Most of us are comforted when someone connects with us at our point of suffering. They express concern, care, and in the best cases, they are able to connect with our suffering by accessing an experience they have had themselves. The greater the level of shared experience, the greater the comfort or connection. A person gets cancer and is going to receive treatment. Friends and family shave their heads in solidarity with the sufferer. A shared experience to demonstrate love and establish connection. The person then spends time in the cancer ward and becomes friends with others who are also fighting cancer. A much stronger shared experience and more encouragement and bond.

With this in mind, we then look at how God reveals Himself to us in the Bible. Here is God choosing to become human, live like a human, and die like a human. Rather than try to give us commands to make us god-like, He becomes human. In John 1 it tells us that God became flesh and lived in our midst. This Christmas we will celebrate the beginning of that process as God doesn’t just come down and try out being human for a few days, but instead He experiences every facet of human experience. The almighty Creator of the universe experiences life as an unborn baby, as a newborn, as a small child who isn’t potty trained, as a youth needing to obey his parents. He becomes an adult and experiences loss, hunger, sadness, and finally experiences fear, abandonment and betrayal, pain, rejection, and death by torture.

He didn’t have to. He chose to. To connect with us. Using the opening analogy, He didn’t shave His head to show sympathy, He gave Himself the worst terminal cancer He could, just so He could connect with us in our sorry state. He loved us that much. We often don’t think through that. We might understand that Jesus died for our sins, but we miss that part of the whole process was to share in our sufferings and take them on Himself. As a result, we don’t have someone representing us in heaven who can’t sympathize, but one who has gone through it all. The Bible says because of this, we can approach Him with confidence to receive grace and mercy in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16)

He gets it. When you’ve blown it. When life has kicked you in the teeth. He gets it. You need more than sympathy, you need someone who has gone through it and will show you mercy and take care of you even if you don’t deserve it. Jesus suffering gives us the confidence that we can go get that from Him. Why so confident? Because He chose to go through all that to be your Savior; to be able to connect with you.

We call it Good News.

The story of Jonah is one of the more widely known stories of the Bible. Even those with little Bible knowledge have heard of “Jonah and the Whale.” What even many Christians haven’t paid enough attention to is what the story is about. We popularly say it is about the “reluctant” prophet. Sometimes we turn it into a cautionary tale about obeying God when He tells you to do something. Neither of these are the point of the story.

First, Jonah wasn’t reluctant, he was downright unwilling. He did not want to go to Ninevah because he didn’t want there to be any chance that they might be delivered from God’s judgment. He tells us this in Jonah 4:2 “…in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.”

Second, the tale is not presented as a lesson on obedience (although you could take that lesson from the story). Instead, the story is not about Jonah’s actions, but about both Jonah’s and God’s hearts. Chapter four finds the story coming to a climax with Ninevah repenting, God relenting, and Jonah fuming because he wanted to see Ninevah destroyed. Ninevah was a major city of Assyria, which two of Jonah’s fellow prophets had predicted would overthrow Israel. Jonah is a patriot and is more interested in saving his country than saving the people of Ninevah. The book ends with God expressing His own compassion on the city of pagan unbelievers.

God gave us the book of Jonah to ask us that same question. To challenge us to face our Ninevah. Too often many find more common cause with Jonah than we might care to admit. We are eager for the defeat of our enemies and more interested in saving the interests of ourselves and those around us than the enemies that threaten us. When you have a pagan, threatening enemy, compassion is rarely your go-to thought.

So there’s the challenge. Will Ninevah defeat you like it defeated Jonah. Will whoever you see as your enemy be the thing that reveals your lack of understanding of the compassion of God? Whether your Ninevah is someone from the other political party, (or all of “them”), someone from a different faith (or someone without any faith), or just a person in your life that seems set against you, do you see your Ninevah like God or like Jonah?

In these days of hyper-polarization and strong partisanship, when we are all busy fighting our political enemies, we have new tools to help us speak. The digital age has handed each of us a megaphone (or several megaphones) with which to speak. We can post all number of memes, rants, reviews, reflections, and reactions to the news of the day and call out all the people who need (in our humble opinion) to be called out. In previous eras, we might sit and speak to a couple of friends at work, or at the store, but now we can broadcast our thoughts and reactions across the world electronically. We can make sure everyone knows how stupid and bad we think other people are. We can mock and decry all the people who are WRONG! We can call out the Dems, the Trumpists, own the Libs, mock little girls who give environmental speeches, and anyone else who has crossed our ideologies.

This presents a real danger for those who profess to follow Christ. We may be students of the Bible and have a clear sense of right and wrong from it, and this gives us a sense that we need to rail against others using this sense. The thing to stop and consider, especially when we remember that our social media is the public square, is what the Bible says to those of us who honor it about our speech, our language, and our approach. There is not enough space in one blog post to cover all the different passages in Scripture that instruct the follower of Christ in how they should speak, but let’s hit just a couple.

There is one who speaks rashly like the thrusts of a sword, But the tongue of the wise brings healing.

(Proverbs 12:18)

Does our speaking cause wounds or bring healing? That is the very simple formulation of this verse. We tend to feel that the people we mock deserve it, but that is very much not the point. As a father of young children, I have never condoned one child being mean or verbally abusive to a sibling even when the sibling was also out of line. One sin doesn’t give permission for another sin.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

(Romans 12:14)

bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

(Luke 6:28)

Facebook, Twitter, or other social media does not suddenly negate the clear command of Jesus. As fun as it is to let loose with scorn and derision against those we don’t like, don’t agree with, or feel mean us harm, the Bible comes out pretty strongly against it. Also consider that when we treat those we consider “enemies” like that, we are not acting any different than the world. As Jesus pointed out, even the wicked love their friends. Our opportunity is to be like Jesus, who did not rail against his accusers but instead, even when being murdered, asked that God forgive them.
One last note. Part of delighting in flaming against others is our strong sense of being in the right and proudly proclaiming that we are justified in our judgments; proudly so. Proverbs again instructs us,

He who guards his mouth and his tongue, Guards his soul from troubles.

“Proud,” “Haughty,” “Scoffer,” are his names, Who acts with insolent pride.

(Proverbs 21:23-24)

Let us stop and consider our next thrust of the sword. Our next desire to mock, belittle, insult and demean. The question is not whether they deserve it, or whether you are more right, smarter, or more righteous. The question is, are you blessing, guarding your tongue, and bringing healing rather than adding flames to a world on fire.