#I wonder how Red's experiences being homeless affected him long term

[smol-grey-tea]

Secret Ending Three - Chapter Five: We Think We Know You

Don't judge books by their covers!!

The wind bites my face as we exit the cafe. The owner led the way, paws in hand, leaving myself and the red head following. She and her bear fall into conversation, pointing out every shop on the way and explaining everything in great detail.

It is impossible to describe the experience of watching her. She is someone with an undeniably one-track mind, incredibly simple in a strangely charming way. Her round and soft, gentle features dance in the midst of her excitement, hopping slightly and with a permanent beam from ear to ear.

I'm not sure how I might handle it if I'm to lose this sight. Watching is satisfactory, but not at all enough, especially after how much our relationship has grown, and us along with it. My appreciation for my owner has only brightened since becoming human and I don't see it's light dimming any time soon. I am determined to win this war with the other dolls.

The other dolls... I do hope that my apology earlier today was to the owner's liking, as well as her bear's. I want to make the best impression I can of myself, not just for my own sake, but so that the new addition to our family may feel at home too.

However, if I'm to ensure my success, I can't just focus on displaying my own strengths, but assessing the competition as well. My attention is drawn to my right, where Red walks beside me, slightly faster than myself. I'd tell him to slow down, but I'm not sure he's physically capable of that. My shins hurt to keep up with him, still.

He looks at me, looking at him, and cracks an awkward smile. I blink back. It's hard to know how to act around the others already, but even more now that all of them have dated the same girl I have.

I've noticed a considerable change in Red since the realities converged and it's changed our relationship. Or it will, at least. In truth, we haven't been alone together until now. We've slept in the same bedroom already of course, but being asleep or busy is hardly time to get to know someone.

Despite this, I've made the observations that Red is now more level headed and less hyperactive than he was before. He also has a notably weaker obsession with that cartoon though. I'm not sure I've even heard him mention it once yet.

What exactly occurred in his version of events? He's rarer and has much stronger of a personality than mine, but he has always been slow and positively delusional. What specifically made the owner choose him over me in that reality, and how can I prevent it from happening again?

"So, Lance." I was running through several ways to interrogate my rival, but he began the conversation before I could even decide on a topic to start with. "You guys never explained about that cross dressing thing. What did they mean?"

Oh... That again...

"... I have already explained that it is none of your concern... And besides, it's not as big of a deal as people are making it seem. I simply took actions to prevent someone else in taking the owner's first kiss in my version of reality. That is all."

"... Really?" A laugh played on his lips as he scratched his cheek at my answer. "And you dressed up as a girl to do that? I assumed someone forced you into it or something. It doesn't sound like something you would do just for fun."

"I did not do it for fun. The version of yourself in my reality was there, and he did not find it very fun either. I can assure you."

"Okay..." This conversation mortifies me, but the look on the red head's stunned face as he assumedly tries to imagine such a situation is exceptionally amusing.

"On the topic of that though," I said to change the subject as we rounded a corner where our destination was finally in sight. "Did you also act in that nonsensical play in your world?"

"I did actually!" His entire face lit up at the mention of the play, as expected. "And so did the Heroine!" Unfortunately, also just as expected. Had he achieved what I had tried to prevent in my own world?

"It was so fun! You only signed her up for the play for her safety, since she'd been attacked by some girls before that, and the drama club members always walk home together. But when she started attending it with me, it was like it was always meant to be.

"It was difficult sometimes, but I think the practicing the lines over and over really helped bring her memories back when she was struggling with losing them. It felt like I'd really accomplished something good when I finally went up on stage with her and performed after working so hard to get it right. I hope we'll be able to do it again in the future."

This man is awfully good at talking endlessly, especially about such pointless things... It struck me as a surprise to hear that I was the one to sign the owner up for that ridiculous play in Red's version of events. He didn't pester her to join, but it was instead my own decision? In what kind of danger could she possibly have been that I would agree to such idiocy..? I dread to think.

