God Is Not the Problem — (Part 2)
I’m thinking about writing a book. It’s about the way we imagine God and how we embody that image in our lives (or not). I’m going to test it out on Medium. I’ve already posted the beginning of chapter 1 called “God is Not the Problem”. Below is the conclusion to the chapter. Here we go!

“For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” — Jonah 4:2
It’s very likely that you get the point by now (the middle portion of this chapter surveys many of the places where the words above are used to describe God), but this last example from Jonah is an important one. It’s also very likely that you’ve already heard of Jonah. He’s the guy who supposedly got swallowed by a whale, lived inside it for three days, got spit up on the beach, and lived to tell about it. Whether you’ve grown up in church or not, you probably know that story. What’s so unfortunate is that all the arguing about whether or not the whole whale thing really happened distracts from a really good thing that God is doing.
The reason that the whole whale thing even happens in the first place is because Jonah is running away. You may have heard it said, “Jonah is running away from God. So, don’t run away from God or God will chase you down.” Or, “Jonah is running away from his purpose. So, don’t run away from your purpose. God won’t let you get away with it.” You may have heard the “spirit of punishment” coming through those messages. What you’ve heard may be true, but it’s not the heart of the matter. As it turns out, what Jonah is really running away from is people he doesn’t like.
God has sent Jonah to a city called Nineveh. Nineveh was not just any city. It was the “great city” of the Assyrians, a powerful nation with a powerful army. They had taken God’s people captive and carried them away from their homes and their land. They have a different culture. They worship a different god. And, they do not care for the people or the place that Jonah calls home. They are not counted among God’s chosen people. They are “other” and they are the enemy.
So, when God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh he doesn’t want to go. He knows what will happen if he does go and he doesn’t appreciate the thought of it. The reason that Jonah runs away from Nineveh is because he knows that God is forgiving and generous and patient and lovingly loyal. Jonah is displeased and angry because he knows that God will forgive. Jonah objects to God’s goodness (“That is why I fled…” Jonah 4:2).
Jonah’s take on the phrase that we’ve been revisiting adds some key words: “For I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful…ready to relent from punishing.” So, as it turns out, Jonah was running away from Nineveh because he didn’t want to see them forgiven and restored. As it turns out, Jonah preferred the spirit of punishment to God’s spirit of mercy and grace. Jonah wanted to see them wiped out, but God didn’t want to let them go.

I realize that many people experience the church as a bunch of Jonah’s. They are judgmental and critical of those outside the church. At times, they can almost seem excited about the idea of eternal damnation for those who belong to other religions (and sometimes other Christian denominations). They seem unforgiving, stingy, impatient, and fickle. They love to point the finger at other’s behavior while ignoring that they are guilty of the same. And, they turn their backs on the very people that God is trying to rescue.
What the story of Jonah tells us is that you’re right to question that attitude. However, what that means, once again, is that God is not the problem here. Jonah is the problem. He runs away in hopes of preventing God’s goodness from getting to the “other,” to the enemy. There is no doubt that God gets angry and jealous and even disciplines, but God has no desire to stay that way. In the story of Jonah, as in all the other stories we’ve looked at, God is good. Good means forgiving, generous, patient, and lovingly loyal.
“Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” — Joel 2:13
No Fear
You read in the Introduction how God is “terribly angry with our sin” and how “God’s justice demands” that our sin be punished. Language like that makes God someone to fear. As we’ve seen in the examples above, that’s not the right way of thinking and feeling about God and the death of Jesus. We recognize that God can be terribly angry at the cruelty and injustice of human beings, but that doesn’t automatically mean that God wants to punish them, and much less that he needs to or has to punish.
God is one whose desire for mercy overcomes the demands for justice. God is not one who is ready to destroy, but one who is ready to forgive. The phrase that the prophets Jonah and Joel add to the words of God’s goodness (“relents from punishing”) should be enough on its own to cancel out any spirit of punishment. Part of God’s goodness is to relent from punishing, to turn away from it and turn to back to his people. This same idea is found much later in the Bible. One of Jesus’ followers named John wrote a letter that had something to say about God’s love and punishment. Here’s the key part:
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because God first loved us.”
– I John 4:18–19
What John is trying to say is that we don’t have to be afraid of God. In fact, we can be bold with God “because we have known and believe the love that God has for us.” (v. 16). It’s a little more complicated than that, but the main point is my main concern. That is, if we are going to understand the death of Jesus, we need to know the God who is behind it. We need to know that “God is love.” (v. 8) John is part of the same, long tradition that we surveyed in this chapter. God is good and what makes God good is love. There is no fear in love.
If we’re going to claim to know what God intends for us, that knowledge should be rooted in God’s goodness. The “dispensation that we expect at the hand of God” should not be the demands of justice, but the desire for mercy that finds “no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” (Ezekiel 33:11) If we’re going to put “in God we trust” on our police cars, they should reflect a God who is “kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Luke 6:35) not one bent on punishing them. If prayer is going to be part of policy-making we should see that it is helping form laws that are not about instilling fear, but inspiring love.
Any talk about God or of God’s justice or God’s law that does not lead us to forgiveness, generosity, patience, and God’s loving loyalty is merely concealing the “grossest self-interest and cruelty.” As we move forward through this book we will try to remember that God is not the problem. Restoring God’s image requires that we see in the death of Jesus an invitation from God to return, to be rescued, and to be restored to a life of promise, a life without fear.
If you’re ready for Chapter 2, then start here with Part 1.
