The God With a Malleable Mind

 

The God With a Malleable Mind

 

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
3:1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying,

3:2 "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you."

3:3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across.

3:4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"

3:5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed God’s mind about the calamity that God had said would be brought upon them; and God did not do it.

 

 

The story of Jonah and his “battle” with God over the people of Nineveh is one of the richest—and one of my most favorite ones—in the whole Bible. Jonah didn’t LIKE the people of Nineveh, and the LAST thing he wanted to do was to give them God’s word of grace that if they were to just repent of their sin, God would forgive them. Jonah was in the “fry ‘em, Lord” school, and grace was not part of that equation. We all know the “juicy” part of the Jonah story that involves a “big fish,” or WHALE in good storytelling vernacular, and that a brief “submarine ride” changed Jonah’s travel plans, but NOT his hatred for the people of Nineveh. We also know that when he gave a half-hearted “message” of repentance to the Ninevites that they passionately DID repent and embrace the divine grace being afforded to them, much to Jonah’s chagrin. But there are other interesting things to consider from today’s lectionary text out of this fanciful book. Let’s examine a few of them.

 

First of all, God must have liked Nineveh, calling it a “great city,” in his call to Jonah to go there and deliver a message. Did God just mean it was a “large city,” as is related in the next verse? Or did God see the POTENTIAL for what Nineveh could be, coupled with getting their moral acts together and accepting God’s offer of forgiveness? I’m guessing the latter. God has a way of seeing the potential in God’s people, if given half a chance, and God seems willing to give CHANCE after CHANCE! In sending God’s Son into the world, even with the threat of retribution against him and his message, even knowing the devil would have easy access to him, even knowing that there was a cross on a hill called Golgotha for him, God was giving God’s people, created in God’s own image, a fresh chance to experience reconciliation. We often think of Christ’s “sacrifice” on the cross as a big deal—and it is—but the ultimate sacrifice was God “baring” Godself to all of humanity and the dark forces of the universe, just so “save” us. You see, God saw something “great” in us, just like Nineveh. And God knew that to get the message across, a death and resurrection would be necessary to drive the point home. Is this not what happens in the story of Jonah? No one could survive in the gullet of a sea-going mammal for three days. Jonah died in that beast, and God didn’t just have the animal spew him out onto the beach like a reluctant passenger. Jonah was spit out like a piece of dead bait, and God must have raised him up from the dead to bear the message to that “great city.” One look at Jonah, and those people KNEW what God had just done, in order to offer redemption to them. And as reluctant as Jonah was to give the “word of the Lord,” Jonah knew, too.

 

However, the other thing I want to focus on in this message is this idea that God CHANGED GOD’S MIND about the “calamity” that God was going to inflict upon these people for their behavior, and spared them. Verse 10 introduces two unique ideas here for us to ponder:

 

*God HAS a “mind”

 

*God—a divine being—CHANGES God’s mind

 

On point number one, isn’t it a bit strange to think about God having a “mind”? What does that mean? Our minds help us understand our “place” in the universe, to form thoughts and words to both understand AND to communicate with the world around us, and to linearly and logically order our lives. Our minds are like a personal computer that interfaces with our “real world” bodies, and “interconnects” us with others in whatever forms of “community” we may find ourselves. Regarding the first two descriptions of what our mind does for us, if we apply these to the divine, we might come to the conclusion that God IS a mind, pure and simple. In terms of the “computer” descriptor, including the “interfacing” and “interconnecting” parts, we can see how Jesus Christ performed these functions as his part of the Godhead, via the incarnation. Still, it’s rather stifling to comprehend the idea of God having a “mind” like we do—a center of consciousness and a place where our inner dialogue takes place. Is this what’s happening in the scriptures when we read—such as in the creation story in Genesis—“let US make…”? (Most theologians do NOT believe this language is a reference to the Trinity, by the way.) 

 

Paul talks about us being able to tap “the mind of Christ” as part of our Christian discipleship. Is the “mind” of Christ kind of a virtual “placenta” between the divine “mind” and our more finite minds? Like the writers of scripture, we are reduced to anthropomorphizing our understanding of God and how God “thinks” and acts in God’s dealings with the creation. The danger is that in doing so, we “limit” God to the linear, time-locked abilities and functions of the human mind. If we believe in the existence of some all-encompassing, all embracing, limitlessly creative divine “being,” we must realize that such an entity would NOT be thus limited to “thinking” like we do. Trito-Isaiah gets it right here:

 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. (Isaiah 55:8)

 

But it’s not just the “bigness” or scope of the divine that makes this hard for us to fathom, but the timelessness of God. God is necessarily a being outside of time. God has the “ability” to see ALL time, simultaneously, OR to enter a moment in time to relate to US. This is precisely what Jesus Christ represents—God entering into a moment in time. Galatians 4:4 says that Christ stepped into our world “in the fulness of time.”

