CHAPTER FOUR

Jonah and the Unified Vision

“Do you believe that Jonah survived three days in the belly of a whale?”

The search committee had drawn their chairs into a tight circle. They were firing questions at me to determine whether or not I was “their boy.” The gloves were off.

I had already passed the first-impression test. They had thoroughly examined my resume and checked my references. Jacquie and I had been treated to a tour of downtown Minneapolis and had assured them we were hardy enough to survive the biting winters. So far, I was a suitable candidate to be their pastor/poster child. But the real examination was just beginning.

Ironically, I wasn't even sure I wanted this job. But it was a good-faith gesture to Jacquie, who couldn't see bringing up our children in the Texas panhandle, at a church I'd accidentally fallen in love with.

I was a senior in seminary at the time. Along with all the other graduating seminarians, I was deeply into the process of interviewing for a church position. Competition was keen, as committees came from all over the country to Princeton to sift through resumes and make initial contacts with promising candidates.

We had been advised to practice interviewing with many different search committees, whether we were interested in a particular church or not. Repeating the process helped to build confidence. That way, when we came across a congregation that seemed like a good match, we could shine.

Banking on that advice, I had signed up to meet with a church group from Hereford, Texas. Now, nobody wanted to end up in Hereford, Texas—not me, not my friends, and certainly not Jacquie.

As I went out the door for that meeting, she reminded me, “Now, remember, this is only a practice interview!”

“No problem,” I vowed. “I have no intention of taking a church in the middle of nowhere.”

But once I began speaking with the committee, I became thoroughly enchanted. These were the nicest, most genuine, most loving people I had ever met in my life!

“Jacquie!” I shouted, bursting through the door after the interview. “They want to take me to breakfast in the morning! And they want you to come too!”

Jacquie groaned. “Paul, I told you not to get involved. You promised this was only for practice!”

“I know. I know. But just come and meet these people.”

Before we knew it, we were on a plane to Hereford, Texas. Once again, they were wonderful people. Slowly, I began to muse over the idea of becoming their pastor. While we were there, they offered me the job. I said we'd need to pray about it.

On the plane home, Jacquie had looked at me and said, “What do you think?”

“Well, I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually considering it.”

“And who would be your wife?” she'd asked.

A LITMUS TEST

So here I was, being grilled by another church in Minnesota—because it was about as far away from Texas as we could get.

When they asked me about Jonah, I knew it was a litmus test. If I answered that I believed a man could live for three days in the belly of a whale, then, in their eyes, I could be trusted to be a true, Bible-believing, God-fearing, fire-and-brimstone, tough-on-sin, Praise-God, Haaaaaleluia, Thankya JEESUUUS literalist.

If I didn't, they'd put me down as one of those no-good, mealy-mouthed liberals, who didn't believe in the Bible—or God for that matter—just another communist in disguise, the product of a socialist, atheistic, heathen church. Why, I might even be willing to marry gays!

It was a tense moment. Though I wasn't sure this church was a good match for me, it seemed prudent to keep my options open. Any hedging about my answer would disqualify me.

To this day, I don't know where the words came from, but suddenly a deep calm came over me. It was like the wise old man came to visit out of nowhere.

“To tell you the truth, I'm not nearly so interested in arguing about the Bible as I am in reading it. That's where I would start. Let's see what's really there first, because most people have no idea what the whole story of Jonah is about in the first place. Mostly, they only know about the whale, and the whale is just a very small part.”

In the next few minutes, I went on to tell the story of the radical nature of Jonah's odyssey. I was shocked to notice something I'd never seen before. The whole committee was listening intently. Even the man who had been the most suspicious of my theology was leaning inward, so as not to miss a word.

It was my first encounter with the disarming power of storytelling. There was a softening on each face, even an occasional silly grin. Their testing, confrontational demeanor had given way to the thrill of a mutually shared journey. Apparently, it was the first time any of them had actually heard the saga in its entirety. Their predetermined positions melted into the childlike curiosity to hear how it ends.

But another, even more surprising, thing began to happen—I actually started to listen to the Jonah tale with new understanding myself Though I couldn't realize the full impact at the time, his story would become one of the most profound, unsettling, and vital passages I would ever read.

