Jonah

Being inside of a big fish is disorienting.

You can’t witness the coming and going of the sun to keep track of the days. You become completely disconnected from time and space. That dark, warm, smelly cove becomes your entire world. It’s no wonder I finally agreed to go to Nineveh.

Jonah scribbled on notebook paper reading a newspaper titled "Ninevah times" with the headline "Murder!" and other headings, "Crime continued," and "For sale."

Apparently, God can sometimes ask us to do really awful things. Like go pronounce a message of warning and mercy upon a horrible people and government who might decide to kill you if they don’t like your message. People accuse me of running away from God. They assume that I didn’t believe in mercy, or that I held grudges, or that I was anti-Assyrian, or something. But look – the Assyrians did bad things. Seriously. Things you don’t even want to hear about. Hearing the news from Nineveh made me so upset I felt sick. And the news never stopped coming. Every day it was something, some gruesome crime.

A sign points in two directions, one toward God and one toward conscience. Jonah follows the sign that reads "conscience" with a pack slung over his shoulder.

So, when I decided to go to Tarsus, it wasn’t because I was running away from God. It’s because I was following my conscience.

You would feel the same way if God told you to go to the most horrendous people you can think of and say, “Hey! Guess what! If you don’t stop being complete jerks then God’s going to wipe you out. So, stop it, and you’ll be forgiven.” You would want justice. I had serious ethical problems with giving the Ninevites a warning against things they really should have known better than to do.

Well, I guess long enough in a fish’s digestive system can change your mind about anything. I blocked out my conscience’s protestations and did what I had to do to survive. At least for a little while. As previously noted, I was prepared for those jerks to kill me. But at least I wasn’t slowly being dissolved by stomach acid.

Jonah scolds a fat ruler in a crown. Over Jonah's head in all capital letters is the word "warning." over the ruler's head is an exclamation mark.

After I declared, “Hey! If you don’t stop being completely horrible right now, God’s going to destroy you in forty days. So, get your lives in order,” the king of Nineveh told everyone to fast and to repent and to stop committing crimes. They all did. They all started weeping and tearing their clothes. I rolled my eyes. How long could this show of repentance last, right? It was going to take more than my little declaration to change these guys. Like some serious punishment.

The word "punishment" in bold block letters sit in front of a scribbled storm cloud and lightning.

I figured serious punishment was coming their way from the divine realm. I had warned them, that was my job, however weird and unfair. Now it was God’s turn to do what needed to be done. To save the rest of the world by wiping out Nineveh.

But God had compassion on them instead. Can you believe that?

I brought my grievances to God. “Really God? This is wrong! These people are criminals! They only care about themselves! They hurt everyone around them! This is why I didn’t want to come here. I have a serious issue with your compassion and love and grace and mercy all the time. Nineveh doesn’t deserve that!”

You know that feeling when you just don’t know what the point of your life is anymore? When you’re so upset because you thought you understood justice and righteousness but then God pulls the stupid rug out from under you? When you realize that you just had a profound impact on history and it isn’t the kind of impact you wanted to have?

I asked God to kill me. It was all too much for me. I became obsessed with Nineveh, constantly observing, certain that even if God didn’t destroy the city, eventually its people would cause it to collapse in on itself. As I built shelter in the desert and obsessed over my enemies, I began to experience that disorientation I had in the fish. Sure, I had sun now. I could count the days of my exhausting obsession. But I lost sight of who I was, where I was, why I was there. All I knew was I hated the people in Nineveh, and I hated myself. My hatred was all that felt real. I went mad with anger and spite. And probably a touch of heat stroke.