SPEAKER_00: Well maybe we should start with your perspective of the story.
SPEAKER_00: In general.
SPEAKER_00: What do uh what were we what were we thinking when we read uh or curious about?
SPEAKER_00: Um what is the book doing for you?
SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand why.
SPEAKER_00: They absolutely don't.
SPEAKER_00: So that's like a foreign concept to map out.
SPEAKER_00: And I think in other ways, it's it's maybe it's not an either-or in some ways, but to think about if God has a plan and you meet it or you don't.
SPEAKER_00: That's one way to think about omniscience.
SPEAKER_00: Another way to think about it is that God is in some ways like the God of infinite potentiality, so that if I pick choice A instead of B, A has a whole bracket of possibilities that God knows the possibilities of, and God's always remapping the chart of possibilities for us, whatever we pick.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's not like hey, fixed fatalism, but it sure is sort of in some ways um an omniscience of where we can go, if if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01: So is it kind of like predestination that you can make one choice?
SPEAKER_00: That's one way to think of it.
SPEAKER_00: Like, so one way to think of it that I grew up is God has a perfect plan for your life, including who you're going to marry, what you're going to do, and if you sin, you fall short of God's perfect plan, and you'll never get there.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine God's plan is this horizontal line, and if you don't pick what God wants you to pick, you miss the line and sucks for you.
SPEAKER_00: So if you marry the wrong person, like the one that God didn't intend, you're living, you're gonna be short of like the best life you can have.
unknown: Right.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means, right, is that every decision you make has gotta be full of anxiety because you can be constantly making the wrong one.
SPEAKER_00: Another way to think of it is um you don't even have you don't even get to choose, because since God knows everything, it's all done for you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's Calvinism.
SPEAKER_00: There's another way to think about it, and this is Leo Tolstoy's view, which is free will is an illusion because it's an illusion, like we make it up, because your personality already predetermines what choice you're going to make in any given circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: So that's a little different from Calvin, which says God has chosen for you, but it does sort of say, like, and I can tell you, if I gave my kids certain choices, I'm giving them a choice, I absolutely know what they're gonna pick.
SPEAKER_00: So in some ways, they're not making a choice, like it's an artificial situation.
SPEAKER_00: But part of me says, well, that takes out room for surprise because there are times, one in a thousand when my kids will surprise me.
SPEAKER_00: You know, like they've always picked A, always picked A, but like one in a thousand they'll pick B and God knows why.
SPEAKER_00: Now Tolstoy would say that's because they have this element of like um rebellion or something else, but he sort of says your personality already picks what you're going to do.
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, Tolstoy is a behavioralist, like like Skinner was, like you've been conditioned to make certain choices, which means they're not really even choices, they're like responses.
SPEAKER_00: I I can't really go there all the way.
SPEAKER_00: I do think our personality gives us proclivities, our formation gives us proclivities, I think our DNA gives us proclivities, but I I like to think that there I like to think, I choose to believe there's room for some surprise.
SPEAKER_00: And so when I do that, in my head, instead of God having a way, I think that there's a lot of choices I make, frankly, that are like amoral.
SPEAKER_00: When I pick to eat at the salad bar, doesn't matter if a flip, to be honest, to God.
SPEAKER_00: So if I didn't take that extra leap of arugula, I haven't missed the happiest plan for my life.
SPEAKER_00: I just got less arugula, and God can deal with that.
SPEAKER_00: Do I think God cares what I eat?
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, yes, because God cares about everything I do in a curiosity way.
SPEAKER_00: But I do think when I make a choice, like when I chose the college I chose, I didn't have to pick that one.
SPEAKER_00: I could have picked another one, or actually I could have picked any of the 15 I applied to and got admitted to.
SPEAKER_00: But when I chose the one I chose, then my and whether you say this is God or or just life, my possibilities got redrawn.
SPEAKER_00: If I'd gone to Wake Forest, I could have majored in German, for example.
SPEAKER_00: My college didn't have a German major, so scratch that one off.
SPEAKER_00: You see how it goes, right?
SPEAKER_00: So the question is, is it life when we make a choice that we have to redraw everything, or is God doing that?
SPEAKER_00: I didn't believe there's one person that I'm meant to marry.
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that.
SPEAKER_00: What I believe is I choose to marry somebody, and then how am I gonna make that marriage work?
SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: So I imagine that every time I make any choice, God is redrawing the board of infinite possibilities.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I that that makes a lot of sense to me.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when you said Bolsoi was a behaviorist.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit.
SPEAKER_00: He's ahead of Skinner.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: He's ahead of Skinner, but he sort of believes, just like behavior, I know what that dog's gonna do because I've conditioned that dog to do it.
SPEAKER_01: Does that show up in his books?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, war and peace, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: Napoleon had to invade Russia.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't choose to do it because of his ego and his background and his whatever, he did it the way he did it.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes you make a choice in a fork in the road that is so wrong you have to go back to the fort.