JESUS AND THE SIGN OF JONAH

Apparently, Jesus felt that way about the story too. When he had a search committee approach him one day, looking for a sign, his only reply was, “No sign shall be given to this generation except the sign of Jonah.”¹⁷

It was an odd response. Surely, a man who could heal intractable diseases, feed thousands with a few scraps of food, and even breathe life back into cadavers could stoop to a minor display of power to entertain his new audience. It was a simple, straightforward request. Why complicate things with a mysterious reference to an obscure prophet?

But Jesus was after something bigger than putting on a magic show. He wanted to shift their way of looking at the world. The story of Jonah asked them to do just that.

Who was this Jonah character? And how could he, in the space of four Old Testament pages, become so central to Jesus’ mission and self-understanding?

By our standards, Jonah was crazy. If we had lived in his day, none of us would have taken him seriously. Yet, when the cute little story of Jonahandthewhale is told to countless toddlers every Sunday, Jonah is held up as a paragon of obedience and virtue.

The tale is told by teachers who, themselves, have no understanding of the radical implications of his journey. Yet, if fully grasped, the story of Jonah challenges our understanding of God, reality, and human consciousness.

Make no mistake though—Jonah was insane, and dangerously so. That's why Jesus’ response to the Pharisees was such a thunderclap.

In Luke, his reference to Jonah is embedded in a series of condemnations against the scribes and Pharisees. As the story goes, “When he went outside, the scribes and Pharisees began to be very hostile toward him and to cross-examine him about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.”¹⁸ Why the hostility? What could possibly be so offensive about the innocent story of a little man caught in the belly of a big fish? And why did Jesus mention Jonah when they asked for a sign?

Matthew provides an easy answer by linking Jonah to Jesus’ death: “For just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the sea monster, so the Son of Man will be three days in the heart of the earth.”¹⁹

But that was not what the scribes and Pharisees were reacting to. Jesus had not yet died, so any connection to his resurrection would have been meaningless to them. It certainly would not have inspired them to such open hostility.

Jesus’ audience was much more biblically sophisticated than we are. They had the whole Old Testament committed to memory. The mere mention of a name or a phrase would evoke for them the entire history and context of the passage in question.

To understand what Jesus was getting at, we need to be just as familiar with the story as they were. Only then can we see why it sparked such unbridled fury.

THE PERFECT ENEMY

Jonah was a good Jew. From the time he was a child, he was taught one thing: the Jewish people are the chosen ones of God.

They didn't need Sunday school attendance medals to get on God's Alist. That favored position was their birthright. Because of their special place in God's eyes, anyone who was their enemy was also the enemy of God. God played favorites, and the Jewish people were on the winning side of that favoritism.

That's why it was such a crazy thing when Jonah started hearing voices telling him, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it.”²⁰ And that's also why Jonah ran as far as he could in the opposite direction from Nineveh when he heard them. The people of Nineveh were the enemy.

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. In 721 BC, the Assyrians had attacked and defeated the northern half of Israel and slaughtered thousands. Those whom they didn't kill were taken into captivity. For Jonah and his fellow Jews, the only good Ninevite was a dead one.

The idea of preaching to these heathens was not what disturbed Jonah. It was the possibility that the preaching might work.

Jonah knew that the character of God was based in forgiveness. If the Ninevites accepted Jonah's warnings, they might repent, and then God might forget about punishing them. It was a possibility that was totally unacceptable.

To understand the depth of Jonah's rage, consider the feelings of Americans after the World Trade Center was destroyed. As far as many were concerned, death would have been too kind a punishment for the perpetrators. Had God commissioned someone to preach to Osama Bin Laden's network so they might be forgiven, that person would have been publicly condemned, beaten, or even killed.

The outrage over Assyria's domination was even more passionate during Jonah's time. Jonah and his fellow Jews wanted nothing less than annihilation of the Ninevites and their nation.

So Jonah ran away, booking passage on a ship bound for Tarshish. He couldn't possibly trust the unpredictable nature of God's forgiveness.

While they were sailing, the wind started to howl through the rigging. Whitecaps broke over the bow.

The small boat was beginning to sink. It was clear to everyone that somebody on board was responsible for this calamity. They cast lots to see who it was.

Sure enough, the lot fell on Jonah. They tossed him overboard, and the raging torrent fell silent. That's how Jonah ended up in the belly of a great fish.