But the rest of this news doesn't sound good either. Because I was the one who decided it, of course the owner would join a club she has no personal interest or experience in. Maybe the appeal that Red has for her is that the two of them are, in some ways, equally as slow as each other.

Two slow people in love... It's at least cute on Eri. On Red, it's... Well...

"We're here!" my owner calls. In front of us stands the stationery shop we were looking for. I admit that it lifts my spirits to see a place so organised.

"Let's go in then," I say, greatly looking forward to the venture. I say this to Red, but upon hearing no response, I turn around to realise that he is nowhere I can see him.

I am left, standing alone outside the shop. I scan my surroundings, but see no trace of him.

If I could have it my way, I'd say good riddance. The owner must have grown quite close to him after how much time they spent together in the drama club. Plus, because he helped her overcome her memory loss issues, she may even feel indebted to him, or even obligated to choose him as her one true love.

A simple minded, slow man with ridiculous dreams and aspirations, yet a vibrant personality. A man who enjoys showing off and effortlessly exceeds at entertaining a crowd of people atop a stage. A man who cures the owner's magical illness without even trying. A man who has never known struggle, who successes come to with ease.

As expected, he is someone to be very wary of in this fight for the right to stand by the owner's side. I should be careful not to let my guard down around fierce competition such as himself.

As I'm about to give up and follow Eri into the shop, I catch the sound of Red's voice behind me and instead make haste to find it's source. I end up walking back the way we came for a moment before finding him seated in an alley, similar to how Yeonho was found when he was chasing that cat.

In this instance though, Red was not kneeling in front of a cat, but in front of someone who was bundled up in warm clothes, seated on a sheet of cardboard under the overhanging roof of an abandoned restaurant. I hadn't even noticed they were there. I don't think anyone else had either.

But there Red was. He'd bought cookies to go from Banjul when we left, but they were now in his hands, being offered to the complete stranger in front of him. The stranger looked incredibly thankful.

I watched them speak briefly before Red soon returned, looking relieved. Had the person told him they were going to be okay?

"... What were you doing?" I asked him.

"Oh..! Sorry for leaving like that. I just saw that guy and he looked like he needed help."

"Right... That was...very thoughtful. People don't usually think to help."

"Oh, well... It wasn't really that thoughtful... I just know what it's like..."

I know what it's like..? To be...homeless..?

It is impossible to describe the experience of watching him say nothing else and return back on track to the stationery shop with a skip in his step, as though the entire exchange never occurred.

I'm left in a stunned silence. He couldn't possibly have done such a thing to boast about how kind he is; I didn't even know he was doing it. And he never even accepted my regretful attempt at a compliment.

Besides, what could he have meant by knowing what it's like..? I've spent almost the entirety of my human life sharing a bedroom with him, but this only defies all expectations.

What else is there about him that I do not know? This new knowledge of Red makes me feel sick. It brings back the same sickness I felt on the day I performed with him on stage in Eri's stead. And what a wonderful, detestable, life-changing day.

[goodbyecringe]

(Un)Natural Selection Chapter 10

Éponine

The Enjolras that I spent a fun, relaxed car ride with was not the same Enjolras that I was watching give a speech on how Illea’s impoverished differed from the impoverished of other countries. I had seen him give hundreds of speeches and public addresses on the Report, but this was different. During the Report he was calm and collected like his parents, and articulated his points clearly enough for the uneducated to understand. But here, in the secret backroom of some cafe, he used terms that I only come across in Monsieur Brouder’s textbooks. He spoke passionately towards the poverty that Illea created for many innocent families when they assigned the first castes. I wondered if Enjolras had ever seen poverty. Feuilly, a Five that worked as a fan maker, offered me several pieces of paper so I could take notes. As Enjolras finished, I realized I had used 2 pieces of paper.

“Excellent job, Enjolras,” a thin man with glasses said, standing up to shake Enjolras’ hand.

“Thank you, Combeferre. I’d like to open the floor for a discussion now,” Enjolras said, taking a sip of water.

