Two Minority Reports from the Hebrew Bible: IX The Inescapable Love of God
July 23, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Jonah 4
“I knew it,” he says. “I just knew this was going to happen. That’s just the way you are, God—you old softy with the bleeding heart.” Jonah describes God as “gracious, merciful, and abounding in steadfast love.” Over the generations it had become the terse précis of Israel’s understanding of God: “gracious, merciful, and abounding in steadfast love.” And Jonah doesn’t like it. Jonah would rather die than live in a world where such people as the Ninevites get a second chance.
Two Minority Reports from the Hebrew Bible, VIII : The Inescapable Tasks of God
July 16, 2023 • Christine V. Hides • Jonah 3
Haven’t we all been in a situation where speaking up could make us look foolish, or worse? Colleagues hesitate to question a doctor’s prescription error. Engineers are pushed to meet deadlines even when there’s a faulty part. Students do social calculus before deciding to stand up for someone being bullied at the next lunch table. In The Out-Laws movie that’s popular on Netflix, Owen, played by Adam DeVine, weighs the risk of losing his fiancée if he tells her “Your parents are bank robbers.” Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson names this the voice-silence calculation. It turns out that remaining silent is often easier, because the almost certain and immediate benefit provides safety from retaliation and being wrong. On the other hand, speaking up benefits the group, often at some unknown and less likely point in the future.[1] Can you blame Jonah for choosing to run away rather than speak up? The Ninevites get the benefit of God’s mercy, while Jonah’s doomsday prediction makes him look less reliable than a soapbox preacher yelling on the corner. [1] Hadley, Constance et al. “Make It Safe for Employees to Speak up - Especially in Risky Times,” Harvard Business Review, 2023 Accessed online: https://hbr.org/2023/04/make-it-safe-for-employees-to-speak-up-especially-in-risky-times
Two Minority Reports from the Hebrew Bible, VII : The Inescapable Presence of God
July 9, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Jonah 2
Someone here is feeling the first gentle but later insistent urgings of God to Gospel duty. Someone here is being called by God to preach or practice Truth in the face of falsehood. Someone here is caught between what she wants to do and what God needs her to do. Someone here faces a choice between a comfortable and a meaningful life. Someone here stands at the crossroads of Broad Street and Narrow Way. Someone here doesn’t know whether to sail west to friendly Tarshish or hike east to wicked Nineveh.
Two Minority Reports from the Hebrew Bible, VI: The Inescapable Call of God
July 2, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Jonah 1
Jonah does not want to preach good news to these desperados, so in response to God’s triple imperative of Arise, Go, and Preach, Jonah answers with a triple indicative of Arise, Flee, and Sleep. He hails a taxi and heads for the seaport Joppa and books passage on the first ship going west. WAY west. To Tarshish, in fact. God wants Jonah to travel about 500 miles east to Nineveh, and in response, Jonah starts a journey of about 2,500 miles west. This is not a subtle gesture. Jonah is telling God to take a hike.