It’s the first day back to school for Evangel’s spring semester, so it’s the first day back to school for me, too, as I teach an online Old Testament book study on Jonah. Twenty-five students and I are going to spend 16 weeks talking about one reluctant prophet and a big fish.
Or not.
The book of Jonah does not focus on the fish, as do children’s stories, but focuses instead on God’s mercy. Specifically, the book focuses on mercy to those whom Jonah deemed undeserving — Jonah’s enemies who brutally and serially conquered other ethnic groups, dominating them via vicious and disgusting methods. Jonah had good reason to, shall we say, intensely despise them.
So when God told Jonah to be His spokesperson to them, Jonah didn’t want anything to do with it because he knew that God would withhold destruction if the people changed their ways. No one as bad as his enemies deserved a second chance, Jonah reasoned.
God’s mercy to enemies (not just Jonah’s but our own and His) is … scandalous.
Now, can we spend 16 weeks talking about scandalous mercy? Yes.
And yes, my students are reading a Zondervan Academic commentary titled God’s Scandalous Mercy by Kevin Youngblood. Something is ‘scandalous’ when it causes general public outrage because it’s perceived to offend morality. There’s been a lot of general public outrage recently — for valid and invalid reasons. People on both sides riot and protest, some for the good of many, and others for the good of none. The result is a highly polarized climate from any angle you look at it — socially, politically, culturally, economically. There’s “us” and “them,” and “they” should not receive mercy.
And maybe they shouldn’t. We have good reasons. So did Jonah.
But sometimes, God says otherwise. He gives a second chance. Yet how can God do something that we don’t think is morally right?
Not that we’re going to solve this question in 16 weeks, but we’re going to dig our heels into it because Jonah has much to say to us in 2021. The more I look at this book, the more I see that I have needed this same mercy that I would so readily deny my enemies.
This is hard. This is messy. This hits home.
Pray for the 25 students, these future leaders, who chose this course for a variety of reasons but who all will daily face the question of whether or not to extend biblical mercy to people and in situations where the victims and the victimizers are clearly defined. How will these students lead with biblical mercy at the forefront of a divided culture? Pray for me along these same lines: I don’t have all the answers, but I seek truth in the text with a posture of expectancy. And pray for more people to demonstrate biblical mercy in our world.
Because God’s mercy is for ALL people, not just our people.