Then the room turned into what I imagined to look like a Parliament. One by one, each man would stand and talk about their experiences, proposed changes, and ask questions. They didn’t always agree with each other, in fact it seemed the only thing they did agree on was that the caste system was wrong and there needed to be a change. Since they all came from different walks of life they all had solutions they thought would be superior. But they didn’t overly criticize each other, instead, they offered information, statistics, and personal opinions that would improve each other’s arguments.

“What say you, Lady Éponine?” Combeferre asked as Feuilly finished his statements.

When all of the men turned around to stare at me, their eyes weren’t daggers. Unlike the Selected girls who were ready to pounce, these men weren’t judgmental. I noticed Enjolras sit up in his chair a little more.

“I don’t think I’m the best person to give my opinion on this topic. I mean, I’ve never attended law school, or college, or high school,” I laughed nervously.

“Well only a few of us have attended law school, Joly and Combeferre are pursuing careers in medicine, Feuilly and Prouvaire intend on following the arts, and we have several members that plan on finding careers outside of politics,” Enjolras said.

He wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just pretending to be interested in his politics before he got too far into the competition.

“Well I really resonated with what you said about how “from equal schools spring an equal society,”” I said, reading from my notes.

“And why is that?” He asked, bringing his pen to his mouth.

“Like I said earlier, personally I haven’t received a formal education, and neither have many citizens of Illeá. The poverty that lower castes experience doesn’t allow for much growth or advancement in the socioeconomic system, which is similar to the point that Mr. Coufeyrac brought up when comparing Illeá to France. Even if eventually the caste system dissolved, millions of people would become homeless due to their lack of education. It would be like the caste systems never left because there are people that only know how to work in factories, or make beautiful paintings, or cultivate the land. There has to be massive change over time,” I said, not looking up.

“Do you envision the caste system dissolving?” Enjolras asked.

“I’ve never seriously thought about it. Every day of my life is the exact same as the day before and I don’t usually have the time to day dream,” I said, locking eyes with him.

“If Enjolras would permit, Lady Éponine, I have a book on the benefits of education and the impacts on different age groups that you might find very interesting,” Coufeyrac said.

“Yes, and I have some articles on cultural attitudes and how they affect a changing society,” a bald man said to my left.

“Excellent my friends! If you would all please give those to Grantaire before lunch tomorrow, I’ll make sure Éponine has them,” Enjolras said, standing.

We left the cafe shortly after, once I had time to be properly introduced to everyone. Several of the men, like Combeferre and Courfeyrac were Twos, having very important parents. Joly and Jehan Prouvaire were Threes, but the rest of the men, Fueilly, Bossuet, the bald man that offered to lend me some articles, and Bahorel were all members of the lower castes. I was quickly able to notice that they were all surprisingly different in their own ways. When Jehan introduced himself, he presented me with a rose and suggested I wear red more often, as it went well with my tan skin. Joly refused to shake my hand, instead insisted that we bumped elbows to avoid spreading any excessive amounts of germs. Enjolras laughed and shook his head as each member of his misfit group presented themselves to me.

Once we arrived back at the palace, Enjolras sat in his seat for several moments, possibly unsure of how to conclude. I let myself enjoy the comfortable leather seats until the growling of my stomach broke our silence.

“Did you not get enough to eat at dinner?” Enjolras asked.

“I wasn’t really hungry after breakfast,” I began to explain.

“You didn’t eat lunch or dinner?” He sat up and turned to me.

“Well no, but I didn’t see you at dinner. What did you eat after you scarfed down your coffee and toast?” I asked, turning my body around to him.

“I enjoyed an apple while I read over some reports,” he said with pride.

“An apple? You’re telling me that you help run the entire country running on coffee, a piece of bread, and an apple?”

“A good leader understands the importance of time management,” he said, sounding offended as he opened his door.

“A good leader understands the importance of self preservation,” I murmured getting out of the car.

“What was that?” Enjolras said approaching me.

“I’m just saying that we need you to be on the throne for more than a few years.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“I can’t tell you, your rule,” I said, turning to walk away from him, making sure to smirk so he could see that I wasn’t too upset.

