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Civil Disobedience: A Sign for Jonah
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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We cannot escape the fact that at USAF Upper Heyford people are ready to kill the innocent. That readiness is at the heart of our deterrent policy. And if we support that policy, acquiesce in these plans, then that readiness to kill the innocent, however reluctantly, is in our hearts also. We harden our hearts. I think we can best explain why we did the limited and public damage that we did by telling a short Bible story, about that reluctant prophet Jonah. He too is hard-hearted. He wants to see Nineveh destroyed, even when the people have repented. He is cross with the God who has mercy on them. So God causes a gourd, a castor-oil plant, to grow up and shelter Jonah. And then God destroys it. And Jonah is furious.
Then God says:
‘You had pity on the plant for which you did not labour, which you did not make grow, which sprouted in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left...?’
(4—10f.)
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- Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
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