Jonah's Prejudice, and Mine

“Forty days, and Nineveh will be destroyed.” Mic drop. Murmurs. “What’d he say?” Panic.
“Somebody go tell the king.” Royal decree. Dust and ashes. Grace.

‍
Jonah offered Nineveh no hope to the sinful Ninevites. His hatred of the Assyrian Empire was so consuming he minced no words and provided no solution in his sermon from Jonah 3:4. He had written them off…so naturally, he assumed God had too. To Jonah, the purpose of the forty days wasn’t for Nineveh to repent. Perhaps in his eyes it was for their torment. I mean, would you want to know the last date etched on your tombstone? Not likely. Jonah thought this was exactly the information he was giving them, and he went up on the hill to watch the spectacle God was preparing. Sodom and Gomorrah all over again? “To have been a fly on the wall,” Jonah thought…perhaps. None of us would dare admit this kind of hatred in our hearts. We’re not like that. But who is, exactly?

I doubt ordinary German citizens of the 30’s and 40’s would have ever thought themselves and their brothers capable of the Holocaust…they were just following orders. Not their fault. Passing the buck to the next guy solves nothing. Guilt by association is still guilt. We should never condemn the actions of someone in the past without having consideration that maybe we’re guilty of the same thing, just in a different way. I can imagine a day in Jonah’s past where something happened that was so foundational in his life, he dismissed anyone that was part of the Assyrian Empire, labeling the whole lot of them vermin. It was that moment where he made up his mind about all of them which was the foundation for his hatred, eventually blossoming into hope of their annihilation. What negative experience with a person have you used to paint others within their group? The truth is, we have labels for “types” of people, after all. Wealthy people. Old people. Young people. Trashy people. Yuppies. Homeless people. Millennials. Ethnicities. Poor people.

And at some point, experience has formed our perception of those within a category. But how all-representative is your experience, anyway? If we allow our experience of people to formulate ideas about vast swaths of others, we see the world through a microscope. The world—that group of people—can’t be defined by my one experience. After all, I don’t want others to make generalizations about me based on some category. But I’ll still do it to them.

To be fully transparent, I was guilty of this very thing earlier today. I was looking for a restaurant to grab a quick bite before Wednesday night church. As I pulled into the parking lot at a local restaurant, three men who were a part of a particular category rode up to the front doors on bikes. No one else was at the restaurant. Them and me. Groan. I thought, “Now if I eat here, these guys will inevitably wind up pestering me.” I was planning to spend my time reading while I ate, so I wanted quiet. Putting the car in reverse, I found someplace else. Minutes later, I began to consider Jonah’s prejudice, and how none of us are exempt from making unfair judgments of others. Conviction sank in. God save me from myself! “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. (1 Tim.1:15)”

Thanks be to God that Christ’s “category” for me was “child in Need of Rescue.” Full stop. Today, ask God to give you the self-awareness to recognize the categories with which you have unfairly labeled others. In the Gospels, we see a Jesus who operated in a world which attached labels to people. But He was the Great Label-Buster, violating all the social norms and unwritten rules because he loved people regardless of labels. The woman at the well. The lepers (whom he touched). Little kids. The woman with the issue of bleeding. Blind men. Demoniacs. The self-righteous. The rich. The poor. Even dead bodies. Today, I resolve to see people the way He does. But I know my strength will fall short, which is why I’m glad his power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). Let the love and mind of Christ fill you today by the power of the Spirit. Let your words offer “those people” hope. They may never see it coming.

Mark 12:30-31 (NIV) 30 “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  31  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”