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Anti heroes of the Bible

By July 1, 2021July 12th, 2021No Comments

We decided we would be sharing stories of some anti heroes from the Bible for this month. An anti hero is not your typical hero because he/she doesn’t always possess purely good qualities or personality traits. Jonah is the first anti-hero that comes to mind for me – to be honest, he is kind of my favorite character to dislike. Jonah and the whale is a popular story of the Bible and that is probably for it’s wild, unordinary nature – I mean it isn’t everyday someone is swallowed by a whale and lives to tell about it, am I right? I have found that a lot of the kids bible’s don’t tell the FULL story of Jonah. They tell the tale of him getting on a boat, running away from what God had asked him to do, being thrown overboard in order to stop a huge storm, spending 3 days in the belly of a whale and then being spit out to finally come to the conclusion that he should obey God, goes to Nineveh where he tells them to repent, they do and God spares them. What the children’s bibles don’t tell is how Jonah was angry that God had compassion on the people of Nineveh. Jonah clearly had some growing up to do, as do we a lot of times. He had learned his lesson about running from God because of the circumstances that had happen to him but I’m not sure his heart had been softened or changed. Ultimately Jonah was still a hero but maybe not the altruistic kind we love to love. I read this story and get annoyed at Jonah but then realize this is really good news for me. God still used Jonah, despite his grumbling flaws to save a city of 120,000 people. I pray that I can be used by God even in my grumblings and that I would always appreciate the gracious compassionate nature of God