SPEAKER_00: Well, but you know, as the Buddha says, you can't go backwards.
SPEAKER_00: I mean the truth, the truth is, right?
SPEAKER_00: You you can't step in the same river twice.
SPEAKER_00: You can't, because it's changed.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the Buddha says you can't step in the same river once.
SPEAKER_00: Because as soon as, I mean, at every microsecond the river is flowing and changing.
SPEAKER_00: So there's just constant possibility and constant flow.
SPEAKER_00: There is this point where we repent so we can go more fully forward, but we're never even going backward, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's the problem that sometimes we try to go backward.
SPEAKER_00: This may may or may not interest you, but you know, like I'm I'm positive that there's this thing called faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Faithfulness is when we um return to a faith experience we've had before.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll tell you, like compassionately, I think people sit in the same seat in church all the time because once upon a time they had this great experience in that seat.
SPEAKER_00: The light hit them a certain way, or they heard the music, or the sermon was good one day, or they had gas and they burped and it felt great.
SPEAKER_00: So they come back to that place because they want to be faithful to that moment when that wonderful thing happened.
SPEAKER_00: So they're putting themselves in a posture for something like that to happen again.
SPEAKER_00: I know for me, like uh I really like to go wine tasting or um distillery tasting because I've had some really nice experiences in those places of slowing down, being connected to people, and the the the tour and the the trial are like lubricants to being present in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so much so that sometimes, like, I'll over like, hey, let's go to one of those places.
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking to be faithful to those experiences.
SPEAKER_00: And we all have those things.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we call hobbies, things we continue to do because we're being faithful to an experience that we had in the past.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we're faithful by doing new things.
SPEAKER_02: And that can go back to your childhood.
SPEAKER_00: I it absolutely everything gets back to your childhood, depending on what you believe.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was thinking if I was sitting in church, we uh well, Catholic school, we went and sat in the front because you were better being.
SPEAKER_00: Episcopalians feel from the back forward.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you know somebody go at Baptist or Catholic, they sit up front.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I sit in the we sit in the second row because I and you know there's something true in education, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like sitting in the same desk every class increases your academic performance.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it does.
SPEAKER_00: And and that's because we associate place with what we heard, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so in some ways we worship that way, and it's good for our it's good for our brains.
SPEAKER_00: And there's some people that say we should move around all the time, and hey, like variety is interesting, stimulates the amygdala, that's all great too, but it's not either it's not either.
SPEAKER_03: You might get somebody else's seat, though, if you move around.
SPEAKER_00: You no one owns seats in church.
SPEAKER_03: They do.
SPEAKER_00: No, they don't either.
SPEAKER_00: I know that, but they didn't.
SPEAKER_00: I know, and they'll be really mad if you sit in their seat.
SPEAKER_03: But if you get in there, yeah, you know, there's only one seat.
SPEAKER_00: There's one seat in that church that belongs to anybody, and that's the bishop's chair, and it belongs to the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: And if I try to sit in it when a bishop comes, it's not gonna be great.
SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean just you just know that that place belongs to those.
SPEAKER_00: Visitors and seeing visitors don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have to be really good to visitors who don't know.
SPEAKER_00: You're in my seat.
SPEAKER_00: No, you're not.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Let's come back to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Because I because we're we're wandering in some good ways.
SPEAKER_00: But Tam, you asked the question, why is Jonah angry and he didn't answer it?
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, remember that Assyria was this huge empire that gobbled up Israel and got rid of it.
SPEAKER_00: And part of their gobbling is they led when they led people from Israel to Turkey and to Greece and to um, you know, modern-day Iraq, they did it by putting hooks in their noses.
SPEAKER_05: That's not nice.
SPEAKER_00: It's effective, so that's what they did.
SPEAKER_00: You're very unlikely to run away when you've got a big hook in your nose.
SPEAKER_00: So they led them off that way, and babies were dashed on rocks.
SPEAKER_00: You can read about it in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you take a baby and you slam it on a rock, and that's the end of the baby.
SPEAKER_00: So, not only are ten tribes wiped off the map, but there's this terrible cruelty.
SPEAKER_00: Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: Sejonah's got a grudge.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just to make a comparable bridge, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is a Jewish grudge against Nazi Germany.
SPEAKER_00: We we as Americans, we don't have any grudge like this.
SPEAKER_00: We I mean, there's nothing comparable.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the War of 1812, way back when, but we're allies with the British now, right?
SPEAKER_03: What if you were on the Bataan death march and we maybe prejudice?
SPEAKER_03: And I know when people that I have known that were in World War II had prejudice, they were taught prejudice, you know.
SPEAKER_03: They didn't like Japs, they didn't like, so my father-in-law didn't like the French.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Because he dealt with them in the Japanese.
