God said to Jonah, “What gives you the right to
be upset about the castor oil plant?”
He
replied, “I have every right to be angry, to the point of death!”
Adonai replied, “You feel sorrow because
of the castor oil plant that cost you no labor, that you did not make grow,
that sprouted in a night, and that perished in a night. Is it not right, then,
for me to feel sorrow for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more
than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say
nothing of all the animals?”
Jonah 4:9-11
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| San Diego Gay Protest Sign @ http://takeastandagainstliberals.blogspot.com/2008/11/no-on-prop-8-rally-san-diego-november.html |
The ability to protest is an existential leap into self-being. Culture
is accustomed to pronouncing its judgments and investing in the building of
legal and social controls to buttress the so called self-evident truths of the
status quo. To raise a protest in such times is to invite the slings and arrows
of an angry society. Yet, it is also to establish a self beyond the repressive
forces of rank-and-file thinking. It is the movement from life with the herd
into the authentic life of the self as defined from the inside out.
The voice of protest is the arrow strung on the tension of injustice,
released to fly against the battlement of indifference. This solitary arrow
finding its mark creates the chink by which the edifice of prejudice is
weakened and falls under the weight of its own pretenses.
The voice of protest in the book of Jonah is the voice of the Sacred.
The object of the protest is the Divine’s own prophet.
Jonah does not care for Nineveh the capitol of Assyria. As a riving
leviathan Assyria swallowed up nations and people in a blood lust of brutal
atrocities for the sake of empire building. All her neighbors formed the
opinion that Assyria and her great murderous heart, Nineveh, deserved nothing
less than cruelty. Praise to those who brought her down and let her blood.
The Sacred was of a different opinion.
The contrast here is not between God and Assyria. The contrast is
between God and Jonah. God calls Jonah to self-individuation. But, Jonah is
unable to emerge from the status quo.
We queers also need to heed the call of the Sacred to individuation. It
is our divine call to raise the protest. We must assert the message that God is
not satisfied with things as they are. We must sound the alarm that God’s
concern is for all the peoples of the earth. We must share the empowering news
that the Holy One of Israel is not stymied by people of faith. We must object
when religion is perverted for the domination of persons. We must, as God does,
protest.
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