Prophets Don’t Tweet ‘I Told You So’

Everyone loves the story of Jonah and the whale. It’s got it all: drama, danger, whales — or at least “a big fish” as any Bible nerd will point out. And a tidy little lesson at the end about the importance of obeying God. 

But the story’s post-whale coda is where things get really interesting. After Jonah finally reaches Nineveh — albeit by a very roundabout route — he obeys God’s command to call the city to repentance. Mission accomplished, he finds a spot outside the city walls with a good view, settles in, and waits for God to smite them. He’s hoping for fire and brimstone and is disappointed when none come. God spares the Ninevites.

Jonah wanted to see a wicked city get what it deserved. But life is not that simple. And neither is God. “Is it right for you to be angry?” God asks Jonah (4:4). Jonah doesn’t answer.

Jonah wanted to see a wicked city get what it deserved. But life is not that simple.

As of this writing, the awful floods in Texas have killed at least 120 people, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, a private Christian camp. The scope of the tragedy boggles the mind, a tragedy sometimes compounded by the breadth of online reactions. County officials blamed a lack of warning, even though the National Weather Service had issued a flood watch and several flash flood warnings. At least one elected official is blaming weather manipulation. And a disconcerting number of the Republican Party’s critics are blaming Texans themselves. 

But according to a small but noisy group of liberals and leftists, there’s a cruel logic to this tragedy that appears to run thus: Texas is a red state and therefore has thrown its electoral weight behind the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts, which have devastated both the National Weather Service and various science programs designed to study and combat the impacts of climate change. Add a general conservative dismissiveness of government help — even if that help is as straightforward as extreme weather warnings — and there is a small but pervasive idea among some liberals and leftists that Texas brought this on itself. 

This sentiment, while not widespread, is loud enough to notice. “The people in Texas voted for government services controlled by Donald Trump and Greg Abbott,” wrote Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of the progressive digital outlet MediasTouchNews, in a since-deleted tweet. “That is exactly what they (sic) getting.” A pediatrician in Texas lost her job after posting that flood victims got “what they voted for,” adding that she hoped “all visitors, children, non-MAGA voters and pets be safe and dry.”

On the one hand, it is useful to point out when and how our elected leadership fails us. This can help us both hold that leadership accountable and make better decisions in the future. And I suspect in this instance, Texas leaders probably made some decisions they now regret: In 2017, Kerr County considered updating its flood warning system, and then decided it was “too expensive.” State lawmakers then killed a massive investment in early flood warning systems that would have included sirens. All this meant that local officials issued warnings on Facebook, and those warnings would not have been seen by campers, who were required to turn in their phones at the beginning of camp. 

Huckabee, Prophets Texas Flooding, water level.png

However, not everything can be chalked up to electoral cause-and-effect. Many people, especially folks on the Left, jumped to conclusions about what political decisions had contributed to this tragedy. For example, while it’s true that DOGE made massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NWS, apparently in the interest of privatizing weather data, it’s not clear those cuts affected the warnings people in Texas did (or didn’t) receive. An inquiry from the BBC that included independent experts concluded “staffing on hand for the Texas floods appears to have been adequate.” We need to hold our leaders responsible, yes, but we also need to be precise about where blame falls.

READ: Christians Must Resist Conspiracy Theories After Hurricanes

Setting aside inquiries about who is responsible (and the political nonsense of lumping together the diverse array of voters in Texas into a single electoral outcome), let’s back up: If your first reaction to hearing that a natural disaster has left dozens of men, women, and children dead is a snarky tweet about voting patterns, then your heart is in a very sick place and you need to get it right, full stop. Which brings us back to the story of Jonah — and any of us who may be tempted to sit outside of Nineveh and wait for God’s justice to rain down.

God’s concern is always with life, all life. No matter where they live. No matter the reputation of their community. No matter how they vote. 

The Bible tells us that God spared the Ninevites and “to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.” His anger only grew when a plant that he’d been using for shade was eaten by a worm (always good to remember that a whale is not the only animal God uses to make a point to Jonah). “Is it right for you to be angry about this plant?” God asks Jonah. Jonah stubbornly insists that it is. 

But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left — and also many animals?”

This is, absurdly, the end of the story. We don’t know how Jonah responded to this strange injunction, but we can gather the point: God’s concern for people (and animals!) is immense and is not conditional on how much they do or don’t know about the world around them. God doesn’t refute or condemn Jonah’s anger but instead directs him toward a larger truth: God’s concern is always with life, all life. No matter where they live. No matter the reputation of their community. No matter how they vote. 

And should any of us find ourselves tempted to celebrate destruction as a just desert for living in a red state, the larger truth staring us in the face is the same: We are all beloved by God and thus inherently connected to our neighbors, whatever their party affiliation or wherever they live. “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe,” wrote James Baldwin. “And I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” Zen master Yasutani Roshi put it even more simply: “The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.”

Your life is one thread woven into a rich tapestry. We are not called to sit outside the city and hope for judgment. We are called to go in.