How easy it is as a foster parent to slip into being a Jonah. The progression goes something like this: We hear the call. We might make excuses at first—too busy, not enough space, don’t want to get attached, too many behavioral problems, what about daycare. But then we finally take that first step, compelled to serve, to help children in need, to reach out to the biological family. All the while secretly worrying our biggest fear might come true: God might decide to restore where we wish He would bring judgment.
God: Get up! Go!
Jonah got up to flee from the Lord’s presence.
Jonah didn’t want to serve their enemy. He didn’t want to follow God’s command. Because he knew. He knew what kind of God this was: a God who brings judgment but who also has a history of showing mercy.
But the Lord threw a great wind onto the sea.
Jonah: You threw me into the depths, into the heart of the seas, and the current overcame me. All your breakers and billows swept over me. . . . I will fulfill what I have vowed. Salvation belongs to the Lord.
Message received. Jonah was finally ready to obey.
God: Get up! Go!
Jonah got up and went.
Then the people of Nineveh believed God.
After Jonah preaches, they repent! This desperately wicked city turns from their sin. Mercifully, God relents from sending sweeping judgment. But instead of celebrating this grand display of God’s goodness, Jonah fumes.
God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—so God relented from the disaster He had threatened them with. And He did not do it.
Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious.
Jonah: I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God.
Jonah shakes his fist at God because of the saving of an entire city. Jonah struggles to surrender his own desires and to trust the sovereign purposes of God, revealing his own judgmentalism and hidden self-righteousness.
God: Is it right for you to be angry?
The Jonah Syndrome happens subtly. I think as a foster parent I relate to Jonah’s heart-attitude a little too much. As foster parents, we love these children to the best of our ability and advocate on their behalf. We begin to think ourselves irreplaceable, becoming a sort-of-savior. And their biological family? They are ignored, intentionally slighted, or perhaps secretly despised because of their treatment of these precious children and their part in the mess.
You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.
Anne Lamott
We forget God is sovereign, or rather we choose to ignore the kind of sovereign that He is because it feels better—safer, comfortable, right. God is sovereign in judgment—which, if we’re being honest, we wish He would bring for that biological family. But God is also sovereign in mercy—which we are thankful He extends to us but certainly do not think they deserve. To our secret disappointment, “mercy triumphs over judgement” (James 2:13). Sometimes God chooses to extend mercy while we turn into Jonah. This is why I didn’t want to start fostering! I knew that You are a gracious God, and I just knew you would forgive those birth parents and give them another chance. Now my heart is broken and I’m scared and I feel like I’m dying inside. What about all of the terrible things they have done? And what about me? What about my investment in all of this?
It is in our virtuous behavior that we are liable to the gravest sins. . . . It is in this context of being responsible, being obedient, that we most easily substitute our will for God’s will, because it is so easy to suppose they are identical.
Eugene Peterson
The Jonah Syndrome means we no longer see the humanness of the Ninevites—those other from us, those seemly destined for judgement but receiving restoration instead. We forget that, if not for the grace of God, we would be just like them. Without God’s grace “lavished on us” (Eph. 1:8), we would/could be just like the biological family of our foster children. Our foster parent platform becomes a pedestal for cynicism and self-righteousness, looking down instead of looking eye-to-eye. Sure, we might be doing good work, but we lose sight of the grace that covers us and keeps us and sustains us. When the Sovereign God gives them mercy and compassion, will a Jonah-like heart be revealed?
Jonah: It’s better for me to die than to live.
God: Is it right for you to be angry?
Jonah: Yes, it’s right! I’m angry enough to die!
God: May I not care?
Then there is silence. Jonah doesn’t respond.
Oh, may God grant us rightly-placed compassion and mercy, straight from His heart. May He help us supernaturally battle back from becoming a Jonah in our foster journey—living an obedient life but disconnected from God’s heart for the world and each person in it. May mercy triumph over judgment in our own souls. May we live in such deep gratitude for the daily grace of God that it overflows in heartfelt compassion and love. May we respond with rejoicing when our sovereign God chooses to relent and restore and redeem.