SPEAKER_00: But we're allies now.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's it.
SPEAKER_00: So my like my grandfather was a barber in the Navy in World War II.
SPEAKER_00: He got drafted.
SPEAKER_00: And and even in his old age, he'd only buy American cars, would not buy Japanese cars.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Um, he was taking some supplement, and my mom had to censor out any Japanese-looking name with a Sharpie because if he saw a Japanese name, he would refuse to take it.
SPEAKER_03: These people were deliberately propagandized in this, but then they had real reasons for for their opinions.
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, and maybe the best thing we could come up here today is like this is Al-Qaeda or Isis or Osama bin Laden, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you just you have to actually make this a little bit of a caricature, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so Jonah, he he says, is the anti-prophet.
SPEAKER_00: The word of here it reads, the word of the Lord was unto Jonah's son of Amitai, saying, Arise, go into Nineveh, the great city, and call against her.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew it reads, for her evil has risen up before me like a stench, like it stinks like evil.
SPEAKER_00: And then we get to here, and Jonah arose and fled before the Lord, and got in a boat and went to Tarshish.
SPEAKER_00: Tarshish is like the edge of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Like if you Tarshish, you go a little bit further, you fall off the world.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so Jonah goes the opposite direction, doesn't obey.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you could say, aha, it's this idea that evil can go unpunished, but I but I do think it's important contextually why they hate Assyrians.
SPEAKER_00: They hate Assyrians because Assyrians destroyed them and were brutal.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it is about prejudice and it's about God relenting from prejudice.
SPEAKER_00: It's about both.
SPEAKER_00: I mean I think that's really, really important.
SPEAKER_00: So you have to ask yourself: are there people you would rather die than be reconciled with?
SPEAKER_00: I think that's another way to read this book.
SPEAKER_01: That's scary.
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's scary.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the parable of the good Samaritan asks the same question.
SPEAKER_00: The guy who gets beat up on the road is helped by a Samaritan, he might rather die than receive that help.
SPEAKER_00: But he has no choice.
SPEAKER_00: He's too hurt.
SPEAKER_00: So would you rather die than have you pick Hillary Clinton take care of you?
SPEAKER_00: Would you rather die than have Donald Trump take care of you?
SPEAKER_00: Would you rather die than Osama bin Laden help you personally?
SPEAKER_00: Those are the kind of questions we have to ask.
SPEAKER_00: Who do I hate so much, justifiably, they've earned my hatred, that I do not want anything to do with them.
SPEAKER_00: I think those are the kinds of questions we have to ask.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah justifiably hates the Assyrians.
SPEAKER_00: And you hear at the end of the book, he doesn't want to go to Nineveh because he knows God is compassionate.
SPEAKER_00: He's mad at God for being compassionate.
SPEAKER_00: This is super important.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little different from what the video is saying, but it isn't.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: The rain falls on the good and the bad, and Jonah's mad about that.
SPEAKER_00: We get mad about that sometimes, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: This book is for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's a total caricature because you know what?
SPEAKER_00: The sailors turn out to be really pious people.
SPEAKER_00: Please.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know any sailors?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we don't want to make God angry.
SPEAKER_00: What have we done?
SPEAKER_00: Jonah is asleep in the boat, not because he cares for those sailors.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm I'm disagreeing with this guy.
SPEAKER_00: Throw me in the water so I can drown.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to do this.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jonah's life means nothing compared to his hatred.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Because he was planning to sail off the end of the world anyway.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, well, God's gonna get me because I already came off.
SPEAKER_00: Notice that he falls asleep in the storm because he's happy if they drown.
SPEAKER_00: That's really different from Jesus falling asleep in the boat when there's a storm and the disciples wake him up.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' case, he's not worried about danger because he knows it'll be okay.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's not worried about danger because it'd be great if they sank.
SPEAKER_00: The sailors panic.
SPEAKER_00: These are professional sailors, and Jonah's asleep.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that just tells you, like, that's crazy, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then they're like, oh, well, let's row towards the shore.
SPEAKER_00: I I mean, again, how many sailors do you know?
SPEAKER_00: I came from a Navy town.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna let you know.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is not the behavior of sailors.
SPEAKER_00: They throw Jonah into the water, because that's what he says, as their last resort, and he gets swallowed not by a whale, but by a big fish, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he's in the fish for three days.
SPEAKER_00: And he says this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, it's a quote of one of the Psalms, but you know, when the fish vomits him, I you could say, like, oh, it's because Jonah repented.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't repent.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't repent at all.
SPEAKER_00: He still hates his people.
SPEAKER_00: It could be that the fish vomits at his fake piety.
SPEAKER_00: Like his garbage prayer makes the fish nauseous and throw up.
