The state of our current world can make it difficult to continue in life with full faith and trust in God. We experience so much war, death, division, and destruction. Not only are we fighting our own battles as a community and our own battles in our personal lives, but we also fight about other people’s fights. We decide who is right, and we want justice–or at least justice in our own eyes.
In the book of Jonah, we catch a glimpse of God’s character regarding the fate of his creation. This gives us so much insight into what the Lord thinks of suffering and our worldly frustrations and earthly perspectives on what/who is “right” and “wrong.”
At the start of Jonah, God commands Jonah to go preach against the evil of the Ninevites and give a warning to repent. First, Jonah runs away because of his strong hate for Nineveh (hence, ending up in a fish’s stomach), but once he is spit up, he complies. Despite Jonah’s extremely sorry excuse for a sermon, Nineveh immediately repents. After this, Jonah is upset and tells God he ran away because he knew God would be compassionate, and he didn’t like that in the case of Nineveh. Jonah prays that God would kill him because, essentially, he would rather die than live in a world where God may forgive such horrible people.
Because the Bible says it best, here is the story from that point:
Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
What do we learn about God from this scripture?
- God is compassionate. We can take comfort in this. God is even so compassionate that sometimes we feel as though certain recipients of mercy are not deserving. The reality is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone. If everyone got what they deserved, Jesus would never have taken on our sins. None of us are deserving of mercy, and we attribute our salvation to God’s mercy through compassion.
- God is just. We look around at the world and we fail to see God’s work. The reality is that God ultimately sees what we can’t and judges with impartiality and omnipotence. As faulty humans, we find impartiality impossible and we don’t see the issues of the world from all sides. That’s why we were never called to judge. If Jonah was called to judge, he would’ve taken Nineveh out without consideration of their possible salvation. But Jonah was not called to judge. He was called to speak spiritual truth, which is ultimately the sharing of compassion and mercy.
- God cares. When we see so much war and pain in the world, we often have this mentality of “Where is God? Why doesn’t he do something? Does God care?” In this passage, we see that God is looking down on the thousands of people and aching for them to turn to Him. He is basically saying to Jonah, “Look how angry you are about this plant that you didn’t create. Now imagine how upset I am that all these people I created may face eternity without me?”
- God hasn’t changed. He cares about all the suffering people in the world and hates the evil that perpetuates suffering. That’s why the ultimate mercy has been given to all those who hear the word and believe in Jesus Christ. Suffering won’t end until we cross eternity because evil will always exist on this Earth, but there is hope that we must share. Let’s share God’s compassion and mercy with a little more willingness than Jonah.
I encourage you to set your eyes on the things above. We care about this wonderful earth that the Lord created, but we hope not to become so engulfed in its things that we lose our heavenly perspective. We care deeply about suffering and people, but we are careful not to seek justice in our own eyes constantly. Reserve true justice for the Lord, but generously share the gift of mercy, compassion, and love. In this, we share salvation.