Confessions: When I feel like Jonah

I have started at least seven posts in the month or so since I've written. I've stared endlessly at my drafts and felt guilty that I haven't produced here. Why haven't I? I've been in Texas, I've had a birthday, and I've been horribly distracted by my life. I think it's okay to be distracted by your life for a while, as long as at some point you say "Okay, PAUSE!" and you take a minute to really understand where you're at. My minute is here, or more accurately, I think my minute is overdue.

Two Sundays ago I got off a plane to re-enter what is my current reality. I was in Texas exploring an exciting option for my future, and the whole time this was a prospect, I'd marketed it to myself and others as "simply one of my options." While this was true, in my heart of hearts this was the thing that I deeply desired to come to pass. It didn't, and I've spent the last week dealing with my dissapointment over the whole thing. I put a lot of time, effort and money into this, and everything felt so right, with the pieces seeming to fall into place. When the final word came that it was a no go, I couldn't do much but be devastated. What now? Even though I had prefaced the endeavour with this idea that this was one of several options, it was the one I wanted. I didn't have any certainty walking in, and actually I felt that the other options that didn't include me moving were just as likely to happen (maybe even more so).

Source

Understanding Free Will
I feel as though I have to revisit the idea of free will. Have you ever read the story of Jonah? Jonah is a really well respected prophet in his time, and God tells him to go to a city called Nineveh to prophecy. Basically, God is not pleased with them and threatens to destroy their city. Immediately, Jonah runs for the hills. He goes the opposite way, because he absolutely doesn't want to do it. He gets on a ship and falls asleep while sailing to a city in the opposite direction, but a terrible storm causes the sailors to eventually throw him overboard because it comes out that he is running away from God. In the ocean, a large fish swallows Jonah, and he is in the belly of the fish for three days and nights. During this time he has a chance to think things over, and he acknowledges God as his rescuer, and supreme. Then, the fish vomits Jonah up on dry land.

Jonah travels to Nineveh and gives them the message that God is not pleased with their evil ways, and the people of Nineveh take heart, and repent with prayer and fasting. When God sees their repentance, He shows them mercy and decides not to destroy them. This outcome angers Jonah, and we discover that this was his reason for not wanting to go in the first place. He was furious because they deserved the punishment that God threatened, but God showed mercy and love instead. God asked Jonah if it was right that he be angry about this, and Jonah said he was so angry, he wished he were dead. God let him sit in his anger, and didn't really offer him any comfort. In the passage, He only explains that a mass of people and livestock live in the city of Nineveh, and even if Jonah had nothing to do with creating them, they all have value and don't really know better. That's all. Exit the book of Jonah.

Seriously? Has God given us free will, or not?

Dr. Greg Boyd writes on the biblical basis of free will in this excerpt from his page:

The Bible assumes that people made in the image of the free Creator are capable of freely creating on their own. This is at least part of what Scripture means when it says that humans are made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27). We reflect God’s self-determination. We think, act and determine our destinies out of our “heart.” The Lord sets before us the possibilities of our lives, including the possibility of life or death. But we freely actualize whatever possibilities our “heart” desires.

That Scripture is not depicting a “soft determinist,” “compatibilistic,” understanding of freedom is clear from the fact that humans often use their freedom in ways that directly contradict the Lord’s will. People are not puppets that God secretly controls, but free agents who possess significant control of their own lives, and can either cooperate with, or resist, the will of their sovereign Creator.

This contradicts the classical notion that everything in history reflects God’s sovereign will. History rather frequently reflects the will of creatures who oppose the sovereign will of the Creator. The Bible clearly teaches that God unequivocally does not will sin. But obviously sin still occurs. Similarly, the Bible explicitly states that it is not God’s will that any person would perish (1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9). But many nevertheless do perish. Hence, it is clear that God’s will is not always accomplished, and God’s heart is frequently grieved.

What about Jonah, though? Jonah didn't want to do it, but God made his environment pretty unbearable until he did. Is it that Jonah still could have chosen not to do it, but there was enough ambivalence in him that a part of him was always willing to go? I struggle with this, because Jonah is so unhappy with the outcome that he is suicidal by the end of the story. How is this free will? I'll tell you a little about how I relate to Jonah as far as my recent experiences go. This blog has followed me through some difficult experiences in my life, starting with a big move of about 3000 miles from a life I understood and loved, to a life I have very little control over. I didn't want to do it, but I felt that this is where God would have me, and I value obedience over creature comfort.

Ever since I've taken the first step, I've been trying to sail in the opposite direction to the city I think God is guiding me toward (my Nineveh). I've been trying to sail away from Nineveh, and I feel like my environment has made it impossible for me to escape anything that is God's will for me. This is painful, and it challenges the loving image of God. I wanted to talk about it because I always want to be real with you. Not everything about being a Christian is a bed of roses, and sometimes you find yourself angry with God. Jonah might have asked himself why God bothered to make him come that way to threaten these people if He was only going to forgive them? Sometimes I ask similar things, like why would God bother to allow me to pursue certain things if He was only going to close doors later on? I think these feelings are quite normal, as many people experience similar frustrations.

The thing is, there is a huge web of twisted loops to free will. If everyone is allowed to choose, it means that every decision God makes is not going to solely be about me. Of course, I'm using a human mind to think about supernatural, Godly cognition (much like Jonah). I take Dr. Boyd's point, because the world we live in is clearly imperfect, and wouldn't it be terribly arrogant for me to assume that because I've witnessed God's perfection that I should be entitled to it, to the detriment of others? If God is consistently the same, then mercy and judgement, truth and grace should be distributed evenly amongst every person on earth, not just me. The final message of Jonah is that everything is not about me and what I understand about life. Some of my own goings and comings will have nothing to do with what I've cultivated or know, and will be solely about masses of God's creations that need attention. Sometimes, what God asks of me will be about others, and not about me at all.

After I've stomped my feet and said "But Gooood!" I think I'm okay with that.