When the monster of the deep vomited him up on dry land after three days, that's where the story usually ends. It's a nice, neat lesson in always following God's will. That's the part we all know.

MORE TO THE STORY

But if that were the end, we'd miss the point altogether, as most people do. You see, what Jonah discovered on the rest of his journey disturbed him immensely. It shattered all of his comfortable notions about God's intentions for the world.

God called him, once again, to preach to the people of Nineveh. Not wanting to spend another three days in the belly of who-knows-what, this time Jonah obeyed.

Through the streets of Nineveh he wandered, screaming out at the top of his lungs, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

He looked like a wild man. No one could communicate with him. His words seemed to erupt from a cauldron of pain and anger. His eyes darted around in paranoia. His clothes hung from his body in tatters. He spoke constantly to an invisible partner.

In many ways, he looked and acted much like a contemporary street person. In almost every city, there's a hidden population of homeless people ghosting about. They push shopping carts containing all their worldly goods. They rant and rave while staggering along the sidewalk. They huddle in cardboard boxes and under bridges at night, finding sustenance in fast-food Dumpsters.

We accept them, ignore them, and then move on with our lives. We take comfort in knowing that we won't intersect with them in any meaningful way. We feel secure in being insulated from their world.

There are times, however, when we can be drawn into their drama, even against our will.

THE MAN WITH DISAPPEARING LEGS

Dusk was settling over the city. The last red-and-gold streaks from the sunset were reflecting in my rearview mirror. Sitting at a red light in my Ford F-150, minding my own business, I was lost in thought. I barely noticed the rumpled figure moving toward the curb at the intersection.

Then something gripped my attention. He was arguing with an invisible partner.

His words were audible, even strident, as if he were doing battle with unseen forces. His hair was matted, and his greasy clothes hung loose and tattered.

Suddenly, his head disappeared below the fender of my truck. Though I couldn't see it, I knew instinctively that he was lying down with his legs stretched out in front of my tires. If I started forward, his legs would be crushed under the weight of my truck.

The light turned green. The cars behind me began tapping their horns. I didn't move.

Another light change. Still there was no sign of the man who had hunkered down beneath my front bumper. Drivers started laying on their horns in anger and frustration.

The light changed back to red, then green again. I threw the transmission into park, opened the door, and waved the snarling drivers behind me to go around. When I made my way to the hood of my truck, my suspicions were confirmed. Here was a man I had never met, stretched out, sitting on the curb with his legs directly in front of my Goodyear Wrangler radials.

I tried to communicate with him, but he kept up a monologue about his missing shoes. He didn't even acknowledge my presence. The voices in his head were much more real to him.

Finally, a shopkeeper came out and began shouting, “Johnny! What the hell ya doing? You can't just sit in the middle of the road! Get up!”

Johnny acted as if his legs were useless. So the shopkeeper and I gathered up his limp form and carried him through the intersection, depositing him on the opposite curb in a heap. Johnny then proceeded to scoot along the sidewalk on his behind, toward a destination known only to him.

As I made my way back to my pickup, the bizarre nature of our encounter washed over me. Johnny lived in a world that was totally separate from mine. Though our physical forms had touched, the encounter had never registered for him, even though our meeting could have maimed him for life.

By all traditional assessments, Johnny was crazy. His “illness” would be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia. He talked to people, or entities, that obviously were not there, and his actions were guided by invisible information.

In every city, there are people like Johnny claiming that they speak to God. They perform actions of the most preposterous nature. And we, in turn, call them crazy and pay them little attention.

Yet, oddly, when biblical characters demonstrate these same behaviors, we applaud them as heroes. Being in the Bible somehow changes everything. They're in there to teach us how to be good, aren't they?

The truth is, if they were living today, we would see them ranting and raving on street corners and sleeping on park benches. We would know they were crazy, no matter how insistently they claimed to be speaking to God. We would walk away, glad to avoid any contact with their madness.

A MADMAN AND A KING

But Jonah's culture was quite different from ours. It wasn't assumed, in those days, that such people were mad. Those who displayed unsettling behaviors were often considered to be the mouthpiece of a god. And so, when the king of Nineveh heard Jonah's preaching, the words had greater impact than they might have had if uttered by a homeless person hunkered beneath a car fender today. Because Jonah was taken seriously, a great fast was proclaimed, and, at the king's insistence, the whole city began its rites of repentance.

