I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 

Jonah 4:2b

I have heard this scripture from Jonah 4 quoted many times. It is often quoted and shared as a means to comfort those who are struggling. The intention is to remind those needing encouragement that God is patient and loving. God cares for you the same way that a compassionate father would care for his own child.

But when Jonah speaks these words to God, he wasn’t celebrating or praising God for these attributes. This was a complaint! Jonah was complaining that God was too slow to anger when it came to those Jonah identified as an enemy. Jonah 4:1 tells us that Jonah grew angry when he witnessed this city repent and worship God.

For me, this realization that Jonah was upset that God was TOO patient, TOO loving, and TOO compassionate had a profound effect on the way I understood Jonah; and as a result, it gave me a new lens to turn towards myself, asking, “in which ways am I like Jonah?”

Are there moments or situations where I wish God was more like me? A little quicker to bring judgement? A little less generous with forgiveness? A little more motivated by seeing people get what they deserve?

The hard truth that I shared during the sermon on Sunday was that God is more gracious and compassionate than we are. I felt like this was an important truth to share because many of us who have grown up in church or come to faith as adults were given a picture of God who is driven by Holy anger. Wrath is coming and we all need to be terrified of God’s judgement.

I think a great error has occurred and been perpetuated by reducing God’s judgement or justice to mean punishment. It it so much more than that. It means God’s work in the world to right the wrongs and to restore that which is broken. To understand God’s judgement and justice requires that we have a solid understanding of biblical eschatology; what is God’s plan for creation in the future? And because this is a topic that would take some time to unpack it will be the focus of later blog posts or sermons.

But getting the view of what God is doing with creation wrong will lead us to a skewed perception of who God is. If God truly is this angry old guy in the sky just waiting to bring an end to all creation, it not only shapes our relationship with God, but with people in our lives too.

Beyond our theology, our present society is hard at work shaping us to be less compassionate and less gracious. For generations the economy was built upon manufacturing and production, meaning that companies made money by making and selling goods. As businesses became more and more aware that labor was the biggest barrier to making even more money, they not only found ways to minimize their labor costs (sending jobs overseas to places with weaker labor laws, developing technology that replaces human labor, fighting against increased wages for employees, etc) but some companies discovered that they could make obscene amounts of money without ever manufacturing and selling any goods. Rather, they have found ways to monetize “engagement”. (Engagement: the level in interaction people have with “content”)

Whether it is television or any of the social media platforms, powerful people have woken up to the reality that there is money, power, and influence to be gained simply by getting people to react. And the most powerful reaction that can be cultivated is outrage against a person or a group we think of as our enemy.

Our most powerful systems (political, religious, and economic) are being driven by manufacturing outrage and encouraging divisiveness. These systems not only create an “us vs them” perspective on the world, but they relentlessly feed it. In fact, some of these flames have been fanned so well for so long that people exposed to this outrage-manufacturing-machine can find themselves completely wrapped up in false narratives and an alternate reality.

This type of manipulation and formation has been around on the small scale for a long time in the form of cults, but as religious, political, and economic systems collide into the same digital town square that we call social media, we see this happening on a tremendous scale.

Why do I mention these systems in a conversation of Jonah? Because not only do we have to be aware of our natural tendencies to let fear or pride make enemies of other people, but now, more than ever before, we have to be aware of the deliberate outright war on community that is happening. There are billions of dollars spent and teams of experts working right now to make you hate your enemy more than you already do. Social media is driven by programs which choose the content they believe we will engage with the most. If you demonstrate a strong reaction to a certain topic or a certain type of content, it will feed it to you more.

The more radical and divisive the content the more engagement it generates. It doesn’t mean it’s good or healthy or true. But more clicks equals more engagement. More engagement means more users. More users equals more ad sales and data collected.

Not only is it true that God is more compassionate and gracious than we are, but it is also true that the everyday elements of our lives are moving us farther and farther away from God’s nature. Our lives, our relationships, our families, our churches, and our neighborhoods will bear the scars of this outrage manufacturing. We have made enemies of the very people God has placed into our lives to love and care for.

We are days away from a national election that has revealed/created divisiveness in our country unlike anything we have seen before. Red vs Blue. Trump vs Biden. These lines drawn in the sand move well beyond political policies and theories of governance. It’s personal. Americans have been encouraged to see their friends, family members, church family, classmates, coworkers, and fellow Americans as enemies. We have spent the past several years identifying our enemies in this fight. There is no shortage of hate and outrage aimed at people on the other side.

I’ve heard many people say they cannot wait for the election to be over, and I agree. But I don’t think the effects of years of intense enemy-making will be magically gone when we wake up on November 4th, regardless of the outcome. I wish it was that easy. But I’m pretty confident that these deeply engrained divisions cannot be forgotten simply because the day changed on the calendar.

So what can heal wounds and divisions caused by the enemy-making, outrage-generating culture we find ourselves in at the moment?

Remembering that our God is more loving and compassionate than we are.

We are confronted with two options:

1. to see our God as He is and work to become more like Him or
2. to commit to our own ideologies and work to make our God look more like ourselves (justifying and deifying our prejudices and biases)

Jonah was angry because God gave the people of Nineveh the grace to repent. God was slow to anger because God loved those people (the scripture tells us it was 120,000 people). Several times in the short book, Jonah expresses his despair because he struggled to accept a God who loved his enemies.

So as we navigate these troubled times in which enemies are so clearly defined in front of us, may we begin to see them with God’s eyes: as people that God loves. And then may our attitudes and actions be shaped by that love as well.

And if we don’t let our faith shape our vision, then the next outrageous thing will be right there in front of us the next time we log in or log on, ready to convert our emotions and energies into dollars and power for some one else.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of outrage right now. I’m exhausted by the constant anxieties and fighting and shouting. And I have a sneaky suspicion that the people pushing our buttons do not have our best interests in mind.

I long for peace that results from God’s love motivating and shaping our engagement in the world.The scriptures offer us a vision of a world shaped by God’s love. It’s called God’s Kingdom. And as we see more clearly in scripture that alternative way of living in and engaging with the world, may we join together in the familiar prayer, “Thy Kingdom Come…”

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