TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
"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 4:2, N.I.V.
Most children who attend Sunday school hear about Jonah. Most of the time, it's the whale that gets top billing. Adults wonder if such a thing could really happen. Maybe that's where the expression "It sounds a little fishy!" originated. At any rate it's a story about a man who thought God was too good to be true.
Very little is known about Jonah. Perhaps the most qualifying statement about him is found near the end of the book that bears his name. After all the hassle of sending Jonah to a Gentile city to foretell its impending destruction at the hand of God, God had not destroyed Nineveh. Jonah is pouting. "I knew it all along!" he told God. "That's why I didn't want to go there in the first place! I knew You were too loving to go through with destroying them. I'm so embarrassed; I wish I were dead!" (See Jonah 4:1-3.)
Jonah knew God! He knew that God was slow to anger and ready to forgive. Then why had he worked up such a head of stem because God had indeed forgiven that repenting, heathen city? We can readily see that his pride got in the way, but let's examine the situation more closely. The truth may hit much closer to home than we first imagined.
Jonah was a member of a family whose name meant "true." Jonah True was proud of his lineage, secure in his religion. No doubt he was a model Israelite in his time. A separatist at heart, he looked upon the surrounding Gentiles with disdain. He would have preferred that God simply rid the world of these heathen, but he had evidently come to know that God did not feel the same way.
Sadly, Jonah had not allowed his knowledge of God's character to draw him into friendship with the Almighty. He had not been changed by interaction with Divinity. "Right," to his mind, was defined by statute and law, not by the deeper demands of unconditional love. And so, for Jonah True, it was more important that what he said turn out to be right than it was for repenting sinners to find forgiveness.
I am glad that God is too good to be like Jonah True, aren't you?
"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 4:2, N.I.V.
Most children who attend Sunday school hear about Jonah. Most of the time, it's the whale that gets top billing. Adults wonder if such a thing could really happen. Maybe that's where the expression "It sounds a little fishy!" originated. At any rate it's a story about a man who thought God was too good to be true.
Very little is known about Jonah. Perhaps the most qualifying statement about him is found near the end of the book that bears his name. After all the hassle of sending Jonah to a Gentile city to foretell its impending destruction at the hand of God, God had not destroyed Nineveh. Jonah is pouting. "I knew it all along!" he told God. "That's why I didn't want to go there in the first place! I knew You were too loving to go through with destroying them. I'm so embarrassed; I wish I were dead!" (See Jonah 4:1-3.)
Jonah knew God! He knew that God was slow to anger and ready to forgive. Then why had he worked up such a head of stem because God had indeed forgiven that repenting, heathen city? We can readily see that his pride got in the way, but let's examine the situation more closely. The truth may hit much closer to home than we first imagined.
Jonah was a member of a family whose name meant "true." Jonah True was proud of his lineage, secure in his religion. No doubt he was a model Israelite in his time. A separatist at heart, he looked upon the surrounding Gentiles with disdain. He would have preferred that God simply rid the world of these heathen, but he had evidently come to know that God did not feel the same way.
Sadly, Jonah had not allowed his knowledge of God's character to draw him into friendship with the Almighty. He had not been changed by interaction with Divinity. "Right," to his mind, was defined by statute and law, not by the deeper demands of unconditional love. And so, for Jonah True, it was more important that what he said turn out to be right than it was for repenting sinners to find forgiveness.
I am glad that God is too good to be like Jonah True, aren't you?
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