What's Tony Thinking

Those Horrible People

A friend was in touch the other day to share the draft of a sermon he will be preaching the Sunday before election day. It is a fine pastoral sermon for what will undoubtedly be a very anxious moment. Drawing on the Old Testament lesson for that Sunday from Jeremiah, he spoke of Jeremiah’s prophecy that the divided nation of Israel would be reunited by God.

He concluded with these words:

“So by all means vote.  Vote your conscience, vote your ideals and principals, vote with such wisdom as God has given you.  Vote above all for the things that you believe God wishes for God’s people.  But cleanse yourself of the sinful perspective that those who vote differently from you are bad people working out of evil motives.  They are God’s children contending with their own challenges and struggles, hopes and fears.  They are your neighbors who you are called to love.”

Sometimes it is, at least with some, a little hard to not keep ourselves from seeing “the other side” as “bad people working out of evil motives.” Sometimes it’s difficult to not think, or say, “What horrible people!”

My friend’s sermon brought to mind a recent post from Nadia Bolz Weber in which she confessed to such thinking. But, then, she found herself reflecting on the biblical story of Jonah. Here’s NBW:

“The heated rhetoric in The U.S. right now, meaning the “they are all racists who hate women” and “they are all marxists who hate America” shit is cranked UP and I find it exhausting and I’m sick to death of how everything we read online (no matter your affiliation) is meant to make us feel righteous and make millions of other Americans look ridiculous.

“But the reason I find it exhausting isn’t because I am so much more evolved than everyone who falls for it, it’s because I KEEP FALLING FOR IT. And while I am hesitantly hopeful for the first time in 8 years, and have my own strongly held beliefs about how I’d prefer for my country to move forward, I am also trying to be honest about what this is doing to my soul.

“So here’s a short Bible story that helps me when I get caught up: Jonah and my enemies . . .

“The detail most people remember about the story of Jonah is that he got swallowed by a whale . . . The whale part – that’s like, ok and everything…. but the rest of Jonah is amazing – I mean, you have to love a Bible story where the least interesting thing about it is that some guy gets swallowed by a big fish and is spat back up on dry land.

“Background: The Assyrians were the enemy of Jonah’s people – they had ravaged and pillaged so much of Israel taking their wealth, occupying their land, and demanded that they be paid tribute . . .

“And then one day, The Word of the Lord comes to Jonah and God says “Go tell that wicked Assyrian city Nineveh to repent– those guys suck so much that their wickedness is like, totally stinking up heaven”.

“It’s like if God came to me and said “Hey Nadia, you know the Jan 6th insurrectionists, and the people who worked to ensure that women in this country could no longer make their own healthcare decision, also all those mansplainers on twitter …well, you’re right, those people suck. So I’d like you to cry out against them for me.”

“Can you imagine? I don’t know about you but I’d take God up on it in a heartbeat. A divinely sanctioned call out? I’d throw up some tweets and go on some podcasts about it and even show up in person with a bullhorn to cry out against my enemies, The Horrible People.

“So it’s kind of weird that Jonah doesn’t take God up on this offer. Instead, Jonah takes off on a boat in the opposite direction. God says for him to go speak against his enemy – to tell them to repent – and Jonah takes off . . . weird.

“So here’s where he gets thrown off a boat, swallowed by a big fish and spat up on the shores of Nineveh where he finally speaks his little half-assed prophecy: “repent or be destroyed” but like, quietly and with about zero sincerity.

“But the thing is, it worked! Jonah’s reluctant prophecy worked. His enemies repented. They stopped their violent ways, they dealt with their systemic racism and provided universal health care and separated their recycling.

“And God did not destroy them! A difficult-to-control kind of God.

“But here’s the rub: Jonah, rather than being delighted that his enemies repented and changed their ways, pouts . . .

“Sitting on a little hill outside Nineveh, Jonah finally admits why he was so reluctant to call for his enemy’s repentance: it wasn’t because of low self-esteem, home sickness or fear of public speaking. No. When his enemies repent and are then spared, Jonah is like, Yeah, that’s why I didn’t want this stupid job in the first place – because I knew, God, that you were gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

“Yep. That’s a biiiig problem, a God like that. Why? Because that kind of God is really hard to recruit onto our own team . . .

“That’s what’s hard about reading Jonah – I have to look at how maybe I too need my enemies to stay my enemies, since it’s hard to know who I am if I don’t know who I’m against. And maybe I need for the apologies of those who have done wrong to never ever be “good enough” for me, because being the one who is right is a comfy place to be. Not to mention that showing up with a bullhorn to cry out against someone else is a pretty effective way for me to avoid being the one being cried out against.”

I’ll close with this memorable zinger from Anne Lamott, very much in the spirit of NBW’s remarks:

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”