“Well you could at least have a sandwich with me. I’ve spent several hours with you today, Kyran will expect me to know something about you,” he laughed, entering the kitchen.

“You can’t tell him that I went to your meeting with you?”

Enjolras shook his head as he looked around the abandoned part of the kitchen we were in. Everything had been cleaned to expert precision, which Enjolras was about to ruin as he began to slice a loaf of bread.

“So far, the Report only knows the very surface of my involvement with Les Amis, and I’d rather it stay that way. So if anyone asks what we did tonight we’ll try to stay as close to the truth as possible.”

“So you made me dress up in a maid’s uniform so we could eat sandwiches for several hours?” I laughed while he pulled out more sandwich ingredients.

“Well I’d rather the public not be allowed to analyze that part. What did you tell the other girls?”

“I just said we were watching a movie.”

“Well then we watched a movie and came down here for a snack. Would you like Turkey or Ham?”

“Ham please. What movie did we watch? What was the plot? Who was the star? These girls are vicious, you know.”

“Are they? That Cosette girl I took out today was quite lovely,” he said, passing me my sandwich.

“Cosette is probably the sweetest, most genuine girl here. You should keep her for as long as possible,” I said, picking up my sandwich.

“And how long should I keep you around for?”

I thought about my answer while I chewed. Was it too early to bring up my financial concerns?

“Well, I was hoping you could keep me around long enough for my sister to go to college.”

Enjolras gave me a funny look.

“I mean, I was hoping to talk with you about the stipend. I was hoping that some of it could be sent to another family that would save it for my sister to use. Ideally for college, but also if she needed food and things like that.”

“What about your parents?”

“My parents aren’t very good at managing money. I just want to make sure that no matter what happens here, she has some security.”

“Well, thank you for being open and honest with me, Éponine. I’ll see what I can do for your sister. I know if she’s anything like you she’ll benefit greatly from a formal education,” he said before he took a bite of his sandwich.

“Thank you! You won’t regret this!”

I could have said a million more thank you’s that would never be equivalent to how I was feeling.

“Tell me about your sister,” Enjolras said as he sat across from me.

“To be honest, Azelma is a bit of a hopeless romantic,” I laughed, making circles in the wooden countertop.

I thought about every boy she would gush over after our parents would fall asleep. From the newspaper boy to that one boy she made eye contact with on the subway, Azelma never failed to fall in love.

“And you’re not?”

“I don’t have time to fall in love,” I joked, realizing that I just made it sound like I didn’t really want to be here.

“Then why did you come here?” He said, circling back to the breakfast question.

“You really want to know that answer to that question, don’t you?”

“I think I can safely assume that every girl is here for her own personal gain. Whether it’s power, privilege, political agenda,” he gave a special pause after that one.

“I would be very surprised if there was a girl here that actually wanted to marry me because she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me,” he stated.

“I promise when I figure out why I’m here, you’ll be the first person I tell,” I said, taking another bite of my sandwich.

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“What I can tell you is that I’m here right now because a nice guy made me the best sandwich I’ve ever had.”

“Well I’m glad I can impress the ladies with my sandwiches,” he laughed.

“How many other ladies do you bring down here to enjoy sandwiches?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

Enjolras laughed again.

The whole situation was oddly surreal. I was sitting across from the boy that I had watched on television eating a sandwich that he made. Enjolras was nothing that I had expected him to be, but then again, what did I expect him to be? We sat in a content silence until the kitchen exploded with shouts and laughter. It sounded like many of the boys had gone drinking after the meeting. Courfeyrac stumbled into the kitchen still holding an empty bottle of beer, but still laughing, which was quite the contrast from how my father handled his alcohol.

“Éponine I think Combeferre and I have to help these poor men into their beds before they wander somewhere they're not meant to be,” he said standing up.

“Oh it’s fine, I’ll just go back to my room. It’s a good thing I don’t have to go back upstairs in that stupid maid’s uniform,” I joked.

