You've seen the signs and heard the rhetoric: "God hates..." Fill it in with your favorite enemy: homosexuals, Muslims, liberals, Republicans, gun-control freaks, environmentalists, polluters,... But does He?
You know the story of Jonah and his three-days in the belly of a fish. I bet you don't know the end of the story. Jonah makes a remarkable New Testament kind of statement for a Hebrew prophet. Paraphrasing him, he says, "I knew God that You would not destroy my enemy, the people that I hate, if they repented. I knew You were a God who cared for all people, not just us, your favorite ones. That's why I ran away and tried to die in the storm. I wish You would change Your mind again, and destroy these...(faggots, ragheads, child-spoilers, Wall Street scammers...). I will sit here until I die in the hope that You will wipe them out."
The end of the story has God comparing Jonah's love for a leafy plant, which he didn't plant/water/tend, with the city's 120,000 people made in God's image. "Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city?" And that's the end. We are left to answer the question. It's like the implied question at the end of the Prodigal Son parable: "We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found. Won't you join me in the celebration?"
Jonah in a pout would say, "No!" to both questions. Jonah in his head says, "Yes, I said You were merciful, compassionate, slow to anger...Of course, You would feel sorry for a great city. Of course, I should join in the celebration of my lost brother." But there is very little precedence for this compassion on an enemy of Israel. The Hebrews were the favored nation. God made a covenant with them, that if they honored Him and obeyed all would be well, that if they repented God would once again turn His face to them. Did this apply to the hated Assyrians (homosexuals, Muslims, Democrats, Republicans, etc.)?
Christ teaches that it does. Paul teaches that it does. Jonah teaches that it does. The question--"shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city?"--is probably not really meant to teach Jonah, or the Ninevites. It's meant for Israel to answer the question. It's meant for Christ's followers to answer the question. We are to be the royal priesthood, a holy nation. We are to be a light to the world, because He is compassionate, merciful and slow to anger. God says the others are in spiritual darkness (they don't know right from wrong, think wrong is right, don't know what they're doing). When they come into the light, God welcomes them like a prodigal son. Christ pleaded for them, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing."
"Because we understand our fearful responsibility to the Lord, we work hard to persuade others...If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. If we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit...since we believe that Christ died for all...He died for everyone so that those who receive His new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view."
Another question God could ask us, at the end of the book of Jonah is: "Who should I hate and not give a second chance?"
"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" (I John 4.8)
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