Jonah 4:1-11

Playing God

© 2000, J.W. Carter
Scripture quotes from KJV

Jonah 4:9 - 11.

9But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?" "I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die." 10But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

Again, God offered Jonah an opportunity for self-searching. Jonah responded with his repeating ludicrous tantrum. Jonah found pleasure in the vine. That vine meant more to him than the city of 120,000 people. He valued his own view of the spectacle greater than the violent deaths of all of the people and animals of that city.

We find pleasure in meeting our own desires or seeing those desires met, and that is certainly appropriate. However, there are two questions that relate to the meeting of our own needs. Do we find greater pleasure in meeting our own needs than in meeting the needs of others? Second, are those needs and desires for which we seek fulfilling the same needs and desires that God has for us?

This study was written prior to the celebration of Thanksgiving, one of the rare opportunities to celebrate a national holiday that honors God. The American tradition is to have the women spend hours preparing the largest feast of the year. The family then comes together and devours the repast, consuming a gazillion calories. The men then leave the women to clean up the mess while they retire to the big-screen TV and watch a series of football games. This pretty much describes my experience with the celebration, except for the big-screen TV. One Thanksgiving we tried something a little different. One of the churches in our community prepares a hot Thanksgiving meal with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and all the trimming. It then places each meal into boxes and feeds the poor and homeless with them. Instead of doing the gorge-and-burp tradition of the day, we joined with the members of this church in this mission. Though we have not made this mission a tradition in our home, those thanksgivings spent meeting the needs of the poor will always be the real Thanksgiving celebrations.

Whenever we consider the book of Jonah, we can be reminded of Jonah’s prejudice towards the Gentiles, a prejudice that was so blinding that he wanted to be entertained by the spectacle of their death. A prejudice so strong that he cared for a vine more than he cared for those people. Though we do not share the depth of prejudice that Jonah demonstrates, we must be vigilant to maintain a Spirit-led love for all people that will empower us to take action on the behalf of the lost. What do you find pleasure in? As we draw closer and closer to God, we will find more pleasure in the same things that God does, and the depth of the joy and peace we will gain cannot be estimated. We will find that those things that we think are important, but are contrary to God’s will in our lives, will start to lose their priority. Let us all seek to grow closer to God, to seek to have a more Christ-centered and less self-centered view, and to learn to love all people more than ourselves, irregardless of their social state.