to the world. If you want people to get the impression that you are all love, that you’ll forgive their past no matter what, that you will accept and embrace even the most wicked person of earth, keep it up. Keep doing what you’ve done in Nineveh. Keep being that kind of God. But I warn you, that if you do, pretty soon everyone will assume that you love the world so much that you’ll stop at nothing to save it.

Unhappily Yours,

Jonah