bleeding out loud

The complete Jonah study is now available for download @ MH’s website in the upper right hand corner of the page.

An excerpt from Jonah 4 (Wk. 5 of the MH Lent Study)

Serious props to Mark Baas for writing the bulk of this!

Jonah says one of the reasons he is angry is because God is “a God who relents from sending calamity.” The word calamity means great loss or lasting distress, or maybe we could just say lasting tragedy. When I think of lasting tragedy, I think of the people of Haiti in recent days. Hit with an earthquake that left thousands of men, women and children killed and thousands more without food, water, or a place to sleep. An entire city in utter distress for many years to come and with very little hope to cling to. This is calamity. And this is what Jonah hopes for the people of Nineveh? I think it is safe to assume that the roots of Jonah’s anger run very deep. This kind of anger isn’t built overnight.

In fact the Hebrew word for anger is the word “chara” (if you pronounce it right, you’ll spit on someone). Not only does it mean anger but it also means, “to burn.” Jonah’s anger is a seething, bubbling kind of rage just below the surface. It’s the kind of anger that has been around for a long time and could explode through the surface at any moment. Minor infractions lead to volcanic eruptions of rage.

Recently, I was having one of those days. The kind that start spinning out of control as soon as you lift your head from the pillow. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. First it’s the car, then it’s the kids, then it’s the toilet and on and on it goes. By mid-day I was storming my way through the kitchen on my way to fix the car when my wife asked me if I could take the trash out.

Can I take the trash out?

You want me to take the trash out?

Do you have any idea what my day has been like?

How dare you!

I explode in anger and fragments of sentences and accusations at a raised volume. Because now suddenly everything that is wrong with my day is the result of her asking me to take the trash out. All the while my wife is staring at me with this look on her face like “Who are you?” That is “chara.” The seething, bubbling river of rage just below the surface.

My rant had nothing to do with the trash (which I later took out). But it was an outlet for my blame and frustration. Everything that was wrong with my situation was the fault of… that, him, her. When we get angry, we quickly look around us to find the cause of our condition. According to Eugene Peterson, anger is an indicator. It alerts us to the fact that something is not right inside. Anger is to the person what pain is to the body. It lets you know that something is wrong, and our first impulse is to locate the source of our anger outside of ourselves. That person made me angry. Those people made me angry. But more often than not, anger is an indication that something is wrong inside us.

The rant had to do with me. There was a storm that was building. I was losing control of my day and I didn’t like that feeling. I like to be in control. When things don’t go the way I want them to, I get angry. Maybe the same is true for Jonah. He is looking around to find the cause of his condition and there stands Nineveh. But maybe this is about more than Nineveh.

Last year, I spent a week visiting with family that I don’t see very often. Family is great. Family is also one of the places where you are almost certain to find “chara.” One evening, I was having a conversation with a belligerent family member. This person was livid at another family member, and took the opportunity to tell me about it. For twenty minutes, this person erupted with a litany of reasons for not liking another family member. “She said this. She did this,” and the list went on. After several minutes of ranting, I finally said, “You know, in my experience what we hate in other people is really a reflection of what we hate in ourselves.” Silence. Then our conversation took an unexpected turn. My belligerent family member started saying things like, “I’m a terrible parent. I don’t know my son. I live with my parents. I’m in failing health. I don’t have a job. I guess it’s hard to love your neighbor as yourself when you don’t even love yourself.” I was speaking to a belligerent family member, but I felt like I was speaking with Jonah himself.