SPEAKER_00: Which is an interesting way to read the book because do we have like phony baloney prayers that make God nauseous?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think God gets nauseous, but like that feeling, I think that's a sensible feeling.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: I listen, I hear sermons that make me like spiritually nauseous.
SPEAKER_00: So I can't imagine what God does with that.
SPEAKER_01: Um is there a is this a metaphor for Christ and he clothes three days later?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the gospels are gonna use it, just as Jonah was in the in the belly of a great fish for three days, so is the Son of Man gonna be in this place.
SPEAKER_00: So it becomes that later, but in the mind of the original audience, no way.
SPEAKER_00: Three days is how long your soul sticks with your body.
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now now keep in mind, at this time anyway, they didn't believe that you have a soul different from your body when this is written.
SPEAKER_00: You are a soul.
SPEAKER_00: That includes your mind and your emotions and your body.
SPEAKER_00: But for the longest time in Judaism, still today, when you die, you've got to be buried within 24 hours.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a quick burial.
SPEAKER_00: That's the current Jewish belief.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like your like your essence.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, before it goes down into Sheol.
SPEAKER_03: So why would you want to be buried with your soul?
SPEAKER_00: Because they believe that your body goes there too.
SPEAKER_03: And then your soul comes up through the dirt.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, it doesn't go up.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody stays under the ground if you're Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna notice when we read Paul, Paul does not talk about like some spiritual heaven where we've got harps.
SPEAKER_00: You get your body.
SPEAKER_00: Your body comes up out of the ground because that's part of your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Now we've moved on past that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Again, most of us, which body would you want anyway?
SPEAKER_00: Not this one.
SPEAKER_00: I want the one that doesn't hurt.
SPEAKER_00: And that's part of why we've moved past that.
SPEAKER_00: But so resurrection did not exist as an idea when this book's written.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly changed a lot.
SPEAKER_00: But he's down there three days.
SPEAKER_00: That's a really long time.
SPEAKER_00: He says this, oh, the seaweed is wrapped around my head.
SPEAKER_00: I'm down in the pit.
SPEAKER_00: The pit, capital P, is like the grave.
SPEAKER_00: It's the place where dead people go, all of them.
SPEAKER_00: Like Tartarus.
SPEAKER_00: There may not be ironic punishment.
SPEAKER_00: It's just all dark and underground.
SPEAKER_00: That's where everybody goes.
SPEAKER_00: And I called on the Lord, and the fish just goes.
SPEAKER_00: And then he goes to Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Now it takes him three days to walk through the city.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine how big that city is.
SPEAKER_00: Three days' walk.
SPEAKER_00: It's 60 miles across.
SPEAKER_00: That's or 30 miles.
SPEAKER_00: It seems really big.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, Nineveh was not that big, but it's a big city.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the old city would have had a wall, and then there's people outside of the defense wall.
SPEAKER_03: That's a long wall.
SPEAKER_00: It's a care it's a caricature, right?
SPEAKER_00: No city is that big.
SPEAKER_00: You can't you can walk through Paris, it's a huge city, right?
SPEAKER_00: It won't take you three days to walk through big medieval Paris.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to be clear on that.
SPEAKER_00: Um this this book is a caricature, it's a hyperbole.
SPEAKER_00: It has to be.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if if we choose to say, like, oh, I wonder what kind of fish swallowed Jonah, I think we're missing the point.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_03: So he had to walk three days through the city.
SPEAKER_03: And and somehow in that time he was able to contact 120 something thousand.
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Let me get to that number at the end.
SPEAKER_03: All right.
SPEAKER_00: His message of repentance is in 40 days, Nineveh is going to be overturned.
SPEAKER_00: So, what's interesting, I actually don't think the people of Nineveh know anything about the fish because the coast is very far from Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Nineveh's not a coastal city.
SPEAKER_00: So think through where Iraq is today, right?
SPEAKER_00: Iraq does not border on any water.
SPEAKER_00: If Jonah is to Tarshish, he's going to the Mediterranean.
SPEAKER_00: The Mediterranean is not connected to Assyria, so he has to walk there, I would suggest to you.
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, he doesn't leave out any possibility that things could go different.
SPEAKER_00: Four days, the city's going to be overturned.
SPEAKER_00: And for some reason, the people in town believe him.
SPEAKER_00: And they get worried.
SPEAKER_00: And even the king says, we're going to have a fast.
SPEAKER_00: And even the animals are going to fast.
SPEAKER_00: This is a caricature.
SPEAKER_00: See, I mean, again, you're not going to deprive your animals of water.
SPEAKER_00: They put sackcloth on the animals.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's that's it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: They put dust and ashes on the animals and the people.
SPEAKER_00: And they say, who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe God will change God's mind.
SPEAKER_00: And not, and by the way, that word in Hebrew is repent.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe God will repent and not do the evil to us God has spoken to do.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it reads in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: Not punishment, but evil.
