Monday 9 March 2009

Bitesize Jonah (24)

Does God change his mind in response to our actions?
It looks like he does that in Jonah. God sends Jonah to preach against Nineveh because of its wickedness (1:2) and his message is that Nineveh will be overturned (3:4). Yet when the Ninevites repent, God ‘had compassion on them and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened’ (3:10).
Some people say that God does change his mind. They point to the ‘plain meaning of Scripture’ in instances of narrative like this one.
But they are wrong and there is a lot more is at stake in this matter than we might imagine. One of them is that God’s trustworthiness is brought into question. Think of it this way: If God ‘changes his mind’ then how different is he to a person (or government) that says one month, you can have X and then some time later says, actually we want don’t want you to have X, we are taking it back? Could we take the word of such a God seriously? No! He might say to us: ‘repent and believe the good news’...but we would think, ok, you say ‘good news’ now, but will it be the same ‘good news’ be next week, or in 10 years, or once I have died?!
Do you see the problems for us if God changes his mind? Our foundations in his promises disappear!
But what about Scripture? The book of Jonah and and many other places seem to show that God changes his mind. What are we to make of them?

God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil? (Numbers 23:19)
Here are three ‘general’ things to think about Jonah and the rest of the places in Scripture where this seems to happen:
a) There is often an ‘if’ that we mean but don’t say in ‘normal’ conversation – sometimes this is the same with God.
So.... I say to you, ‘let’s meet in Walsall tomorrow’. Tomorrow comes and on the news it is saying that 6 months of rain has fallen overnight, Walsall is flooded, bus services cancelled and all the roads are impassable. Do you still walk/swim to Walsall to meet me? No.You realise that what ‘really’ I said was ‘Let’s meet in Walsall tomorrow, if all things are ‘normal’’...not if there has been a hurricane, or you have broken your leg or something! There was an unsaid ‘if’ in my plan for you. And you wouldn’t think I was fickle and untrustworthy in such a situation would you?
b) Sometimes for effect we say one thing but mean another– so does God.
So... imagine you are teaching your child or grandchild to count. And so you take four coins out of your pocket and say: ‘Tom, I have 2 coins here and 2 coins here. So (big smile and possibly a wink) that means I have 5 coins in my hand.’ Will they say – ‘Liar!’? No, they’ll say: ‘Don’t be silly, you’ve got 1,2,3, 4 coins in your hand!’
c) The infinite God relates to finite people. This will make your brain hurt most probably! We, as finite beings experience time sequenentially (glance at your watch if you don't believe me!) and therefore experience God moment by moment too. If we had been in Nineveh then at one moment on (say) 20th April we would have experienced God as wrathful at our sin, but then at another moment (say) 21st April, after Jonah’s preaching and our repentance, we would have experienced him as our merciful God! To us, God has changed. But God himself has not changed because he is not finite, but infinite. Although he is in and ‘experiences’ time, he is also over it and beyond it. In his complete control over all things he has in his eternity decided to relate to the Ninevites in this way, that on the 20th April he would be wrathful and then on the 21st April (because of all that he would do in sending and resending Jonah, amazingly including using a large fish as lifeboat and taxi!) he would be merciful.
All this according to his unchanging character so resented by Jonah (4:2).

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