2 posts tagged “bible”

Jonah is so often oversimplified to the point of being practically meaningless.  I heard the story so many times growing up, but I never heard the real story.  I just saw it in felt cutouts where a smiling Jonah is eaten by a great fish that looked eerily like Fudgie the Whale.  The story always seemed to end, "Jonah was faithful and everyone was saved.  YAY!"
    Imagine my surprise when I first took the time to sit down and read the book of Jonah.  I found it less as an inspirational tale about obedience, and more as a editorial comment on disobedience.  Jonah was not so much a great man of God as he was a reluctant hero, dragged every inch of the way kicking and screaming, only to be bitter and dissatisfied with his own victory because it wasn't what he expected.  For all of you who don't know the story, I will now quickly paraphrase it.

SCENE:  Jonah, a moderately well off Israelite, is sitting around reflecting on how awesome he is.  Enter the Voice of God.

GOD:  Hey, Jonah, I need to talk to you.
JONAH:  me?
GOD: That's what I said, isn't it?
JONAH:  I can dig that.
GOD:  I want you to go to Nineveh.
JONAH:  The people there are gay.  No.  I don't want to get to close to the gay.
GOD:  I'm God, and I told you to go to Nineveh.  Tell them to repent or be burned.
JONAH:  They're awfully gay.  Can't you burn them anyway?
GOD:  I am telling you to go to Nineveh and call for their repentance.  I am the LORD your GOD.
JONAH:  Aren't there people better suited to this sort of call?
GOD:  Don't you dare make me count to three.
JONAH:  Okay, okay, I'm going.
GOD:  Good.

Jonah scampers off, buys a ticket on a boat heading in the other direction so he can put as much distance between him and the Nineveh Men's Choir as possible.  God sends a storm and Jonah confesses that God is probably pissed at him, so he's sacrificed to the ocean.  While in the water, a huge Fudgie the Whale cake miraculously becomes a REAL whale and swallows him.

JONAH:  um, so, God, I realize you're probably still angry with me, but I promise to never ever again ever disobey you ever if you'd just be merciful.  (repeat for the next 72 hours)
GOD:  Stop nagging me.  Okay.

Jonah is spat up on the shore of Nineveh.  He wanders into the city and starts raving about God's wrath and how they all need to turn from their wickedness.  The people of Nineveh, seeing a half-digested man gesturing wildly, decide that maybe they would rather be less gay than taste the wrath for themselves.  They repent.  Jonah goes up on a hillside to what for the brimstone to start falling.  He sits there all day long, but no brimstone.  So Jonah starts complaining.

JONAH:  Okay, I called for repentance.  I fulfilled my end of the bargain.  Why no brimstone?
GOD:...
JONAH:  I signed up for brimstone.
GOD:...
JONAH:  The lighting is perfect right now.  Obliterate them!

Jonah had gotten rather attached to a weed that had sheltered him from the midday sun.  Now God sent a huge freaking caterpillar to eat it.  Jonah got angry.

JONAH:  Now, on top of everything else you've done to me, you steal my plant?
GOD:  How much did you love that plant?  Imagine how much more I love my people whom I made with my hands and breathed life in to.
JONAH:  Oh, that whole loving God thing.  I'd forgotten about that.
GOD:  Moron.

    Yes, I realize that I'm probably either towing the line of sacrilege or just outright sacrilegious.  I should point out that the people of Nineveh were murderous adulterers and child slave traders, a little worse than just boys who like chorus music.  Jonah was right to be afraid.  But even so- he constantly ran from God and flouted God's judgment, and he still blamed God for making bad things happen to him.  Jonah eschewed personal responsibility while at the same time being a self-righteous blowhard.

    And yet...?  God allowed him to witness a tremendous demonstration of God's own love.  God, always the parent, punished him only in order to let him live a better life.  Jonah, the embodiment of hard-headed youth, refused to recognize his own blessings and whined and whined.
   
    You can read the Bible two ways.

WAY ONE:  Read it in order to pad your pre-chosen notions of what it should say, thus seeing God as judgmental, cruel, and irrational.

WAY TWO: Read it in order to see what it says.

I like way two. 

The book meme.  Open the book closest to you to page 123, count down five sentences and then post the next three.  I thought this would be interesting, since the book that is actually closest to me is a Bible.

    Leviticus 18:3-4a

       You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do what they do in Canaan, where I am bringing you.  Do not follow their practices.  You must be careful to follow my decrees,

For the sake of discussion, I'm going to post just a little more.
    Leviticus 18: 4b-5

       I am the Lord your God.  Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them.

I found it interesting that the meme happened to trigger that particular passage.  It's an interesting one, not only because of what it leads in to (a whole load of laws which are often mocked) but because of what it truly represents.  OId Testament Law, like all law, was primarily about protection.  The phrase "for the man who obeys them will live by them" initially seems redundant, until you read the footnote and see that "by" could be translated as "because".  Those who obey, will live because of the law.  There are laws about how to deal with black mold, about how to plant and harvest, about what foods can and can't be eaten.  All of these laws truly served to protect the people of Israel.  Pork has a much higher risk of disease than beef.  The same is true of poultry.  I find it interesting that by the time Jesus came and said that there is a higher law, the cooking and curing practices of people as a whole had advanced to the point that fear of disease didn't need to be as much of a governing factor.  The same is true of handwashing and the like.  Those laws, while ridiculous for us, were a necessary thing in the governing of a healthy and thriving nomadic society such as Israel's was at the time of the law giving.
    Not blending two kinds of fibers in clothing may also seem ridiculous, until you look at the method of fabric making utilized by the Israelites at the time.   Blending fibers of two lengths and properties actually would have made a much weaker weave, and their clothing would have fallen apart much more easily.  One could ask, "does God CARE about the quality of your clothing?"
    I don't know.  Jesus does caution his followers to not worry about their riches.  He says, "look at the Lilly of the field, see how God clothes it..."
    I think that on some level, if you're going to believe any part of the Bible, go whole hog.  I don't think it's any more ridiculous to believe in a loving God who cared that the people of Israel not live in tents full of mold, eat disease infected pork and have holes in their clothing than it would be to believe in an angry spiteful God who made all of those laws just to torment his faithful.

Enough.  I MUST go work.