SPEAKER_01: So how did the Assyrians had a variety of gods?
SPEAKER_01: And so now they're going to believe in this particular one God.
SPEAKER_00: These are not monotheists either.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe they include this God in their pantheon.
SPEAKER_00: When you're polytheist, there's always room for one more.
SPEAKER_00: And why they would choose to do it, we don't.
SPEAKER_00: They don't become Jews.
SPEAKER_00: They don't get circumcised.
SPEAKER_00: They don't start reading the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: They put on sackcloth and ashes.
SPEAKER_03: They didn't.
SPEAKER_00: It's an old, old symbol.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, it's it's sort of the same idea as like whipping yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Sackcloth is burlap and it's very uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's it's sort of a return to like the most basic level, but it's also like itchy.
SPEAKER_00: Um so it's just it's this sort of way of showing that you're trying to do your penance, like you're trying to suffer in your own body for what you've done.
SPEAKER_00: Same with fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Ashes are this symbol, like when you burn up a sacrifice to God, there's like junk left over.
SPEAKER_00: The ashes.
SPEAKER_00: And actually, the guy, there's a priest has to clean those up, go through them outside, and then wash his garments and stay outside of camp for a day to like quarantine all that impurity because you tried to offer God your best and there was junk left over.
SPEAKER_00: So ashes are a sign, like, even at our best, look, we've got like junk left over.
SPEAKER_00: Like even our repentance is selfish.
SPEAKER_00: So you wear that.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of why we still wear it on our heads, is to say, like, even our best efforts aren't perfect.
SPEAKER_03: So they figured, well, this God that's going to destroy us is gonna look or look at us and see us all dirty and uncomfortable and miserable and listen to our animals moan and groan, and then he'll pay attention to us and and uh hopefully not kill us all.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe God will change God's mind.
SPEAKER_00: Um and so what do you know?
SPEAKER_00: God does.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah gets really mad and says, I wish I were dead.
SPEAKER_00: No surprise.
SPEAKER_00: He was gonna sail off the end of the world, he was gonna go in the water.
SPEAKER_00: And then God says, Is it really okay that you're that mad?
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah says, Yes, it's okay enough to die.
SPEAKER_00: Then he goes outside of the city and he he sits there, and then there's this, just I have to tell you this, there's this Hebrew word that only appears two times in the Bible, and it's in Jonah, and it's whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: This thing grows up.
SPEAKER_00: Vine, bush, we don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, you probably don't care in Hebrew, it's the word kikayon.
SPEAKER_00: We don't well, people try to figure that out, but no one knows what it is because from context, you can't tell what it is.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it could be a palm tree, it could be a vine, it could be a castor oil plant.
SPEAKER_00: I've read all that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't care, it miraculously grows up and gives him shade.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So he's sitting there and he gets this shade and it's great.
SPEAKER_00: And then the next day God appoints a worm, is how it reads, and the worm eats the plant and he dies, and Jonah's really mad.
SPEAKER_00: Again, take my life, it's better for me to die than live.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, Is it okay that you're so mad about the Kika yon?
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah says, Yes, it is, because it's no longer giving me a shade.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, You're angry about a plant that you didn't plant and that you didn't care for, and then you didn't cause grow.
SPEAKER_00: But in Nineveh, there's 120,000 people who don't know their right from their left, and many cattle.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the book ends.
SPEAKER_00: So, 120,000 who don't know the right from their left.
SPEAKER_00: That could be people who don't know morality, but I want to suggest to you who doesn't know the right from their left, two-year-olds and under.
SPEAKER_00: So there's like children and cattle.
SPEAKER_00: And the book ends right there, and many cattle.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't say anything about adults, I would tell you.
SPEAKER_00: God says there's children and animals.
SPEAKER_00: This is a lovely phrase, right?
SPEAKER_00: That it ends with the animals.
SPEAKER_00: God cares about the animals of the town and the babies.
SPEAKER_03: And Jonah just cared about the adults.
SPEAKER_03: That's what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah once hated them.
SPEAKER_00: He hated them for logical reasons.
SPEAKER_03: And he's kind of a control freak.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I again, he he he fundamentally knows God is merciful and he doesn't want to take a chance on mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what we do is something really different with like modern Christianity, like the kind that you hear on TV.
SPEAKER_00: God hates sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And even I hear this like America is God's country, and we're gonna punish like evil, whoever doesn't like Americans because they're not the right kind of Christians.
SPEAKER_00: And and it's I'm sorry, this book says no, no way.
SPEAKER_00: Like, no, no way.
SPEAKER_00: But it also has something to do with our, I think, our personal piety.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, can you imagine being reconciled with somebody that you hate?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, geez, there's people in my life who don't deserve other chances.
SPEAKER_00: And here's God giving people who don't deserve other chances other chances.
