It’s Not About the Fish: A Memoir

This morning, I read the book of Jonah. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t really about the fish.

The story of Jonah and the whale ranks among the most recognizable stories from my Sunday School years. I thought I could recount it easily from memory: God tells the prophet Jonah to go to Ninevah, Jonah runs the other direction. God punishes him with a big storm, and his shipmates throw him overboard to save themselves. Jonah gets swallowed by a whale, prays to God, and gets hawked up onto a beach somewhere, at which point he becomes obedient and goes to Ninevah. The End.

Those of you who know the story a little better than I did realize that focusing on the whale (literally, a “great fish”) misses the bigger picture of what Jonah’s story holds for us. For that matter, I’m going to stop calling it a story. It happened. Let’s call it Jonah’s memoir instead.

As we read Jonah’s memoir, it helps to know a little of the historical setting. Ninevah, the place God was telling Jonah to go, was the capital of Assyria, an incredibly powerful and brutal nation at that time and one that would eventually take northern Israel into captivity a few decades after Jonah’s experience.

Understanding this setting helps clarify that Jonah wasn’t scared of going to Ninevah. He didn’t want God to save them. They were enemies of Israel, they were a threat to Jonah’s hometown. Jonah understood from the start that if God wanted him in Ninevah, it was to offer salvation to the enemy. He wanted no part of it.

We all know the next part. Jonah’s firm “no” started sounding like a resounding “yes” as it gurgled up from the bottom of the sea. But God heard Jonah’s waterlogged prayer of repentance and accepted it, bringing Jonah back and giving him a second chance to do what was asked. Recounted in Jonah chapter 2, it’s actually a great example of a “rock bottom” prayer, where despite Jonah’s huge mistake and humbled circumstance, he cries out in faith to a God he knows will save him. Jonah wasn’t perfect, but there’s a deep faith there worth our consideration.

At any rate, Jonah went to Ninevah. He had no love for the Ninevites. You could even speculate that he relished the chance to tell them God was going to destroy them in 40 days and was already planning his ring-side seat for the show.

That’s not what happened, though. The people believed God. They fasted, they put on sackcloth, and they repented. And God relented. That prophesied destruction didn’t come 40 days later after all. God gave the 120,000 people of Ninevah a second chance, just like he’d given Jonah.

Jonah was exceedingly angry about this. Remember, he still didn’t like the people of Ninevah. He whines to God at this point, “see, this is why I didn’t want to come here to begin with. You’re gracious and merciful and I just knew you were going to save them.”

As Jonah proceeds to pout in the desert, God gives Jonah yet another opportunity to rethink his position. He even gives him some shade to keep him comfortable while he mulls things over. After awhile, God then removes the shade. He cranks up the heat a little further for the now-uncomfortable Jonah by bringing a hot east wind. I think God is reminding Jonah that Israel’s security doesn’t depend upon Assyria, but on God’s sovereignty.

The discomfort finally provokes Jonah to say, “fine! Just kill me then. I may as well just die.” Instead of striking Jonah with a bolt of lightning and giving him his wish (which I may have been tempted to do, lacking God’s patience as I do), God gently reminds Jonah that his shade plant, his momentary comfort, is nothing compared to the 120,000 lost people that were just saved.

Mercy triumphs over judgment, as James puts it in New Testament. As I was considering that this morning, it occurred to me this way: maybe judgment isn’t just about punishment. Maybe judgment is actually an invitation to mercy.

Most of my posts to date have related to weight loss and physical restoration from obesity, and you may be wondering where the connection is to Jonah and the revival in Ninevah.

Jonah’s memoir shows us something of Jonah, to be sure, but it’s really more about God. Jonah tells us about his own worst moments, but in so doing, he reveals to us the God of second chances, and the God who delivers mercy from judgment.

As an overweight person, I have lived in fear of judgment about my body. I’ve received my share of it from strangers and loved ones alike, and I’ve feared or imagined how others were judging me even if nobody said it out loud. The truth is, I’ve judged myself pretty harshly, and most of the words I feared hearing from other people were already rattling around my head.

I have avoided going to the gym because of what the other people there might think of me.

I have hidden in baggy clothes.

I have avoided experiences or relationships because I didn’t feel good about myself.

I have faced loving confrontations: “are you sure you should be eating that?” “When are we going to talk about your weight?”

I have judged myself preemptively with self-deprecating remarks aimed at throwing the judgment out there before anybody else had a chance.

I have overheard cruel remarks and been called names.

I have felt rejection.

I have called myself cruel names. I have looked in the mirror and felt disgust and disappointment.

I bet you can relate. In one way or another, we have all experienced the harshness of judgment, and it’s not unique to those who struggle with weight. As women, we tend to be terribly critical of ourselves and one another. We face (and give) criticism, feedback, correction, shade, ridicule, tough love or some variation thereof on an all-too-frequent basis. Some of it is very unfair. Some it is spot-on. Pretty much all of it is hard to hear.

I don’t like it any more than you do. And it’s almost worse when it comes from someone who loves me enough to say the hard thing, instead of just some stranger I can write off. Regardless of how “judgment” is packaged, there’s often — not always, but often — an element of truth we need to hear.

Please, please remember that whether judgment comes from friend or foe, you get to choose whether it makes you better or makes you bitter. You can choose to add it to the bucket of hurt feelings you’ve been stuffing away inside for years, or you can look at it for what it is: a nugget of truth that propels change.

I look back on all the energy I’ve invested in worrying, self-judgment, replaying the harsh words of others, and I really wish I’d reinvested that time in accepting the truth of the moment and stepping forward in faith, seizing mercy. It bears mentioning that unlike human judgment, God’s judgment is always true. So it’s important to be able to discern the difference. Don’t waste a moment believing lies about yourself or others. But when God is using somebody around you to tell you something you need to hear, He is doing it out of love to give you an opportunity for something better. Every single time we  turn to God in repentance, He responds with mercy, forgiveness, restoration and redemption.

And rest assured, He’s got something in store for those folks who seem to really enjoy delivering judgment on others, too. They get their own invitation to mercy. Jonah did. He must have felt like a real jerk when God pointed out that he valued a vine over the lives of hundreds of thousands of ignorant souls who needed salvation. But God gave him another opportunity to change, too, because ultimately God’s mercy is part of HIS character and has nothing to do with whether we deserve it.

He is the God of second chances, not just for the Jonahs but also for the rest of us — even the barbaric Assyrians in Ninevah. If there’s something in our lives we’re not doing the way we should, whether it’s care of our physical bodies, loving well those around us, trusting in God, or something else altogether, God will bring it to our attention because He loves us enough to do that. Our Father chastens those whom He loves. If we ignore it, His voice gets louder. It may sound like the whisper of a loved one, the shout of a stranger, words from a pulpit, or even the unexpected news of a doctor. Our job — our choice — is to listen or not.

I’m grateful for my second chances … and third and fourth and fifth. I’m still learning to listen quickly. My past holds things I wish I could undo. Like Jonah, I have fled from God when I knew full well what I was doing was wrong. God chased me down and turned me back around. It has at times been pretty unpleasant to see myself through His eyes. At the same time, He has been gracious with me in brokenness.

Mercy triumphs over judgment. Because of who God is, not because of who we are. So when we inevitably face the voice of judgment, let’s do our best to hear it as an invitation to hold on to the mercy of God for every part of our lives.