Jonah is given the task of converting sinners, the “wicked” people of Nineveh. He walks away from the task feeling no desire nor urgency given their wickedness. He eventually carries it out and the people convert. “But this greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry.” He believed the sinners deserved the wrath of the Lord. “Jonah then left the city (and) built himself a hut and waited,” preparing, hoping to see the destruction at hand.
Jonah shares qualities with preppers, specifically U.S. ‘Christian’ preppers. Both are fixated on the sins of others, are oriented toward calamity because of it, and are personally prepared to survive it, believing they are good. Like Jonah, preppers do not dread coming deadliness but welcome it, hopeful it destroys enemy sinners. They believe destruction by the Lord is at hand against a modern-day Nineveh, the “wicked” socialist culture of the U.S. Enemy sinners will die in the destruction but they will survive. Those who analyze preppers recall Søren Kierkegaard in his 1844 work, The Concept of Anxiety. He asserted life or death experiences surface anxiety but also freedom. We realize we are free to die or free to live, to survive. That freedom to survive is invigorating to preppers, selfishly so. The destruction at hand from energy failures or financial collapse or invented socialist dictators stimulates them to action for self-preservation. They are exhilarated by choosing freedom from a wicked Nineveh that deserves the deadly wrath of their Lord. Preppers have seen a significant increase in their numbers, purpose, and business gains with the coronavirus outbreak (e.g. PrepperNet and Survivalism). But is it possible these self titled Christian preppers are themselves a virus, an infectious agent replicating within the cells of living hosts but dead Christians? They prioritize personal capitalist concern for survival in what is, by their own admission, a communal crisis. Yet they do not apply to the crisis a communal Christ-like witness. They have thus, in part, helped devise the destruction and yet walk away, like Jonah, waiting, even hoping to see the destruction which their Lord will inflict on enemy sinners while letting them survive. They helped devise the destruction by being themselves an energy failure – an ‘every man for himself,’ lifestyle pitted against threatening neighbors; by being a financial failure, elite capitalists stockpiling their own tribe’s finances against the poor; by being and supporting fascist dictators of man-made disasters. Preppers practice an un-Christ-like witness yet claim the need to flee for the purpose of passing on the gospel. They assert the gospel cannot survive in a Nineveh whose destruction is at hand. Whose gospel? Not Jesus’ Gospel. Jesus’ Gospel constantly passes on the exact opposite message. It does so in this Sunday’s Gospel. It is not destruction that is at hand but, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” It is not flight from enemy sinners Jesus calls for but immersion in the “Community of God.” The Community of God describes not bunker living, nor isolation from any culture but engaged living, outreach to every culture. Jesus calls people not to be like Jonah prepared to walk away from others but to join together with others prepared to create a peaceful Community within every Nineveh.
”I walked away. Though the things that have happened and the wrong be, I have to find my way out of this,… It has been a horrible journey that I hadn’t planned to take, the day I turned my back, and I walked on away. We were already in separation; I was not in preparation.” (You’ll Always Be My Tomorrow – William Darnell Sr.)
Prayer: Spirit, prepare us to help co-create peaceful communities, which are always at hand.
Question: How are we prepping for a living witness during preppers’ man-made destruction?
January 24, 2021 Gospel Mark 1:14-20 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time