The Jonah Syndrome

<p>THE JONAH SYNDROME</p> <p>God wanted to save the great city of Nineveh in Assyria (about 755 years BC), so he sent Jonah, a prophet of Israel with a warning about the harm and destruction they were causing one another that would end up destroying them as a people unless they went through a spiritual conversion of their minds and hearts. Jonah 1:1 GOD's Word came to Jonah, son of Amittai: "Up on your feet and on your way to the big city of Nineveh! Preach to them. They're in a bad way and going from bad to worse and I can't ignore it any longer." </p> <p>However, Jonah had made his own judgement about what God really needed to do with this bunch of people. Jonah was a fierce nationalist, and he could not agree with God’s appraisal of the fate of this despicable Assyrian city, and he tried to escape his responsibility by running away from it. The name Jonah in Hebrew means dove, which speaks of the Holy Spirit’s anointed message through this prophet of God. And that message was being contested by the messenger himself! Jonah's attempt to run away probably has some logic to it because he would/could have assumed that God only spoke to Israel – not so!</p> <p>God showed Jonah in this experience the magnitude of his goodness and mercy to all people, not only Israel, and that as the Lord over the whole earth he could hold people accountable to his basic covenant standards of blessings and cursing whenever he wanted to. For those ignorant of his covenant, he had respect to a person’s heart of a good conscience towards God (IE, Job and his friends). And he did send prophets to other nations, to Egypt (Moses to Pharoah), and Babylon (Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar), and Jesus reaching out to gentiles (the centurion, the woman touching the hem of his garment etc). Jonah didn’t think that way.</p> <p>When Jonah ran away, he boarded a boat to sail off as far away as he could in the opposite direction to Nineveh, but a huge storm hit the ship and the crew members cried out to their gods to find out who had offended