A Theology of Causality

Series: Jonah: No One Is Beyond God's Reach

 “A Theology of Causality” (or “Is the coronavirus a judgement from God?)   

 Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, May 10, 2020. // Jonah 4

 

Hello, friends.  I want to welcome you into this online space together.

I don’t know about you but I am learning a lot about myself and a lot about other people around me during this pandemic.  I’m leaning that some of my neighbours are conspiracy theorists.  I’m learning that I’m pretty judgy towards people who hoard toilet paper or hair products but I have those tendencies to stockpile when it comes to Ms. Vicki’s sea salt and malt vinegar chips and Chicago Mix from Costco (you may have your own list of essentials items to survive the pandemic at your house don’t judge mine). 

 

And, unfortunately, I’m also learning that pandemics bring out BAD theology!  I suppose that this has always and will always be true. Both the presence of poor thinking about who God is and what God is like (that’s what theology is) and the propagation of this in all kinds of ways are brought to the surface and then amplified during times of crisis (and also since everybody and their dog has a social media account and thus has an opinion about everything).

 

For example, I had a conversation with a friend the other day who wanted to convince me that the coronavirus was sent specifically and uniquely as a judgement from God on people who had lived wicked lives.  Or I read the blog of a popular preacher who, when asked about the COVID 19 said that: “God uses disease to bring particular judgements on those who reject Him”.  Or take Ralph Drollinger, the Christian pastor who leads a Bible study for members of US Cabinet, who, when asked said that the disease is “God’s consequential wrath on our nation.” (end quote)   

 

As a Christian, a person who attempts to follow God reveled most clearly in the person and work of Jesus, I have a big problem with this kind of bad theology. It’s highly reductionistic to seek to explain specific horrible events in our world as acts of God’s specific judgement on specific people for very specific sins.  And you’ll note that the people who espouse these things, never include themselves. It’s always about God punishing others.

 

The reality of life in a fallen world is that bad things happened to good people, and good things happen to bad people.  We’re going to see today in Jonah 4 one of the most intriguing discussions between God and a human being as recorded for us in the Old Testament book of Jonah, that it is a dangerously unhelpful and unwise thing for you or I or anyone to step into the place of attributing specific actions to God.  This is above your pay grade, and it should say there. 

 

We’ve already seen in our study in the book of Jonah over the past three weeks, the account of a man who, although he is a prophet, doesn’t seem to understand God’s heart very clearly.  Jonah receives an invitation from God to take a message of repentance to a foreign nation, Assyria, to their capital city, Nineveh.  And instead of living into God’s mercy and being a messenger of God’s grace, Jonah runs in the opposite direction and spends some time in a fish doing some temporary repenting of his own. 

 

After a prayer that gives us yet another window into God’s compassion in chapter 2 and God giving Jonah a second chance in chapter 3, Jonah finally delivers his message.   And at the end of Chapter 3, the text says that “When the people of the city of Nineveh changed their ways – they repented.  And 3:10 says “When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.”

 

So you would think that Jonah would find this to be fantastic news and that he would throw a “mission accomplished” party.  But instead of thanking God that the message he had delivered was heeded and that God’s mercy had triumphed over judgement, Jonah got angry. 

 

Pause and think about this more a moment.  Jonah is a momentum of God’s mercy.  This is the one who ran away and whom God graciously found and spared.  This is the one who cried out to God “I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows for salvation comes form the Lord alone”.  This is the one who sees the largest turning to God recorded in the Old Testament. 

 

And yet, this is also the one who get’s angry because Jonah sent out the RSVP for God’s judgement and God’s mercy showed up to the party instead. Listen to the TONE.  Didn’t I say this before I left home?! I knew you were going to do this.  “‘I knew that you are a merciful  & compassionate God, slow to get angry & filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people!’   How dare you!

 

I’m struck by the thought that each and every one of us holds view of God that are both true and yet also distorted.  We each see through a glass dimly.  Jonah might give intellectual lip service to God’s mercy, but Jonah is really obsessed with his own personal reputation.  I might say God is loving, but I can’t demonstrate love for someone in need.  How we think about God is important – and it is also complicated. In the person of Jonah, we have a messenger who doesn’t believe that God’s power and goodness are strong enough to accomplish the message he delivers.  And yet, God, in God’s mercy, works despite Jonah’s stinky attitude.

 

How about you?  What do you say you believe about God?  Even though Jonah says that he believes God is merciful, Jonah’s actions demonstrate that his real conviction is that God is angry and punitive. 

So we not only have to ask what we think about god and what we say about God, but also how we live.  How does what you say you believe about God show up in your actions? 

 

If you say “I trust God’ but you don’t seek medical treatment, you’re might really be saying “God only cares about spiritual stuff not our physical bodies.”  If you look to the future and it looks scary so you hoard your money instead of giving with generosity to help those in need, you might sings songs: ‘God, I trust you. I look to you for help” But your actions are speaking louder than your words.  And certainly louder than your thoughts. 