God was so moved by this collective act of contrition that the creator of the universe repented from his intention to destroy them: “When God saw what they did…God changed his mind about the calamity…and he did not do it.”²¹ What happened next is terribly clever. When he saw that the enemies of the Jews were spared, Jonah flew into a rage and began railing against the divine nature. It was the consummate “I told you so!”

Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish in the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.²²

In this passage, Jonah is quoting words that were sacred to the Jewish people. These were the very words revealed to Moses on the mountaintop, when he came within a hair's breadth of seeing the Lord: “The Lord, the Lord, a God slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”²³

This is so clever, because the author is using this sacred description of God to show the absurdity of the Jewish notion that God cared only for them. It was a subversive way to force them to confront a steadfast love that was much bigger and more inclusive than they had previously acknowledged.

Jewish history was replete with instances of God demonstrating mercy in dealing with the Jewish people. As long as mercy and steadfast love were displayed to those who were the favorites, the world made sense and God seemed rational.

But the thought that this same God could love those who were clearly the enemies of God's people was bizarre, to say the least. It was so unsettling that Jonah would rather die than consider the possibility.

Jonah's world and theology were shipwrecked on the rocks of an insane God. Unable to die, Jonah did the next best thing. He went outside the city, sat on a hilltop, and set up camp, hoping God would repent of his repenting. Maybe there was still a way for Ninevite blood to be spilled. Jonah wanted a good vantage point to view the carnage.

As luck would have it, it was a very hot day, and the sun beat down hard. Yet, God's mercy came in the form of a great plant, which grew rapidly above Jonah to give him shade.

Jonah was pleased about the plant. It seemed appropriate that he, a good Jew seeking the destruction of God's enemies, should be rewarded. The world was beginning to make sense. Maybe Nineveh would be destroyed after all.

But, in the blink of an eye, everything turned upside down again. A worm killed the bush that was giving Jonah shade. What's more, a withering east wind blew up, and the brutal sun beat down all the more intensely. For Jonah, it truly was better to die than to face such a crazy world.

Then God said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons, who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”²⁴

The story ends with this question. It ends this way precisely because we too are meant to consider its implications, for God's question put to Jonah is ours as well.

In a beautifully crafted little tale, we are invited, almost without our knowing it, to ponder the very nature of the creator. And, when we do, we're confronted with something that is both profound and disconcerting. For at the very heart of this tale, we are shown a God who chooses and yet has no favorites, a God concerned far the whole world.

This, then, was the sign of Jonah that Jesus offered to his listeners.

THE RAGE OF THE PHARISEES

The Pharisees knew exactly what Jesus was driving at. In those days, Israel was under Roman domination, and the occupiers were hated with white-hot fervor. Roman boots were treading on holy ground. Clearly, these intruders were God's enemies. By calling the story of Jonah a sign, Jesus was asking the Jews to consider the possibility that God cared about the welfare of these Romans just as much as the Israelites.

It was tough to swallow then. It's just as tough today. Take away our enemies, and what is there to live for?

Worse still, what is there to die for? When the implications of this simple quality of God are realized, the entire nature of life is altered.

Yet, for many, enemies are so obvious, so dangerous, that to propose that God is not constantly calling us into a holy war against them seems patently absurd. It's not just the Jews who can be convinced that God is on their side. Virtually every country that goes to war does so with the belief that it is acting on God's behalf. Quick to point out the inhumanity and evil of the enemy, the combatants rarely recognize their own nation's capacity for corruption and malevolence.

Americans, for instance, are aghast at the idea of jihad, or a holy war, as it is conceived in some Islamic cultures. To us, it seems like a despicable marriage of faith and militancy that degrades the sacred nature of religion.

Yet, when we choose to go to war, there is no hesitation to call upon God to bless our soldiers and our country. Our own marriage between war and religion is just as pervasive in many ways. This sentiment is captured in bumper stickers like these:

“It is up to God to forgive Osama Bin Laden.…It is up to us to arrange the meeting.”

“Praise God. Pass the ammunition.”

The ubiquitous American flag paired with the words “God bless America” has become so prevalent that, in the minds of most people, God is exclusively concerned with the welfare of citizens of the United States. It is a rare person who would dare to ask if we might not have fewer conflicts if we began asking God to bless all nations instead.

