The Faith of Jonah & The Faith of the Ninevites

Many Christians' favorite pass times is to judge the faith of other Christians. What is demanded of each and everyone is a kind of absolute certainty or a commitment that allows of itself no cracks. Such a level of certitude and commitment may be commendable, but it seems to me that faith, whatever it amounts to, cannot be boxed in so easily. 

One can see this in the Book of Jonah. Jonah is not a very good person, nor a very nice person, but he is a person of deep faith. When the boat he is sailing in meets a terrible storm, he sleeps soundly in the confidence that, in the end, he is protected as a prophet of God. Everything Jonah does is grounded in the presupposition that whatever happens, God will take care of him. And indeed, over and over again that faith turns out to be justified. When Jonah faces death in the jaws of the great deep, God send a fish to save him from death. Salvation is, for Jonah, retreating from victory that is already assured. 

The faith the Ninevites find is very different. They are given no hope in Jonah's message. Some people focus on the fact that the Ninevites repent, and make the mistake of attributing a message of repentance to Jonah. But in point of fact, Jonah's message is unambiguously negative. "In Forty Days this city shall fall", this is the substance and limit of Jonah's message. The Ninevites repentant response to that message is unsolicited. They act without knowledge and lacking any certainty. "Perhaps", they say "God will relent and save our city." Their faith is not an act of certainty, but of uncertainty. It is a groping in hope, a whim and a prayer. 

But the Ninevites receive in their uncertainty the same salvation Jonah does. Their hope is justified as Jonah's confidence was. We all go around spending time defining faith any number of ways, often using very limited English understandings of the Hebrew and Greek concepts of faith to create a box that either someone fits into or doesn't. Perhaps, in the end, what God really wants from people is honesty. There may be more honesty in the hopeful doubter than in self-righteous certainty. And some people who grope in the darkness grope in only the false illusion of hope, and not with any real desire to live differently as a result of their quest. For God, faith may be a much wider thing than we think it is. I for one, hope so.