Queer Theology Is Your Anger a Good Thing? – Jonah 3:10-4:11
Happy Bisexuality Day!!!
So to celebrate that, let’s start today’s episode by answering a listener question from a bi woman. While she is in a great relationship with a straight man, she sometimes likes to look at pictures of naked women — which her partner finds healthy, by the way. Her concern stems from a Bible passage that says, “if you look at a woman in lust you’ve already committed adultery in your heart.” She adds: “Because when I look at pictures of a woman’s boobs I don’t actually have any true desire to have sex with her, it’s just a moment of fantasy, and I don’t know if indulging in that fantasy is wrong.”
Then, we queer a very interesting text from Jonah in which you’ll see a petulant Jonah who God matched at being petty, too. We then call out those who have been against the LGTBQ community and have turned an abrupt 360 only after someone in their family comes out. We unpack so much in this episode so make sure you don’t miss it.
Key takeaways:
- Brian’s update, still from New York City [0:37]
- Fr. Shay: Fall educational programming (weird) kick-off [3:52]
- Listener question from a bi woman [7:32]
- Tune in to the intentions of your divine insight [9:12]
- Consent — is key [12:56]
- The transfigured course is now open and why Brian is excited about this course [13:08]
- Queering the Bible: Jonah 3:10-4:11 [17:39]
- Why is this text a quirky story? [19:24]
- Jonah and God being petty [22:05]
- How people are “wishy-washy” about LGBTQ folks [23:19]
- What have you done to repair the harm you caused while you were on your journey? [25:40]
- Asking the question: ”Is your anger a good thing?” allows room for clarification [26:08]
Link(s) mentioned in this episode:
Transfigured: A Course in Trans Theology: queertheology.com/enroll
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Jonah 3:10-4:11
God saw what they were doing—that they had ceased their evil behavior. So God stopped planning to destroy them, and he didn’t do it.
But Jonah thought this was utterly wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Come on, Lord! Wasn’t this precisely my point when I was back in my own land? This is why I fled to Tarshish earlier! I know that you are a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy. At this point, Lord, you may as well take my life from me, because it would be better for me to die than to live.”
The Lord responded, “Is your anger a good thing?” But Jonah went out from the city and sat down east of the city. There he made himself a hut and sat under it, in the shade, to see what would happen to the city.
Then the Lord God provided a shrub, and it grew up over Jonah, providing shade for his head and saving him from his misery. Jonah was very happy about the shrub. But God provided a worm the next day at dawn, and it attacked the shrub so that it died. Then as the sun rose God provided a dry east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint. He begged that he might die, saying, “It’s better for me to die than to live.”
God said to Jonah, “Is your anger about the shrub a good thing?”
Jonah said, “Yes, my anger is good—even to the point of death!”
But the Lord said, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub, for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night. Yet for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
Photo by Matthew Brodeur
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