Like Jonah but unlike Nineveh

I recently re-read the story many call “Jonah and the whale” and I could not help but compare Jonah and Nineveh with the Philippines.

Filipinos today are much like Jonah when it comes to calling out what’s wrong in our society. Jonah chose to skip town rather than do what God called him to do.

To be fair, it is no easy task to walk up to a city and its king and tell them that your sins are so many, they have reached up to heaven and God is about to wipe you all out.

In today’s world, many of us surely see similar sins or errors in judgment being committed by friends and loved ones. But instead of “telling it like it is,” we play nice and choose to be politically correct.

We water down the problem, play along or say nothing at all. Of course we care, we care so much that we don’t want to risk hurting people’s feelings, losing friends or being cancelled.

But in reality, what we do is cancel our belief, love and concern by being silent. Addicts who recover often credit the people who “intervened,” parents or people who kicked them out or forced them to go to rehab.

Regret or “sayang” (what a waste) are words I really dislike, even hate, because it is our lack of love and lack of courage that bite us after someone loses it all or loses their life because we wimped out, just like Jonah.

But God has greater concerns and when you are “it,” he will not accept a “No” or let you skip town. What’s interesting is that God uses difficult circumstances to make us realize what matters.

In running away and boarding a ship to who knows where, Jonah, like many of us, was running away from the problem. Then things get worse, the ship encounters a life-threatening storm.

But the storm was not just focused on or targeting Jonah. It threatened the lives of the ship’s crew, who could not believe how Jonah could sleep through the life-threatening storm.

It’s the same in our lives. Many times, the consequences of our sins, mistakes or those we fail to correct or guide cause collateral damage and casualties, including us.

Soon Jonah is told by the crew to pray to his God to save them. Many people going through turmoil and challenges have at some point been told by someone or several people “to pray and call on God.”

This is not just a bunch of people “telling us to pray” but God himself saying, “Call on me and listen to me.” Ironically, Jonah would rather be tossed into the sea, same way we toss ourselves to misery, not accept help rather than regret, repent or obey.

The whale and being in the belly of the whale half drowning and certain of dying reminds me of people who are also drowning in their hurt, anger, misery or drowning in debt.

Like Jonah, we drown our sorrows in drink, drugs or misery. We wallow and swim in self-pity and only after being confronted by the “no contest” situation did Jonah come to his senses enough to confess his sin of running away from God and from God’s will.

So, after all that, Jonah walks to the great city of Nineveh and declared:

“Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

“When the news reached the King of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.”

The king issued a royal proclamation: “Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

“When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he threatened.”

This was a “miscarriage of justice” in Jonah’s eyes because he believed the city deserved to be torched like Sodom and Gomorrah. This sounds similar to “Lord, kunin mo na po sila please!”

God ends the argument by pointing out that Jonah had been concerned with his personal comfort while sulking but ignored the fact that “Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left and many cattle as well.

“Should I not be concerned about that great city?”

So how is the Philippines unlike Nineveh? Almost a week ago, the PCEC or Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches invited everyone to take part in a week-long prayer and fasting for repentance in the Philippines.

Either the announcements were poor or limited or people simply ignored it because fasting for foodie Filipinos is like carrying a cross on Holy Week. It seems that many people who heard about it treated it as optional or “a matter of personal choice.”

If we want God to intervene, then, just like the king and people of Nineveh, we must intentionally make personal sacrifices and not personal choices. We are talking about the future of the Philippines, and we are calling on God Almighty.

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