Politicians have long recognized that the easiest way to solidify support is to propose armed conflict with a foreign nation.

George W Bush didn't have to work very hard to sell Americans on the idea of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite the fact that weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq, the mere assertion that Iraq was a threat to us unleashed a torrent of patriotism and outcry in favor of mobilizing our military. Bush's popularity skyrocketed.

But enemies come in a variety of forms. It's not just conflict with foreign nations that underscores the hunger we seem to have for naming an adversary. In his book Blinded by the Right, David Brock reflects on the unexpected consequences that victory over communism had on the Republican Party:

When the Berlin Wall fell, ushering in an era of post-Cold War politics, the reliable Republican issue of anti-Communism…was also lost. Everywhere Communism was collapsing…. Anti-Communism, as the conservatives conceived it, was never supposed to be a winning crusade. Now, the passion behind our politics was gone. The loss of anti-Communism as a rallying point “left [conservatives] in a sinking boat without a motor,” said Thomas Fleming, editor of the conservative magazine Chronicles.²⁵

It was Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich who recognized the danger to their party inherent in the loss of an enemy. Their genius was to supply a new one and to sell it to the American public: liberalism. Liberal became synonymous with satanic in the minds of many. Yet, if liberals should one day cease to be a threat, like communism, another enemy would be required to take their place. The same could be true of the demise of conservatives—both factions are needed. Without the term liberal, conservative has no meaning.

Therein lies the value of an enemy. Our enemies define us. They give us a reason to live, if only to fight against the evil we project onto them. If the enemy goes away, we are faced with the task of defining ourselves in a vacuum.

The need for an enemy is certainly not limited to foreign relations. It is just as prevalent in the church.

In the Presbyterian tradition, groups of churches come together to form Presbyteries. It's astonishing to find out how much of these meetings is spent in fighting. If it weren't for the prayers and preaching, there would be little difference between a Presbytery gathering and a congressional filibuster.

There are the same old feuds, the same behind-the-scenes maneuvering in smoke-free rooms. Sides are drawn up even before debate begins. There is exasperation with the opposition at its inability to see the obvious. Votes are taken, issues are decided by narrow counts, only to have the losers vow to fight on, with the victors incensed that their win isn't recognized as God's final decree. For a church that was founded on the idea of love, there is an amazing amount of animosity and even outrage.

One issue that refuses to go away is sexuality. Like a worn-out family joke, it keeps coming up—long after it has ceased to be funny. Whether it's ordination of homosexuals, sexual expectations for pastors, definitions of morality, or family values, the arguments are so well rehearsed that they don't even need to be voiced. The combatants are intense crusaders fighting for the purity of the church, utterly convinced that God is on their side.

Few seem to notice that, for all their hairsplitting and posturing, for all the hours and days spent in preparation and debate, the pronouncements made are irrelevant. Despite their best efforts, sex is here to stay in all of its kinky, extravagant, and taboo variations.

Seldom, if ever, does anyone check on the latest General Assembly guidelines before embarking on a forbidden sexual exploit. Still, the fights rage on, coming back year after year, as surely as the change of seasons. The fight has to go on. Without an enemy, the combatants are unable to define themselves in any meaningful way. Ironically, the very thing that is hated is essential for giving order to the lives of most people.

Is it possible to live without enemies? Can we see our lives as having positive value in and of themselves, without the need of an enemy to define us?

Jonah's story asks us to consider just that. It's not an easy proposition, however, especially for those who have based their lives on the conviction that they are doing God's work.

GOD THE ENEMY

Telling the Jonah story to that Minnesota search committee had turned the tide. Though I hadn't elaborated on the implications of the Jonah story, the very fact that I knew the story from memory seemed to impress them. I could almost see them saying in their minds, “Well, at least he knows the Bible. He can't be too far off base.”

Afterward, the questioning turned from theology to pastoral care. The guy with the perpetual sour look took the lead.

“Are you a good listener?” he mumbled.

“I'm sorry. What did you say?” I replied, tongue-in-cheek. Nobody laughed. In fact, I was quite sure that nobody even got it. He repeated the question.

“Are you a good listener?” the prune face mumbled, louder this time, for my benefit.

