WHEN WHAT IS RIGHT DOES NOT SEEM FAIR

Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.

Jonah 1:13.

What is right does not always seem fair.  Not all right prescriptions are sweet.  That is one strange message from the story of Jonah.

There had been a storm, with much loss of time and property on account of one strange passenger on the ship.  The mariners cast lots to determine the source of their woes. Mercifully, God answered them in that language, as He usually speaks to everyone in their ‘native’ language.  Jonah did not need to cast lots to know the mind of God, but those mariners were not prophets, like Jonah.  They did what they knew how to, and God answered them all the same, in their ‘language.’ The lots fell on Jonah.

Then came the prescription for ending the storm: cast the storm’s culprit out of the ship. But those were nice men, kinder than angels, too religious to be right, too disciplined to do something so drastic, even if it was the will of God.  They ‘loved’ Jonah more than his God loved him.  They had an option: they would rather row harder.  They did, with greater vigour, trying to ‘fix’ the problem in their own way.  For all their efforts, they merely wasted more time and energy.  They made no progress.

We must give it to them: they had good intentions, but good intentions are not necessarily God’s intention; and some good intention brings greater disaster.  The longer they accommodated Jonah, the more time and resources they lost.  The longer they tolerated what God had told them to separate from, the more severe was the storm they faced.  Their ‘gooder Samaritan’ sentiment cost them very much; their ‘kind’ nature only brought them more pain.

Accommodating Trouble out of ‘compassion’ is stupidity, especially when it is trouble from which God has provided a way of escape.  It is not virtue when costly ‘kindness’ is preferred to drastic escape.  General Joshua didn’t dare another battle, even against weak worms, with harmful Achan exposed in his storms-ravaged camp (Joshua 7:25).

The battle raged in the minds of the sailors as they stood and waited before the watery altar of a strange kind of obedience.  There were two storms: the one within and the one without.  Both were fierce.  Should they ‘sacrifice’ more goods to the sea or ‘sacrifice’ the man?  But where was it ever heard or read that one saved a man by drowning him?  How would a loving God instruct them to do something so terrible to His own prophet; something so unlike His loving, forgiving nature?  Or was Jonah intent on self-harm that he deviously wanted to blame on their innocent heads?  If he wished to commit suicide, couldn’t he just jump into the sea himself?  Did they have to be the ones to do it and bring his blood upon themselves?   They lingered, between being nice and being right; between the will of God and the feelings of men, between faith and fear.  They rowed harder still, but went nowhere.

At last, they were ready to obey, but began first to confess their perceived sin: “We beseech thee, O LORD, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood…” (Jonah 1:14).  They asked forgiveness from God for what was the will of God for them to do.  They confessed obedience as a sin of murder.  They admitted iniquity where there was none.  Their religious sentiments had taken the better of them.  Nice folks indeed, but the storm did not hail them at all.

Sometimes, self-righteousness masquerades as kindness, as humility, as compassion, as good character, and even as godliness.  Sometimes rebellion actually wears a spiritual face.  Sometimes, the right thing to do does not seem so fair.  Sometimes it is fear rather than righteousness that keeps some folks from what is right.

Finally, they gave up and got Jonah out of the ship into the sea where a big fish had been “prepared” by God to transport him to his next stop.  The only way Jonah could ‘board’ that fish to his divine destination was by being in the waters.  They never knew.  You miss the bus stop, you miss the ride; you miss the ride, you miss the destination; you miss the destination, you miss destiny.  That is tragic.

It had been a conflict between God’s ‘terrible’ command and men’s ‘kinder’ option; between sacrifice and obedience, between the fear of men and the terrors of an implacable storm.  At last, they had obeyed, but imagine the irretrievable loss of the goods they had ‘sacrificed’ to the ruthless sea in the hope of peace that never came!  Somebody’s cargo had been flung overboard; somebody’s DHL parcel containing their international passport with visas to all the countries of the earth was offered to the angry sea; somebody’s diamond ring and designer gown for a long-awaited majestic wedding the following week had followed into the insatiable waters; somebody’s container of treasured goods imported from Joppa, costing their entire life’s savings, had gone down; somebody’s frozen liver for transplant to a waiting patient hanging from a thread of life support at Tarshish Imperial Hospital, had been wasted.  For all that, the sea had not been appeased; the storm had only been angrier, until they obeyed, and then “the sea ceased from her raging,” promptly (Jonah 1:15).  Imagine what they would have saved if obedience had not been delayed!

The prescriptions of God do not always sound fair, but we would never know the calm until obedience is perfected. Hindsight sometimes comes too late.  Sometimes it comes with a party.

While they delayed, they never knew they were just about to save an entire ship community, with its remaining cargo, crew, and passengers.  They never knew that they were just about to save a man and his ministry by ‘helping’ him to his next critical bus stop by a means so unusual, so apparently drastic and unkind.  But for that unrelenting storm, throwing Jonah off their ship into the wild sea was one obedience that those good men might never have dared.  Thank God for some storms.

From The Preacher’s diary,

December 10, 2025.