The Shift

 "Should I not Pity?" Jonah 4:11.

They're a pretty stubborn bunch, you know - people. You can provide them with all manner of astonishing wonders... life, the universe, and everything. You can grant them some real moments of beauty and joy and top it all with the opportunity to actually commune with the one who provides such riches, and you know what happens? They will take it all for granted, and either snub the giver entirely and squander what's available, or, they'll view themselves as moral and righteous enough not to need any more intrusions, because they're fine making their own way thank you very much.

People often make the fatal mistake of thinking that they're just fine living in one of the  two 'modes' outlined above. I'm "moral" enough not to break the social norms, whatever they may be, but I also want to 'live and let live' as and when I can, because that's what matters, right? Group one. I keep myself distanced from those who believe themselves to be OK but are actually deplorable because they're not really moral at all - nothing like me, who would see all of them shunned in a heartbeat if I had my way. Group two.  In other words, the residents of Nineveh and their diametrically opposite, a man named Jonah.

Now you'd never expect these two parties to end up together, but Jonah's story shows that what God wants - all people facing something deeper than their own misplaced desires - has a way of breaking through our stubborn ignorance and drawing us to what we genuinely need.

The needs of group one are pretty obvious. They're so caught up in the pattern to satisfy what's immediate that they are not looking beyond that, so the vital need here is to open a larger world to them - to jolt their world-view in such a manner that they begin to understand that they have to look harder and deeper than before.

It's often the case that people in the group two company look upon those in the group one just like Jonah - believing themselves to be morally superior - but you'll notice something telling as you look at this little book... most of it is actually focused upon the trouble in Jonah, not Nineveh, which speedily repents when it's given the opportunity. God's wrestling with Jonah is still a work in progress at the end of the book.

So, given that the folks of this city needed to change their severely shallow understanding of what was good and then live accordingly, what is the real issue at the heart of this story?

Jonah is clearly someone whose 'morality' meant that he never chose to get entangled with those deemed 'below' (less "righteous" than) him. At the very end of these events, we learn something crucial - Jonah knew enough to understand that the Lord's attitude was entirely different to his own (Jonah 4:2) - that God wanted to rescue people from their folly - and the truth was Jonah wanted nothing to do with that!

There is some good news.

Jonah's experience shows us that God is most certainly greater than our folly. When Jonah finds himself in deep trouble (chapter two), he understands that he can only cry to God for aid, and this clearly motivates him to do what's been asked (chapter three), but there's a far deeper work to be done in respect to this man's mis-placed confidence in his own piety (chapter four).

The final lesson here is clear - God is seeking to sustain what truly counts... our souls being right with him (4:10), and this should crucially point us to the vital and inherent truth concerning His nature - that He is the Lord at work to show men mercy in their time of need (verse 11).

In Jonah's world, there was no place for mercy to a city like Nineveh - they deserved the disaster falling upon them, but there was also no place for God to show care to him (the lesson in the final part of the book), because he was just as needy of God's aid as everyone else, though he clearly still needed to learn this.

We live in a world where we so easily dress ourselves in all manner of misplaced assumptions about our right to be a particular way, be that 'sinful' or 'righteous', but the truth is that without Gods absolute mercy being bestowed upon us, all of us are in a precarious situation where our inherent evil will finish us for good. When we're made aware of this, we can choose to respond in two ways - we can either do as the people of Nineveh here and run to God for aid, or we can become a Jonah, believing our deeds, our standing, covers what's required, and we can therefore judge others beneath us - we can even judge God's mercy as something out of line!

As we find ourselves facing a society becoming more and disjointed by the plague of political correctness and a new (yet all too familiar) morality which divides between those deemed 'good' and the unacceptable, we have to take God's warning here seriously - He is a God who pity's ALL those in trouble, and is indeed a God who is wanting to correct those who believe they are beyond the straying of others.

The truth is only God's love expressed finally at the Cross rescues at all.