SPEAKER_00: There's people I don't want to spend eternity with.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, is that okay?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: They don't deserve it, or I don't deserve it, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you're upset about a plant you didn't plant because of what it did to you.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is sort of the call of the of the book.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you the interesting thing about this book is that it happens in the same collection of books that has Ezra and Nehemiah that says, get rid of foreign wives and their children.
SPEAKER_00: Get rid of them.
SPEAKER_00: Put them outside the city, which means they're going to die or become prostitutes.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's this book that says, Well, actually, God cares about foreign people who don't convert to Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: So, so I do think what he said is really helpful.
SPEAKER_00: David Noel Freeman is like tops, right?
SPEAKER_00: He says this really interesting thing about this shift from every bad deed must be punished.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I grew up hearing that in church.
SPEAKER_00: God is like the most perfect judge there is.
SPEAKER_00: So when you sin, I mean, God doesn't may not get mad, but you got a better price.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus, somebody's got a bit of punishment, so Jesus is your whipping boy.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's how I was taught to understand Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But this book even questions that, I think.
SPEAKER_00: It questions that view of Jesus, questions that book about God, that view of God's justice.
SPEAKER_00: God's justice is so much greater than ours that not every infraction has to be punished.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the proof.
SPEAKER_00: The 120,000 children who don't know their right from their left and the cattle, they weren't involved in the reasons you hate those Assyrian people.
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like the parable Jesus tells that if you pull up the weeds, you'll pull up the weed as well.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you hate, if you hate um Herman Gearing's infant child, there's something wrong with you.
SPEAKER_00: If you hate Osama bin Laden's children, there's something wrong with you.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what the book is trying to call us to think about.
SPEAKER_01: And right here is the first time that repentance has been mentioned.
SPEAKER_00: No, God repents in Genesis 6.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is one of the few times God repents.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: And again, the word is repentance, which doesn't mean what we usually think, oh, I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that at all.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Repentance means two things in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: It means you either change direction, like aha, you change your mind, or you change, you turn your car.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to change your mind to turn your car, you just turn the wheel, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or it means that you sort of have this grief.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, I you have this grief that there are forces in the world that are not great that you can't overcome by yourself.
SPEAKER_00: So when my child does something I've trained them not to do, I I have this kind of grief, not because I'm embarrassed by them, but I'm disappointed for them.
SPEAKER_00: And as their parent, I'm irreparably linked to them.
SPEAKER_00: So it hurts my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Um, same kind of thing hurts my heart that a white woman in my job is less likely to get my job and more likely to get paid 90% of what I'm going to get paid.
SPEAKER_00: I can't change that by myself.
SPEAKER_00: I can't say to like a hiring vestry, pay me like you pay a woman, or you better listen to the women can't.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do that.
SPEAKER_00: So I can't overturn that social stigma by myself.
SPEAKER_00: I know I benefit from it as a man or as a white person, or even as a Latino person as opposed to a black person.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, like you always think through everybody in this room has it better than at least somebody else just on how we look or speak or went to school, right?
SPEAKER_00: We all have something like that, even though we've got different opportunities in the room by itself, right?
SPEAKER_00: But that whole business isn't fair.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we call sin with a capital S, and and you can't change that by yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You you grieve that system and you do what you can, I think.
SPEAKER_01: So So when you said he re he has repentance in Genesis, where is that?
SPEAKER_00: Happens in Genesis 6 5, right before the arc story, where God looks at the hearts, that's the will of human beings and sees that every inclination is toward violence, and God repents for making humanity.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean I wish I'd never done it.
SPEAKER_00: It means I made you, and look what you're doing with what I gave you.
SPEAKER_00: I wish you weren't.
SPEAKER_00: I'm wrapped up in what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: You're squandering what I gave you.
SPEAKER_01: And then repentance shows up again here in Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: As God changing God's mind.
SPEAKER_00: Now, God repents also in uh Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: The people make the golden calf.
SPEAKER_00: And God says to Moses, Oh my God, look what the people are doing.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you what, I'm gonna kill all of them and I'll start over with you.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, You shouldn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Because people, it will hurt your reputation.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody, all the other nations will say, Look, you called these people out and killed them all in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what kind of God is that?
SPEAKER_00: And God repents and changes God's mind.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, God repents and does not do the evil God spoke.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it reads in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_01: And then isn't there one other occasion in which um I forget who he is, he goes to his should and he begins to bargain with God and says, Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: Abraham, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Um the word is not used repent there, but that's essentially it.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham haggles with God like a Middle Eastern bazaar.
unknown: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: And succeeds.
SPEAKER_00: The rabbis actually say Abraham should have kept going, he shouldn't have stopped at 10, like he should have gone to one.
SPEAKER_00: Um, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: So we have this choice.
