Scripture reveals God’s regard for animals. Jonah, distorted in his faith about God and world mission, resisted the call of God to ministry in Nineveh, a city perceived by many in Israel as pagan beyond the grace of God. Jonah runs from God when called to an evangelistic directive to Nineveh. He appears to have come to the belief in God as tribal, so if he can escape from Israel’s boundaries he will be free from what he feels is an onerous task. The story of Jonah’s ordeal with the great fish follows. He then realizes there is no escape from the mission. Pleased to learn that a fierce judgment would visit the spiritually recalcitrant people of Nineveh in forty days, he proceeds to the city declaring the judgment, but his message gains the repentance of the city – so to dissolve the judgment. Disgusted with the turn of events, Jonah is angry at God, and pouts in the desert to the point of saying he preferred death to the failure of his decree to the people – when he detects that the city will not perish. He finds shade under a gourd given of God, but the gourd is infected with a parasite and shrivels. Matters for him have gone from bad to worse, and he becomes quite sincere in his invitation of death rather than face the continuing rigors of the desert sun. God, in what seems like special patience, asks Jonah why he would not be pleased that his message had saved the lives at least of the obvious innocent of the Nineveh population – the children and animals. The narrative closes here. We are left to speculate on the rest of the story of Jonah. The Nineveh recovery was maintained by converts in the city who took up on God’s points and fulfilled the ministry that was meant for Jonah.
We are arrested in the story by not only its main thrust of God’s mercy in the light of judgment, repentance and forgiveness as means for turning a culture and consequences, but the lack of application on the part of a believer to the same solution for himself. There are several implications in the story that should not escape us, and one of these is that some divine value is related to the animals. God’s first reason for sparing the city was in the repentance of a knowledgeable population. They were on their way to self-destruction in their own context, but God would hasten the matter if necessary. Another reason for either delay or forgiveness was in the admission that there were innocent creatures, especially children and animals, possessing life that didn’t deserve a holocaust. God was calling his servant to do what was necessary to stop his (God’s) own program. God is pleased to back down on any prediction or program if the response to righteousness is genuine. God’s interest is in making a life of peace, love, and fulfillment for all blood life – whether of human kind or animal kind. Human beings currently relate the animals as predecessors of human kind in physical ascent, whereas God relates them in spiritual meaning as sharing life (which only God can give) in its proper perspective on earth. Animal life will end, and the animal is spared that information so lives for the moment. Mankind lives in the hope of immortality.
Here there is temptation on my part to evaluate the distortions of many in modern literature, both scientific and general, that reduce mankind from the Christian culture that shifts the emphasis from the biology of the human body (mortal/physical) to the spiritual meaning of the soul/spirit of mankind that possesses something of the image of God. Some literature is so far out that it makes mankind seem less than the animal. One writer called our arrogance of high position as specieism, which is specie prejudice. Without reference to God, the writer stated that: European humanism, as it developed over the past few centuries, inevitably classifies the vast majority of human beings as subhuman (high animal). The literature is contradictory on the differences, status, meaning and source of it all. There is confusion of tongues about who we are as human beings. Movement toward the margins of perception diminishes us and God in a variety of ideas. Christians want to find the facts of status and culture as God would have belief and practice. This includes a world that seems to run on tension between blessing and burden that accompanies all that natural life encompasses. Wisdom relates to the facts of our lives, both spiritual and physical, that gain knowledge and understanding toward all in our experience to form belief and conduct that not only offers earth benefit but meaningful lives, transitional to something more beyond earth. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020