I decided to play it straight. “Oh, yes! Listening happens to be one of the things I do best!” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, assured that I was a capable listener, as long as they remembered to speak loud enough.

It began to dawn on me that I would be explaining myself a lot to this group. By the end of our time together, it was clear to me that we weren't a good fit. I gracefully bowed. Out of any further discussions and focused my job search on other churches.

One by one, though, my leads ran out. Suddenly, I was faced with the prospect of graduation with no job.

The thought was paralyzing. Jacquie, pregnant with our third child, was becoming more rotund by the day. Dirt One and Dirt Two were growing like crazy and needed to be fed constantly.

How would I support my family? Where would we go? What would I do with my life? The anxiety swirled around me like a tornado, and, with it, an intense anger began to build.

One night, unable to sit still in the face of mounting pressure, I went for a walk alone to vent my rage. With each step I screamed at God—mostly in my mind, but sometimes even out loud.

“How could you? How dare you? I leave everything I have, I come to this place to follow a calling that you chose me for, and now you abandon me? Is this some kind of joke? Do my prayers mean nothing to you? Is this the reward I get? Nothing? Don't you care anything about my family? Answer me! You have no right to do this!”

And so the raging went. I must have looked like a wild man, pacing furiously, eyes darting everywhere. Engaged in battle with someone who was obviously not there, I became oblivious to my surroundings.

The irony was lost on me. I had turned into Jonah, railing against God because my position as a chosen one couldn't be cashed in for special privileges. Deep down, I had expected that my journey through seminary would make me a favorite son. Surely, God would see to it that a spiritual person's earthly needs would be satisfied. It was shocking to find out otherwise.

In that moment, God became the enemy. In a way, it felt good. I needed someone to blame. By making God the bad guy, I helped to define myself: I was the one being wronged, the hero standing up to the ultimate adversary.

And how much more dramatic it was that my enemy wasn't a mere mortal, or even a nation, but the very creator of the universe! My rage was of biblical proportions! I might not have had a job, but at least I was special enough to do battle with the Almighty.

By the time I arrived home, I was exhausted from the fight. I walked through the door utterly spent, but somehow cleansed.

As soon as I got back, Jacquie announced that a pastor from Muncie, Indiana, had called wanting to interview me. We had never even heard of the pastor, the church, or the city.

I picked up the phone and dialed, little suspecting that Muncie would be the place we'd spend the next seven years of our lives.

LIMITED-SIGHT DISTANCE AHEAD

Part of the problem with selecting an enemy is that we do so on the basis of flimsy data. We think we know what's best for us, only to discover that our assumptions are misguided. Circumstances change, and we suddenly realize that the very person we hated has become our greatest teacher. We nurse our pet peeves, as if they were ordained from on high, only to find out that we've been blind to grace.

Such is the dilemma of the dualistic mind. With holy fervor, it splits the world into a thousand distinctions. Then, in the aftermath, it either grieves its choices, when they're shown to be inadequate, or it goes to war to defend them, so as not to have to face contrary evidence.

That's why it's not easy to live with a God who is equally concerned about the welfare of our enemies. It undermines our worldview.

The way we understand our lives is the product of countless choices, most of them made unconsciously. Because we assume God sanctions our judgments, it gives us a sense of security, even power. It gives order to our lives. Conversely, if our worldview becomes unraveled, we're lost in a raging sea of uncertainty.

Is it possible to live without enemies? Is there a way to look upon the world with eyes that can see value in everything, even in that which we would seek to destroy?

In truth, that is a very difficult proposition for normal Western consciousness. We've been taught from the earliest age to discriminate between good and bad, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. The filter of judgment we place on the material world largely determines even the nature of our perceptions.

But there is a way around this limitation. It requires that we shift out of the mind of duality and to embrace, however fleetingly, an entirely different state of awareness. In this other way of perceiving, the world is no longer a series of isolated things and events. Instead, it's a web of interconnections that is ultimately one.

From this perspective, the idea of an enemy is laughable. The old saying, “We have met the enemy and they are us” becomes exceedingly apparent.

When Jesus pointed to the sign of Jonah, he was calling for a dramatic shift in awareness. That shift forms the basis for the kingdom of heaven.

But before we can grapple with such a change in consciousness, we must more fully understand the nature of our own perception. For that story, we must begin at the beginning.