"God I am so angry I want to die!" Jonah told God (Jonah 4:3) God had done it again. Exactly what Jonah thought God would do. Jonah had preached to Nineveh and the city and repented and God had forgiven them! And Jonah was pissed. The Ninevites were bitter enemies of Israel, and Jonah was the last person who wanted to be used by God for their salvation. As if that was not enough to piss Jonah off, Jonah's precious plant that gave him shade in the desert was eaten by a worm and died (Jonah 4:7). And now Jonah was getting scotched in the hot desert sun. Now he was so pissed he really wanted to die (Jonah 4:8).
Have you ever been so angry or upset at something that you wanted to die? Something happened or someone did something inconsiderate or selfish that really pissed you off. Everytime you think about the incident, your blood boils and your stomach churns. Your mind wonders to ways you can take revenge and contemplates the delight you will enjoy inflicting that revenge on the person. Sometimes our anger is even directed at God. He is suppose to be trustworthy and loving but you really feel let down this time.
"Is it right for you to be angry?" God asked Jonah (Jonah 4:4 and 4:9) What God was saying was really "Is your anger legitimate?" Should you really be getting angry about this? Let's get some perspective here Jonah...You have preached to 120,000 people and the entire city repented. This is one of the greatest revivals in biblical history. 120,000 souls saved. Any mordern day evangelist would be proud of that, and fall down on his knees in thanksgiving. Yet you are pissed off about it! Let's get some perspective here. Now you are also getting pissed over the stupid plant which died. You care more for the plant than the souls of man! You need to wake up your ideas and get your priorities right, Jonah! And the book of Jonah ended right there.
The painful lesson we need to consider is sometimes, like Jonah, we get angry over all the wrong things. The things we get angry about reveal alot about our priorities. And often times, the small, petty insignificant things we get angry about just reveal how selfish we are about things. If you are like me, I don't really get angry about the injustice suffered by millions in the world. I don't really get angry about the millions of aborted babies, or abused children, or victims of crime. I don't really get angry about the fact that selfish industrialist are killing our planet or world powers are using their military and economic might to justify attacking smaller nations. I may disapprove of these things but they hardly extract much emotion from me. What I do get angry about is someone cutting me in on the road, driving at 80 kmh on the extreme right lane of the expressway, bad service in a restaurant, a guy at the front of the queue taking his own sweet time.
I've been thinking alot about this lately. Alot of the things we get angry about are simply not worth getting angry about. They only reveal our wrong priorities and perspective about life and things. Maybe it is time we get in with God's priorities and perspective. To God, nothing else is as important as people. Their rights, their freedom, their dignity, their welfare and the salvation of their souls. Every person is created by God, nurtured from young by Him and percious to Him. This means that in every situation when we are angry over our own violated rights, we all have a choice, you and I. We can either get pissed off and take it out on the world to vindicate our own selfishness. Or we can take the opportunity to affirm the dignity of a fellow human being, to show respect and love to a fellow human being, to respond in a way that will make our society a more gracious place, and to make someone else's day. How we respond will reveal where our priorities lie, what is important to us. Like Jonah, we all have our plants...something small and petty and selfish that we are so pissed off about we want to die. And then the Lord knocks on our door, "Is it right for you to be angry..."