Jonah: Drinking Poison

A friend recently mentioned that he is re-reading Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. It's the story of a failed priest on the run from the police. He is friendless, homeless, and searching for some sense of purpose in his life. Hiding from his calling and from decisions he has made in the past, he is, ironically, incapable of not being a priest and ministering to people—even at the risk of his own life. Tormented by guilt, he spends the whole novel both in flight and in pursuit.

It is so much like the story of Jonah. I don't know whether Graham Greene had Jonah in mind when he wrote the novel, but their stories are remarkably similar. I've been thinking about Jonah and his anger lately. I've had similar experiences over the years and have come to believe that we all have at least one Ninevite in our lives—though probably more.

Maybe I am simply more sensitive these days to the spirit of Jonah and the signs of it in our own society. We have a hatred festering and bubbling up among us that is increasingly taking control of our lives.

My Ninevites are not citizens of foreign cities or nation-states. They are people I know—or feel like I know because I cannot escape them unless I completely withdraw. These are the people whom we believe deserve our anger and God's as well, so we allow a small but spreading dark corner of our hearts to grow around our outrage. We nurse it. We feed it. We protect it.

There are people I consider hypocrites and frauds, yet they are successful in ministry and in life. Why don't their thousands of followers see them as clearly as I do? Why do their sins go unnoticed—or even excused? The Psalms say that the wicked strut about when what is vile is honored among men. They do. They strut and boast. How can they fool so many people for so long?

These are the people about whom I enjoy hearing bad news. The German word is schadenfreude.

When I see articles about their failures, I read and re-read them. I don't skim. I absorb the details. I linger. I want to hear more. I want to repost them over and over again. Schadenfreude.

There are more than a few people I have met along the way who do not meet my standards—or God's. Scripture says the people of Nineveh were so morally confused that they did not know their right hand from their left. They had an excuse for their wickedness. But I know that my Ninevites willfully choose deceit, and I have become an expert at discerning their spin and deceit. I am a connoisseur of human frailty. I know well their flaws and failures.

And, honestly, I don't want to see them humbled in sackcloth—not right away. First, I want them exposed. I don't want them to repent. I want them humiliated in public and, even then, cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. I want justice. I want righteousness.

I believe that is why Jonah ran. He ran from a justice he could not understand and, like Javert in Les Misérables, could never have accepted for himself. He ran from the possibility of freedom from his own self-destructive anger. He ran from love.

Greene writes:

"... God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert didn't it and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.”

It's true, isn't it? For some people their being humbled or saved is not enough for us. First, we want to see them found out for who we know them to be - and they can repent afterwards. I want to see them on their faces waiting judgment. Then God can save them.

I know that holding on to anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It's true and only the measure of love that is enough to scare us and from which we long to run can save us. I would have headed to Spain myself and suppose I still do when God’s love for my Ninevites exposes me – not them – for who I am.

Jonah’s story is ours.

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