“Actually, Éponine, I would prefer if this remained in the utmost secrecy. So even if I was discovered with them, you wouldn’t be associated with us.”

I thought about if that statement was some sort of compliment while I changed back into that stupid uniform to walk back up to my room and wondered if this would all become a regular occurrence. As I walked back upstairs I felt like I wasn't even in a competition to become a princess. For a few hours I forgot about being a Six, and felt truly equal to Twos and Threes. And as I sat across from Enjolras, equal to even a One. I didn't know if this feeling would last forever, but I did know that I would never be able to go back to my old life. I knew that when I left the competition as a Three I would have to get a degree myself, and hope that I would find someone that would share their ideas with me like I had shared with Enjolras at the meeting tonight.

[xxmisty]

Funny how someone who made fart fetish porn thinks he has a right to badmouth men

Oh boy, anon, you’ve really overpacked this suitcase, haven’t you??

Look, let’s just start by pointing out that there’s a contradiction between you having respect for my pronouns and yet an apparent prejudice against sex workers. I just don’t get that. Thank you for being more respectful than most and actually using male pronouns here, I think the rest of your message is seriously betraying the kind of person you are. Build on the good. You’re already head and shoulders above most people I know in that respect.

I was trying to work out what could have come across as badmouthing men and I found that two posts about Captain Marvel had come out of my queue. So that’s it. Anon, i’m not badmouthing men. But I will call out toxic masculinity where I see it, and there was a whole lot of it around the launch of that movie. Toxic masculinity hurts everyone, no matter who you are. It’s the kind of attitude that makes men feel they have to behave a certain way or they can’t be true men. As a trans guy that went a long way toward being terrified of coming out, and still goes a long way to not being accepted. It is also a master force behind the kind of behaviour that has left women vulnerable, scared and abused throughout history. I’ve been on both sides of that. I’ve had men roll down their car windows and cat-call me from the age of 14 upward. When I was 13 I took a term of piano lessons and quit because the piano tutor kept holding my hands and asking me if I ‘painted my nails red when I went out at weekends’. I’ve had parts of my body groped and touched in public because someone was drunk, being egged on by their mates or just thought it was their right to do it. I’ve had a z-list celebrity slide his hand into my crotch blaming ‘the train’ with a huge grin on his face. I spent twenty years blaming myself for being sexually assaulted by my cousin’s husband because I was wearing a dress the night I met him. No, not all men are like this, but if you’re offended by someone discussing it then perhaps there’s a reason why. Maybe you see a little of that in yourself.

I’ll reblog posts about captain marvel until my fingers are sore because Brie Larson took so much abuse in the run up to its launch, most of it from a subsection of the population. And i’m not blindly backing it as a marvel fan, nor as a perceived ‘man hater’ - I didn’t think it looked that good from the trailers, but boy was I wrong. I still think the trailers were pretty bad and did the movie a huge disservice. The point is, I waited until I watched the movie to make up my own mind. Brie Larson spoke up on the press tour about how she was sick of looking out and seeing nothing but white men, and a whole lot of those white men took that very deliberately in the wrong way. She spoke of wanting diversity. She didn’t want to look out there and see no white, male faces, she just wanted to see a mix of them with POC and female faces too. You’d have to be extremely over sensitive to take that in any sense other than the one she’d intended it.

People flooded Rotten Tomatoes with negative reviews, days before the movie even came out. They hadn’t seen it, they just wanted to try to make sure that they stopped as many potential viewers from seeing it as they could. And that's why it’s so important to people who aren’t of that small subsection of the population to share the movie’s success. I’m so damn proud of Brie, and of everyone involved in the movie, and of everyone who has stood up for Captain Marvel when in doing so they’ve also opened themselves up to abuse.

The truth is, the world has been run by straight, white, cis men for countless years and that’s starting to change. The world is becoming a richer place for that. We need to hear all kinds of voices, especially as the world grows smaller. Anon, the world has changed more in the last twenty years than it had in centuries before it. But that means the truth is going to hurt sometimes.