 

How God’s “mind” works is a difficult thing to ponder, but it IS an interesting endeavor. We are nudged into it by interesting passages of scripture such as this one from Jonah. Storytellers and screen writers have had a field day with how God “thinks,” and how God has connected with humans, as witnessed by such films as “Oh, God” and “Bruce Almighty,” both comedies, because this may be the only “safe” way to approach an unanswerable question! Fundamentalist/Evangelical friends might suggest that all we can EVER know of the mind of God is what is in the scriptures, and what has been revealed in Jesus Christ. I can buy the second idea, for the church has largely affirmed the concept that God’s “fulness” is demonstrated in the person, witness, and ministry of Jesus. However, even here is a mystery, for how we interpret the teachings of Jesus, and the historical and theological ramifications of the totality of the Christ Event from Bethlehem to Calvary, to resurrection and ascension, and even through the apocalypse, have always been open to debate. A timeless God stepping into history with eternal consequences—wrap your mind around that!

 

It gets worse. Look at the second asterisked point—here in Jonah (and numerous other places in scripture, such as God’s dealing with Moses and the people of primitive Israel), God is said to CHANGE God’s mind! Flippantly, we could say that God can do whatever God WANTS to do, including change the divine mind, but if we embrace the intricacies of the possibilities we have already raised, HOW and WHY would God ever NEED to “change” God’s mind? This, again, may just be a case of over-anthropomorphizing what is really happening, on the part of the author here. (I know this is hard, if not impossible, for those of you who take a much higher “inspired” or “revealed” view of scripture to accept this possibility.) Here's one way to think about it: if WE are created in the “image” of God, maybe our ability to weigh what is before us, study the facts of a situation, apply the great gift of reason to it, and change OUR minds about something, based on our analysis, observation, and where necessary, a loosening of our “immutable” views or beliefs, why can’t God? Maybe the variable at work here is not just TIME, but FREE WILL? 

 

When you give someone freedom to choose—whatever this encompasses—you also give up control of the choice they will make. Unless you are some sort of a Svengali, your only recourse to “affect” their choice in a direction that you would like to see them go is discourse—making an appeal. Some might say “persuasion,” but this can—and often is—manipulative, even controlling. If we love and respect the one we have given the choice to, we will let this love guide and govern the way we make this appeal, with its motive being the GOOD of the person in question, not that of our own. Oh, we may be appealing for a given choice that we believe would benefit the wider community, as well, but we must first come to terms with our own motive, and how strongly we feel about it. Rules and mores are adopted to provide boundaries. In the best of worlds, they nurture and empower persons and communities to live their best lives in peace and harmony. In the less-than-best scenarios, they provide protection, offering practical resistance between those who might use their choices to exploit for their own benefit, and those who may be the targets of this exploitation. Now, let’s go back to that “mind of God” business…

 

The writer of this text wants us to believe that the “evil” done by the people of Nineveh had God so upset that God was going to bring calamity upon them. (We don’t have the details of this “calamity” here like we do in the Exodus narratives, where God tells Moses that God is so TICKED at the people, God is considering wiping them out, keeping Moses, and just starting over!) But the text tells us that when God “saw” how the people repented and changed their ways, God changes the divine mind to offer pardon and acceptance. (Again, in Exodus the language is stronger, where it says that “God REPENTED of the evil God was going to do against Israel”—now THERE’S one to look at sometime—God REPENTING!). 

 

The Good News is that God, however God does it, sorts this all out and reconciles with the human creation. It’s a good thing, for this is what we believe God is all about, at least in the community of faith!

 

Maybe all of this “God bringing calamity” and “God changing God’s mind” about the “evil” God is thinking of doing to people who have committed evil themselves ARE just creations of the HUMAN mind, trying to make sense out of cosmic and eternal issues. How DO we understand our relationship to the divine AND the “Mind of God”? It IS a fundamental belief of the world’s major religions—certainly at least for the three “biblical” ones—that God IS a loving, creating, and forgiving God, and that the one thing that God wants of us—especially in light of God having given us the gift of FREE WILL—is to live together in harmony with each other, and at peace with God. Parsing through the sometimes crude language of scripture, this is what we “see” as the end-product of the divine/human relationship. And this is CERTAINLY easier to see in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus made it very clear why he came, and what the “mission” of God would be through the totality of the Christ Event, and in the work of the Holy Spirit of God. One wonders what the Christian church might look like if we took John 3:16 HALF as literally as we have other passages of scripture we take to mean God has set US up as judges on the earth. And Christ’s proposition to “Love thy neighbor” doesn’t come with qualifiers, does it?

 

Still, there is something quite comforting about believing in a God whose mind is capable of change, and of pondering how even GOD has to rely on “an appeal” to us to make wise choices, instead of threats or “calamities.” Process Theology is a model of “God-thinking” that imagines God “out ahead of us,” both illuminating our pathways, and “luring” us toward better choices and harmonious relationships with each other and Godself. In this model, our missteps are not “punished,” but just little alarms that bring the benevolent, prehensive God to us to help pick up the pieces and get us back on the journey and headed in a less chaotic direction. 

 

I’ll say “Amen” to that! Keep the faith, Dear Ones! Shalom!