Grace, mercy, forgiveness, and forbearance are Christ-like character traits that emanate from love–a healthy love for the God of the universe, and a healthy love for our fellow man. Grace is the aspect of giving someone something good when they don’t deserve it. Mercy is the idea of NOT giving someone the punishment they deserve. Forgiveness is letting go of bitterness or indignation against another who asks you to do so. (Jesus said to forgive until 70×7. As a joke, a high school friend of mine and I started keeping track of the 490 times we needed to forgive each other. Needless to say, that quickly ceased because she soon exhausted her 490 ☺) Finally, forbearance may be the hardest of the four to practice, (At least it is for me.) Forbearance is the act of overlooking other’s faults, mistakes, and errors. That little annoyance from your co-worker who taps his pencil incessantly, that OCD practice your spouse insists on EVERY TIME, or the bad habit your child has developed because they learned it from you. I guess the reason I wrote this today is twofold: one of my friends recently told me that she and her husband had returned to church and she loved the message because the pastor explained the Scripture–it was about grace. The second reason I wrote this is that she made me contemplate my own relationship with grace.( Boy, do I need to make some improvements and adjustments! ) Anyway, I hope my musings are somehow a blessing to you. If you have thoughts, please comment. As always, my posts are only a starting point. I do not have all the answers and writing an exhaustive post, essay, or book on any subject would be–well, exhausting! Have a great day!
“ Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.” (from the New Testament book of II John)
Grace, Mercy, Forgiveness, & Forbearance
This made me think of the Story of Jonah. G0d wished to do evil to Nineveh, and so he sends Jonah son of Amittai to talk to them. Now the first question you might ask is, why does G0d tell us Jonah’s father’s name? Amittai is Hebrew for Truth. Jonah is the son of Truth. Having studied ancient Roman and Greek literature, this is a very Roman and Greek concept. Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles was the New Fire. He inherited the traits of Achilles. So think of what it would be like growing up with a Dad named Truth. I was born on Halloween, so that holiday certainly means more to me than most people. As the son of Truth, I think G0d is telling us there there is a Truth that is driving the story. One such Truth could be that Jonah fears that he will go to Nineveh, and they will repent. This will create a Truth in G0d’s mind that he sends prophet after prophet to the Jews, and they never change, but one prophet is sent to Nineveh, and they repent. Perhaps, G0d chose the wrong people. Plus, the Ninevites are not good people. The Jews would be better off if G0d did evil to them. These could have been the Truths that caused Jonah to run away.
In the end, Jonah is not successful, and is forced to complete his mission. The Ninevites repent just as he feared, and G0d changes his mind about doing the evil that he had planned to do. This angers Jonah greatly.
“And he prayed unto the LORD, and said: ‘I pray Thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in mine own country? Therefore I fled beforehand unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and compassionate, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy, and repentest Thee of the evil.”
Now let’s look at that list of attributes for G0d. Thou art a gracious God, and compassionate, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy, and repentest Thee of the evil. He is quoting Psalm 86 verse 15 “But Thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth.” But he made a change. He dropped truth, and replaced it with repenting of evil. Why is this act of mercy so offensive to Jonah. It is because Jonah knows that evildoers often escape any punishment here on Earth, but he can accept that if he knows that they will get what is coming to them in Olam Chabad, the World to Come, but if G0d can change his mind about doing evil, they may not even be punished then.
What is interesting is that the word used for G0d is not Elohim, the all power judge of good and evil, but Hashem Elochim, the loving Father who dwells with us in the Garden. Hashem is the source of the compassion that offsets Elohim the judge.
Now, I can’t speak for all religions, but for Catholics, the story, which is quite short in the first place, basically ends with the repentance of Nineveh. The anger of Jonah is not explained, and the story of the worm and gourd is not even read, as far as I remember, but the whole story up to this point is really just prologue to the actual point that unfolds in the last 11 verses.
Jonah is angry to the point that he wants to die. He goes out to the edge of the city to a high hill, and build a shade structure and sits there to see if G0d changes his mind back, and destroys the city. G0d creates a gourd who broad leaves grow up and provide shade for Jonah, that is might deliver him from evil, and due to the shade that it provides Jonah is exceedingly glad. Jonah sat there in the shade wishing evil on Nineveh. The gourd provides him shade, and makes him glad. Why? He already had shade. He did not need this shade. Why did it make him happy? We see this by what happens next.
In the night, G0d prepares a worm, and smites the gourd and it withered. In the morning the sun beat down, and withered the gourd, and it died, and a fierce east wind, and the sun, burned at Jonah, and he fainted. He cries out to G0d that he wishes to die once again.
G0d asks Jonah if he is angry for the gourd. Keep in mind that all of this started because Jonah was angry about Nineveh being spared. He feared this outcome, and when it happened he wanted to die. But his answer was not that he was mad about Nineveh, but that he was mad about the gourd.
Now, this certainly seems like a very strange turn of events. He’s been all about Nineveh the whole story but here in the last 6 verses, he’s all upset about a gourd. So, let’s get back to G0d’s question. Are you greatly angered about the gourd, and Jonah’s reply is, “I am greatly angry, even unto death.” Now, everything is in place for G0d to impart his lesson.
And the LORD said: “Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night; and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?”
What is it that G0d is trying to teach us? The story seems to be about good and evil and the consequences of them. Evil is as present in the story as truth, and even Jonah replaces truth as an attribute of G0d with he repents from doing evil. Is truth and evil what this story is truly about? No, the end seems to say that the real truth of the story is potential. The gourd had no right to exist. There was no seed that was planter. No one tilled the soil, nor cared for the plant. There was no reason for the gourd to exist at all, and it only lived for a day, and a night. Jonah does not care that it had no right to exists. That it did not come from a seed is not the important part of the gourd. What was important was that it had the potential to give him shade, eve though he already had shade. It came from G0d, and it made him happy. Those were reason enough, to Jonah, to spare the gourd from destruction, not based on what it was, but on what it could still be.
So when G0d applies Jonah’s logic to the people, the animals, and the great city of Nineveh, surely the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw for the first time, the potential of these people as demonstrated by their obedience to G0d, and their repentance. That is what forgiveness is all about. I don’t forgive you because you are sorry about the evil that you have done. You did the evil, and nothing can change that. You cannot change the past. I forgive you because I would otherwise miss out on the potential of who you could become. It is the future where you can change, and that is what you must show to be worthy of forgiveness.
Chuck, thank so much for your comments! There is a lot to unpack. I especially appreciate your summary: “So when G0d applies Jonah’s logic to the people, the animals, and the great city of Nineveh, surely the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw for the first time, the potential of these people as demonstrated by their obedience to G0d, and their repentance. That is what forgiveness is all about. I don’t forgive you because you are sorry about the evil that you have done. You did the evil, and nothing can change that. You cannot change the past. I forgive you because I would otherwise miss out on the potential of who you could become. It is the future where you can change, and that is what you must show to be worthy of forgiveness.”