I’m white, and i’m learning more about what that means from people of colour who share their experiences, their stories and their views. I understand a little better every day that it isn’t enough just to not be an actively racist asshole and that I need to use my privilege to speak up when I see it happening to others. I need to open my ears and listen to people from different countries, of different colours, of different religions, and hear about the struggles they face every day that i’ll never truly understand as someone born into a white family, in an area where there were very few people of colour as I grew up. I want to learn. I want to listen. I hope that the more POC speak out, the more that we can learn as people who haven’t faced the same prejudice. I’ll still never know what it’s like to walk in those shoes but i’ll be a little more mindful every day of what needs to change and how I can help.

It’s a similar thing existing in a predominantly cishet world. Something I realised recently is that, as much as I know it can take years, decades, sometimes a lifetime to really discover who you are, the cold hard fact is that when I was five years old I knew I wanted to marry a woman and call myself John but it’s taken decades to reverse the programming that a predominantly cishet world tried to write into me. We’re getting there, little by little. The world is changing, but a big part of that is from having the courage to find our voices and share our experiences as people of a gender and/or sexuality not defined as cis and heterosexual. I think trans folk have a unique point of view when it comes to gender wars since we’ve seen both sides of the coin to some degree. I’m just as scared of toxic femininity as I am of toxic masculinity. Both are dangerous and destructive, and they hurt everybody. It’s time they began to die and allowed people to be themselves without a gender-approved bar they have to reach to be a ‘real man/woman’.

Lastly, anon, I would really like you to rethink the way you view sex workers because most that i’ve met along the way have been the kindest, most genuine, most open individuals who work harder than you’ll ever know. Making fetish videos put food on the table, a roof over our heads and bought our boat when we were faced with being homeless. My health wouldn’t allow me to work a job outside the home any more and I wanted to make a living as best as I could. I feel like you would be just as critical if I lived by benefits alone. Plus making videos was a very important step in my own life. It helped me to love a part of myself that i’d always resented and felt ashamed of, and gave me confidence to appear in front of the camera which I could never have imagined some years ago. Plus I made a few wonderful friends that way.

Anon, you have a good heart, enough to not misgender me. I can’t and won’t apologise for reblogging posts that talk about subjects that affect me personally. This is, after all, my blog, and it’s important for people to see how many others have been affected by the same issues. It helps when you don’t feel so alone. If there’s something that triggers you about those posts then perhaps there’s something you recognise in it. This is a really good time to identify what that is and to work out why it upsets you so much. We can all learn to be better people, and listening to our discomfort is a good first step.

[daddycoldhands]

Little Christmases #1: Unwanted Mercy

For the city of Nineveh, Christmas started with a large fish vomiting a man up onto a beach. It was not the Christmas, of course, the famous one with shepherds and angels and a confused teenage mother, but it was a little Christmas. For the Ninevites, it was the day when God’s redemption entered the world.

For Jonah, on the other hand, the day was simply another in a long list of miserable days. First, God had told him in no uncertain terms to go to the wicked city of Nineveh, a city that Jonah despised. Jonah opted to run away, and ended up a passenger on a boat that sailed through a storm so violent that it nearly broke to pieces. He’d been thrown overboard, swallowed by a fish, and sustained somehow in the fish’s belly for three days prior to being spit up onto dry land. Assuming that fish didn’t care to beach itself in the process of delivering Jonah to his destination, Jonah was probably vomited into the shallows, and spent long, frantic minutes trying to find his feet while the harsh sunlight assailed his eyes and the waves crashed over his head.

Scripture is frustratingly vague on the particulars here, almost to the point of sarcasm. We’re told that God “provided” the fish to swallow Jonah. I wonder how long it took Jonah to start thanking God for this provision. Of all the miraculous ways that God might have saved Jonah from drowning in the ocean, a fish must have been the least comfortable for his prophet. Wasn’t there a heavenly submarine of some sort?