SPEAKER_00: Is God is God capricious and vengeful, and we have to change God's mind through our prayer?
SPEAKER_00: That is one way to hear all of these stories we just shared.
SPEAKER_00: But in the story, that's not the case.
SPEAKER_00: Joan is capricious and vengeful, and God isn't.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question is: in this story, does God change God's mind, or is God asking us to change ours?
SPEAKER_01: Well, if if he changes his mind, then he's thinking like us.
SPEAKER_01: So he can't be us.
SPEAKER_00: So so Jonas says, right, this is an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, I I want to suggest to you that this whole story is suggesting we need to change our minds because Jonah says, right, this is in chapter four.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, is this not what I said while I was still in my own country?
SPEAKER_00: That's why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: For I knew you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.
SPEAKER_00: I knew you were good, and that's why I ran away.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: So this I think turns that whole changing God's mind thing on its ear.
SPEAKER_00: Do we pray to change God's mind?
SPEAKER_00: Or should prayer change ours?
SPEAKER_01: God's mind.
SPEAKER_01: Because philosophically, if we can change God's mind at any time, then it's kind of scary.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it means you should be really careful what you pray for, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um so I I want to put to you that I think like prayer changes our mind or confirms our mind, and that's why we should be very careful what we pray for.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna tell you nobody should pray.
SPEAKER_00: I my opinion, my opinion on that.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody should pray that um their political candidate wins an election.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody should pray that I'm just gonna say the sitting president is has everything he wants happen.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we pray that government and elected officials will pursue justice with compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Especially if we don't agree with their policy.
SPEAKER_00: We do this other bull crap, I'm sorry, when we start picking people to be God's agents in the world instead of asking that people pursue justice with compassion.
SPEAKER_00: And so I see churches lining up behind political candidates, and the Bible would tell you that that's idolatry.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, it is.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll tell you in any election, I know who I want to vote for, and that's me, but how I pray needs to be.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you think of the Congress or the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court or the President, our hope is not in people, our hope is in God, right?
SPEAKER_00: So, God, we pray that they would pursue justice with compassion.
SPEAKER_00: And I would tell you the same in the impeachment trial, right?
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you think about that, if it's gonna happen, if it isn't, the prayer needs to be may justice be done with compassion, help all involved, be discerning and wise.
SPEAKER_00: That's about it.
SPEAKER_00: If we pray that somebody wins a trial when we don't even know or we think we know, again, it's idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Justice, we pray for justice, especially because we don't know everything.
SPEAKER_00: And that's part of what the book is saying, right?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know everything, like that there's 120,000 small children, and think of the animals.
SPEAKER_00: I just I just love that God says that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: Think of the animals.
SPEAKER_00: Who will that who will take care of the dogs?
SPEAKER_05: Yes, the innocence.
SPEAKER_05: The innocence.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I I I disagree with him.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think he's part right.
SPEAKER_00: He's got a good phrase, but I also think where this gets really personal is part of what he said, but also it has to do with how we how we pray and what we're open to.
SPEAKER_00: There's a book called Praying Shapes Believing, which is the words we pray shape the way we see the world.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00: And again, the question is, did God change our minds or are we in are we sorry, do we change God's mind, or does God invite us to change our own?
SPEAKER_00: And if if we approach prayer as we've got to straighten God out, we're probably doing it wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Because what that means is God doesn't know what God's doing.
SPEAKER_00: So if we believe in general that God's powerful and knowledgeable and present in lots of places, then prayer really needs to be where we we seek to understand more like God understands.
SPEAKER_00: So prayer might be where we listen, not when we talk.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer might be where we imagine God's presence in the people we hate so that we can treat them better, so that we can change our minds.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, none of this has anything to do with accountability.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing to do with accountability.
SPEAKER_00: When you run over a police officer, there's gotta be consequences.
SPEAKER_00: But when you look at a person who ran over a police officer and you say that person looks like a criminal, we gotta do some work.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the person who ran the officer over looks like a criminal.
SPEAKER_00: And we gotta work on that.
SPEAKER_03: His mother doesn't understand.
SPEAKER_00: And and you heard me say, I believe it.
SPEAKER_00: I look at that person and I saw the picture and I thought, oh crap, you know, I mean, that's just gonna make us be more stereotypical.
SPEAKER_00: And I look at that person and I see, like, you're styling yourself as a criminal or a gangster rapper.
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, like in poor black communities, those are your choices.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna go to jail, or you're gonna be a professional athlete, or you're gonna be a rapper, and you're gonna style yourself like that no matter what you do.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't grow up in an environment where those are my three options in life.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up to have lots of options.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a choice of being unemployed.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have that choice.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a choice of being uneducated because that's not acceptable in my community.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a choice of getting somebody pregnant in my teens.
SPEAKER_00: That was not a choice for me.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a choice of being gay either.
