But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. 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 4:1-3

Most people remember Jonah being swallowed by a whale.  A few others remember he was running from God when the “whale” (actually a “sea monster”) swallowed him. Sunday school scholars actually remember what happened after the whale threw him up: he went to preach to the Ninevites.  Sunday graduate school scholars remember what happened after Jonah’s day-long sermon: the Ninevites repented. And God actually forgave them, relenting from the plan to destroy the wicked city.

But almost no one can remember what happened in Chapter 4, when Jonah saw his prophesy of doom reversed by God.  He had a hissy-fit.  The last chapter of the story of Jonah consists mostly of Jonah complaining that God had betrayed him and that God’s mercy for Nineveh was more than he could stand.

Jonah was expected to deal with a divine-ordered reform: the acceptance of repentant pagan people. As a traditional Hebrew prophet, Jonah held the belief that Gentiles, all non-Jewish people, were not favored by God. What God says at the conclusion of the book of Jonah is: And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals? (Jonah 4:12).

The implied response to God’s question is “Of course,” but Jonah’s final words in this book are: Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. (Jonah 4:3). Laughable, but also pitiable, because even three days in the whale could not shake Jonah’s fixation on the rights of the “chosen people.” The tale instructs us that God is more tolerant and merciful than his chosen people.

I call the rigidity of faith against new revelation or compromise the “Jonah Syndrome.” It means a faith that expects a certain universal order and rejects anything that disrupts it. Jonah is the extreme case. He says, Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. 

Could the certainty of some people’s faith instill a prejudice against human differences? Differences in gender preference, the role of women, race, political preference ? “True faith” people can sometimes mean stubborn people.

I remember having a discussion about homosexuals with a friend and former Lutheran pastor. We were both members of the first church I had attended after a desperate period of my life.  He asked me to consider the human identity of those born to prefer their own sex. I had preconceptions that I could not see through, and I told him I thought the gay identity was an aberration, learned in the culture.  I remember his disappointed expression, when he realized I was implacable.

Two years later Kathy and I moved to Ypsilanti, MI to take my first academic appointment at Eastern Michigan University. We moved to Depot Town, a lovely historical neighborhood. After a year I realized that my new next-door neighbors were lesbians, and, a year later, that my back yard neighbors were gay men.  I realized there were several gay professors where I worked.  It was a classic case of cognitive dissonance: believing something that was utterly challenged by circumstances.

Kathy was much more tolerant of homosexuality than I, and she invited our next-door neighbors over for coffee and conversation. I was nervous about entertaining them, because of my own hang-ups, but I found we had much more in common than I imagined.

They were married. They were musicians and had met in Europe, where gay marriage had been normalized. They wore ordinary clothes, a little more “mannish” than an avowed heterosexual might expect, but nothing disturbing. They were interested in acquiring a dog. We had three dogs, and Kathy obliged with most of what she knew about small dogs. We had two Papillons and had bred another Papillon twice, and they were interested in all the details. Kathy loved gardening. So did they. They were the most compatible neighbors we could ask for, and they won my heart over a period of months. It was obvious they were truly in love with each other no differently than Kathy and I were in love.

The guys over the back yard fence were very friendly. In the summer we would meet at the fence to share the news of the city and the neighborhood. It took me longer to accept gay men, but my prejudices toward lesbians had been broken, so I gradually felt comfortable with my male neighbors.

As for the workplace, my department head was gay as well as many in my department, so I learned acceptance just by working with people I had never known.  We were all just colleagues with shared experiences. It was what some conservative believers call “normalization.”

The city of Ypsilanti brought forth an equal rights referendum, including same-sex rights, within two years of our moving there. It passed by a three to one vote. Clearly, we were in a new culture! My experience convinced me that integrating with people was a powerful way to learn to accept them. I chose not to call it “normalization .”

So maybe I wasn’t rigid. I certainly had my prejudices changed over a couple of years, and nothing has happened since then to challenge my reform. But I know what I believed before we moved to Ypsilanti, and probably nothing but a transplant into another community, i.e. divine intervention, could have changed those beliefs.

The Jonah Syndrome prevented me from seeing gay people as real people, as chosen as much as any of us, for God’s mercy. I had to give up my dualistic view of gender to accept sincere couples, who practiced monogamy and cared about their heterosexual neighbors.

The narrative of Jonah ends quite differently than the book of Job,  a narrative written about the same time. In the very end, Job is restored to double his original family and fortune, but first he says when God appears from a terrifying whirlwind:

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

But now my eye sees you;

Therefore I despise myself

And repent in dust and ashes.  Job 42:5-6)

How different from Jonah, who hears the dreaded truth and says, Lord, take away my life. Job survives with a new understanding of God. Jonah despairs, because he cannot accept the new understanding. He is trapped in an ethnocentric view of God, instead of the new vision of an omnipresent God who favors all people. Faced with a “cognitive dissonance,” Job turns from anger to worship.

It is harder for me to identify with Job, who bears so much and hangs on to fragments of faith, in spite of unfathomable hardship. It is easier for me to see myself as the sad sack prophet who cannot accept what I now believe: that God’s mercy is to all people, not just a select few.

I find it easier to learn from Jonah. His lesson is basic: don’t assume you know who God favors and doesn’t favor. Let faith be a matter of “the conviction of things unseen,” things I don’t already know or think I know. Faith is not only what I believe, but what I might believe, as my understanding of God grows. God may be unchanging, but God is not always who I think God is. I can learn from the hapless, whale-devoured prophet, Jonah.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

Nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. (Isaiah 55:8)