 

Jonah’s actions tell the real story here.  He goes up onto a hilltop to wait and see the fireworks. Jonah is convinced that God is a God of justice who is going to punish the Ninevites for their wickedness and evil.  And he wants to have affront row seat to this.   

 

He operations out of a fixed mentality around cause and effect.  That evil people always have bad things happen to them and that good people only have good things happen to them.  But friends, the world isn’t as simple as all that.  Good people will get sick and some of them will die from this virus.  And many evil people will be largely unimpacted.  

 

St. Augustine, who lived in the 5th Century, and experienced some horrific global events, sought to work out the question of cause and effect.  And after much careful observation and deep immersion in the world of philosophy, theology and history, he reaches this insightful conclusion:

we do not know by what judgment these things are done or permitted to be done by God, [all we know is that God is of the] highest virtue, the highest wisdom, the highest justice… That God is never unfair…   Therefore, it is not beneficial for us to try to make it make sense.”   In other words, it’s not beneficial for us to say “I know why COVID 19 is here – God did it because of x or y.”  The purposes of the Almighty might be opaque but God’s heart of loving kindness never is.   

 

This is a point that God drives home to a sulking Jonah by way of a powerful object lesson.  Look with me at Jonah 4:6 and I’m going to draw your attention to one word:  Jonah 4:6 the Lord ARRANGED for a leafy plant to grow…. So Jonah was grateful for the plant.  4:7 BUT God also arranged for a worm to eat the plant and so it died.  4:8 Then God arranged for a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah.  

 

Here’s what I want us to catch in Jonah’s story: There’s a difference between what God allows and what God arranges.

 

God sometimes arranges things in our lives for the purpose of teaching us, correcting us, growing us, things that might help turn us back to God.  God arranged a messenger for Nineveh. God arranged a fish to swallow Jonah.

 

And God sometimes allows for things that are bad things to come into our lives.  Think about the story of Job, for example.  But God doesn’t “cause” these things like global pandemics in order to “teach us a lesson”.  That’s faulty thinking.  There is a difference between what God allows into our lives and what God arranges for our lives. 

 

Jesus is asked the same question in Luke 13 – a tower has fallen down and killed 18 people and some are saying “yup, that was God’s judgement on them” and Jesus says “‘Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?’ Jesus asked. ‘Is that why they suffered? Not at all!” Then why do bad things happen? “We do not know by what judgment these things are done or permitted to be done by God, [all we know is that God is of the] highest virtue, the highest wisdom, the highest justice… That God is never unfair.”   

 

NT scholar Raymond Brown says “Not everything that happens is God’s will. But God’s will is in everything that happens.”  In other words, not everything that happens in our lives or in our world is God’s desire. BUT God can work God’s will within anything that happens.  That’s what Romans 8:28 is all about.  God can work good things out of bad circumstances. God is not the cause of bad circumstances in your life.

 

But Jonah is at the end of his rope.  He’s not thinking straight. He has had it and so he pout-shouts to God (like a toddler does). “This is so horrible I could die!  Death is certainty better than living like this.”  

 

And now we come to the punch line of the book, where God asks Jonah a simple but profound question: “Jonah, what do you have a right to?”  Did you have a right to that plant?” (the answer is “no”).  “Then, do you have a right to be angry that the plant is no longer there?” (and here we see that Jonah’s attitude has not shifted).  He is so angry, so hard in his heart and his actions that it’s as if he were dead.

 

And God says to Jonah, if we were to put this in the language of the New Testament, “look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, 29 yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 30 And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?”

 

Friends, my sense is that some of you, some of us, need this reminder today.  We feel grumpy, lost, forsaken, maybe deeply angry at God or at COVID-19 for all that has been taken from us.  It came becomes easy to turn this angst or this search for the cause of all this into anger at God.  But Jonah is pouring all of his emotional energies and pity into a plant and God says to him “if you care about that plant that much, why don’t you try multiplying that by 120,000 and then add in all the animals and you might be getting close to my heart, Jonah.”  Oh love of God, how measureless and strong!

 

As we’ve been together in these moments and inhabiting this account of Jonah, this has been the thing the most struck me and that I take away from our time today: Don’t make God’s love too narrow…. For the love of God is broader /  Than the measure of our mind;

And the heart of the Eternal / Is most wonderfully kind.

 

What’s your Jonah take away?  Write it up in the chat section or give it some thought and send it to me by email this week.  I want to know what you are learning and processing about causality and about God’s deep and measureless love for you in time of COVID-19.   

 

One way of responding to God’s love is in prayer so Let’s pray together as we sing these songs of response. 

 

 

We do not know by what judgment these things are done or permitted to be done by God, [all we know is]… that God is never unfair… Therefore, it is not beneficial for us to try to make it make sense.

Sometimes pandemics bring out bad theology. In Jonah 4, we explore the difference between what God appoints and what God allows. This helps answer questions like "Is COVID-19 a judgement from God?" (and other light, happy, Mother's Day themes).

Speaker: Brad Sumner

May 10, 2020
Jonah 4:1-11

Brad Sumner

Lead Pastor

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