SPEAKER_00: So if I was, boy, I was stuck.
SPEAKER_00: So again, we just got these totally different things.
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's this really interesting thought, again, about these about 120,000 children who are in some ways being formed in ways they can't control.
SPEAKER_00: So this guy who's 21, how was he formed?
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't take away accountability, but it does open up the kind of compassion we see God showing.
SPEAKER_01: Is there any spot in here where they not in Jonathan, but maybe somebody else, where they talk about accountability?
SPEAKER_01: Or is that not?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, we see the prophets say things like, no longer will parents eat sour grapes and their children's teeth be set on edge.
SPEAKER_00: You eat the sour grapes, your teeth are on edge.
SPEAKER_00: So you get consequences.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the truth, right?
SPEAKER_00: Consequences happen no matter what we do.
SPEAKER_00: I think the story is really trying to think about how do we think about the people to whom consequences happen.
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times when we find ourselves saying, you're getting what you deserve, we use that word deserve, this book I think is calling into question about who deserves what.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I think I deserve something because somebody else I know is getting it.
SPEAKER_00: So I should deserve that.
SPEAKER_00: And really what that creates is enmity between me and that person.
SPEAKER_00: Like I leave compassion because I'm no longer happy for them.
SPEAKER_00: I'm slided from myself.
SPEAKER_00: Or something bad happens and I knew not to be that behavior to say, look, they're getting what they deserve.
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you, my worst thought ever is they should have known better.
SPEAKER_00: And most of the time when I'm really mad at priests, these are the people with whom I often feel the most competitive and like suspicious, it's because I have the phrase, they should have known better.
SPEAKER_00: And I I hold on to that accountability, but I but I gotta hold on to compassion as well.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the problem is when we go to punish people or when we compete with people, it takes us to Jonah's spot.
SPEAKER_00: So again, I think if you do if you abuse your priestly position, there should be consequences, but that doesn't mean you're a scumbag.
SPEAKER_00: I I I do think a lot of priests are scumbags, so I have to work on that.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you, right, like I can be real objective and protificate about, hey, you know, um, this guy, I mean I know the officer, you know, what kind of environment did he grow up in, that's really unfair, and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: But if I got on a bus that's going from Compton to the port of Los Angeles and I was the only white person on the bus, I've done this before, I wasn't thinking like, oh, how interesting.
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking like, am I safe on the bus?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's and it's the same way if you go downtown to the bus stations.
SPEAKER_01: I'll save them right.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm saying, like, this is for me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't have an option of riding Greyhound bus.
SPEAKER_00: That's silly.
SPEAKER_00: I could buy a ticket anytime I want.
SPEAKER_00: That's not an option for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna drive or I'm gonna take a flight.
SPEAKER_00: These options are very different according to what we grew up with, and I think the book asks us to consider that.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you like that book.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I like this discussion.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe not read this thoroughly enough, but what was the disaster that was supposed to be?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, God was just gonna blow it up like Sodom and Gomorrah, like boom.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Jonah Jonah is not the last book in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: No, Malachi comes last in ours.
SPEAKER_00: If you're Jewish, the Jewish Bible is organized a little differently.
SPEAKER_00: Esther is the last book.
SPEAKER_02: And you know, like this is maybe off the subject, but I I always worked in the inner cities, and one time I I don't remember what I said to a child, but he this I don't remember what the context was, but he said to me, his Koola Stone and Mistone, you get in your car and you drive away to your neighborhood.
SPEAKER_02: I don't get in a car and go anywhere else.
SPEAKER_02: I cross the street and I'm still in the same neighborhood.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a song I love when this guy who lived in Atlanta bought a house in Black Atlanta and lived there, and actually a drug addict comes onto his property who used to live there and said to him something like, You're so happy with yourself because you live with the poor, but you can leave anytime you want to.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you never yeah, I love talking about this architect.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah is not the last book written.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: So it's old enough because it uses God's personal name.
SPEAKER_01: Right.
SPEAKER_01: And he it says it was written in the eighth century.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, good luck, anybody.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody who's like really is tied to dating books in the Bible, sorry.
SPEAKER_02: But do you have any idea?
SPEAKER_00: Probably around then is fair.
SPEAKER_00: I it has to, to me, it has to be written after 722 when the Assyrians destroy the North.
SPEAKER_00: So it could have been written shortly after that.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: Um, could have been written in the late 600s, you know, but like it's definitely written before they go to Babylon, because when they come back, they don't use God's personal name anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And they don't use the concept of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: That starts to disappear, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So you again God repents in Genesis and an Exodus, which those parts are older than the exile.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And so then Jonah, there is the repentance there, and then it goes away until Jesus comes.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance means something different in the New Testament, and we'll get to that when we do Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you all.
SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: We'll do lesson 17 when we come back.
SPEAKER_02: January 8th.