Why are you running from God? What is it about Him that you don’t like?
Or, to ask it a different way, why are people deconstructing from God, why are there so many exvangelicals. What is the attribute of God that makes them want to flee?
Perhaps they think He’s too…
Rigid
Demanding
Staunch
Judgy
Authoritative
Outdated
But one thing I never hear is that God is too kind. Too merciful. Too loving. Too patient.
**Jonah has entered the chat.**
It’s sad that most people - most Christians - only know 3/4 of the book of Jonah.
We know Jonah 1 - he runs from God, gets on a ship, gets thrown off the ship, and gets swallowed by a whale.
We know Jonah 2 - he prays in the whale and gets vomited up
We know Jonah 3 - he goes into Nineveh, preaches judgment, Nineveh repents, and God relents.
But we don’t know Jonah 4 - there’s a tree, a worm, some sun, Jonah’s mad enough to die, and a gives the reason for the rest of the story.
It’s in Jonah 4 that his reason for running from God is revealed. Why did he go to Tarshish instead of Nineveh?
[1] But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:1–4, emphasis added)
You’re Too Kind
Why did Jonah run from God? Because God is
Gracious
Merciful
Slow to anger
Abounding in steadfast love
Relenting from disaster
This was theology that he knew both from Exodus 34 and his experience in the belly of the beast. And he didn’t like it.
Jonah was angry. Angry enough to die. How dare God be kind. Especially to His enemies.
Jonah and the “Well….”
I remember conversations with fellow Calvinists in seminary and Bible college about whether it’s legitimate to tell an unbeliever “God loves you” (it is). Or if John 3:16 really means what it says, that “God so loved the world” (it does).
For some reason, it’s next to impossible for some people to freely say “God is love” (just as John does twice in 1 John 4). That attribute is surrounded by, “well… yes, but we have to remember…”
“Well, God’s love is different than our love…”
“But God’s holiness is repeated 3 times and His love isn’t. So, well…”
We will gladly and unequivocally confess God’s holiness, righteousness, justice, etc. But for some reason, we think our confessions of God’s kindness have to be qualified.
I wonder what Jonah would think about that.
He knew God would have mercy. But doubted God would bring judgement. That’s why he ran.
Between Nineveh and Now
What’s happened to our theology? Why did Jonah (rightly) assume kindness but that’s the last thing we think about when we think about God?
I don’t have a good answer. Do you?
That’s not a rhetorical question, I really want your thoughts. It seems like a significant issue in the church, one I really care about (and will come back to a few times when Systematic Sundays get to the doctrine of God). What’s happened to the kindness of God?
Leave a comment, send me a message, I want to know your thoughts.
For now, this post doesn’t have a conclusion. It just ends abruptly. I don’t have answers. But, it seems like we (especially preachers and teachers of God’s Word) have some work to do if we want to recover a view of mercy like Jonah had.