What do the bullies for Christ hope to gain?

The bullies had to prove that they could control World Vision, because controlling World Vision helps them pretend that they can control the Bible.

It’s just like why the same bullies are compelled to control women. Controlling women is another way of pretending that they can control the Bible.

And as long as the bullies can pretend that they can control the Bible, they can pretend that they control God.

That’s what they really want to do and sometimes almost actually convince themselves that they can do: Control God.

After all, somebody has to get God under control. It’s just like the biblical prophet said — God gets out of control:

God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at 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.”

Jonah totally called it. He was looking forward to some righteous smiting and wrathful calamity, but he just knew that God was going to ruin everything. He knew that God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

Completely unreliable, in other words. Completely out of control.

And Jonah, just like his disciples, the bullies for Christ, was sure that unless he could get God under control then life just wasn’t worth living.

So the bullies for Christ pretend to control the Bible and thereby pretend to control God. On behalf of God, they say, LGBT people are banished. And anyone who fails to condemn LGBT people or who fails to shun them is also banished.

But here’s the thing — we’ve all been banished into Ninevah. Jonah and his fellow bullies imagine it must be awful in there, inside that wicked unclean city full of wicked unclean people. And so they stand outside, baking in the desert sun, smugly convinced that they’ve managed to punish all the out-of-control people that an out-of-control God refused to smite.

What they don’t realize — what they’ll probably never realize — is that banishment into Ninevah is no punishment. Ninevah is a party. Ninevah is the party — the party to end all parties, the banquet at the world’s end, the marriage supper of the Lamb. It’s out of control.