Yet thank God he did, and eventually Jonah found himself back on dry land, his feet pointed back toward the city of Nineveh. Unless God miraculously saved him from the effects of stomach acid, he would have been a strange sight, as red and puffy and slippery as a newborn child, his clothing in tatters.

However he looked, Jonah certainly made an impression on the people of Nineveh, despite his reluctance to actually pass along God’s message. As God instructed, he traveled to the great city, a significant journey, as Nineveh is located in the northern part of modern-day Iraq, a good distance from any ocean. It’s hard to imagine that Jonah did his prophetic work with any enthusiasm here. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown,” he told the Ninevites—or, at least, whatever few Ninevites happened to be working nearby.

The Ninevites themselves spread Jonah’s prophecy all over the city. It’s astonishing to think that such a message found root in their hearts and minds. I’ve heard similar messages before, most recently by a man on a street corner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Wooden staff in hand, he walked among the city’s homeless, proclaiming God’s wrath on the disobedient citizens driving by. I just turned up the radio and drove on by, and it’s hard to imagine the Ninevites doing any more than I did, yet Scripture tells us that the whole city turned to fasting and mourning.

Nineveh’s king clothed himself in sackcloth and ashes, and he commanded his people to do the same. “Let everyone call urgently on God,” he told them. “Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

The king’s statement is either the worst prayer for salvation recorded in scripture, or the best. I remember all the Bible tracts that people used to leave my wife in lieu of tips when she waited tables at a Denny’s. These cheaply-printed tracts contained elaborate, verse-referenced instructions for the one true path to salvation. Compared to these modern-day distributors of gospel, Nineveh’s king knew next to nothing. “Who knows?” he asked. Yet even this miniscule amount of faith pleased God. The king didn’t have enough faith to believe that God would save him, only enough faith to believe it was possible, yet God was apparently overjoyed. God relented, and the promised destruction didn’t come.

History suggests that Nineveh’s repentance was short-lived. The city did not become a holy place, renowned for its men and women of faith. It was crushed by neighboring peoples, and is remembered as yet another in the region’s long line of temporary empires. Shortly after Jonah’s time, the city became an empty ruin, unoccupied for centuries. It’s entirely possible that the Ninevites never actually knew that they had been saved. When the destruction promised by Jonah didn’t come, it’s quite likely that many assumed that they had been bamboozled by the strange Jewish prophet, and forgot about the whole affair.

Jonah’s appreciation of God’s salvation and mercy was equally short-lived. After doing his requisite rounds of the city, preaching destruction, Jonah set up shop on a nearby hill to watch the fire from heaven rain down and destroy the Ninevites. When the fire never came, he became angry with God, and didn’t mince his words. He said, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” Jonah was so appalled by God’s willingness to show mercy to the wicked that he wanted to die rather than watch another minute of it.

It’s difficult to acknowledge, but many of us are more like Jonah than we care to admit. God’s mercy is frequently outrageous, even unwanted. Think of the man crucified next to Jesus, the man redeemed in his remaining seconds of life from a lifetime of violent sin. Think of the people who’ve hurt you the most in your life, and try to swallow the fact that God has mercy enough for them, too.

At this point, if I were a pastor who liked being gainfully employed, I’d be getting a little worried about my message. I’d be reading the room, looking at concerned faces, the people wondering when this message was finally going to turn into a Christmas sermon. The easy answer would be to turn this into a one-size-fits-all life-application message. This is story about why we need to follow God’s directions, I could say to them. If you want to experience God’s power and God’s plan for your life, you have to trust and obey!

There’s a measure of truth in these well-intentioned interpretations of Jonah, but there’s a problem: they don’t fit the story. This is a common misconception that Christians face when we read the Old Testament, to be honest. We have this conviction that God works in and through good people, people who pray and tithe and attend church services. When we’re not feeling God’s goodness and grace for whatever reason, when we don’t feel like we know what his plan is for our lives, we immediately become convinced that the problem must be us. Surely some kind of sin or doubt is getting in the way.

The story of Jonah doesn’t bear out this interpretation in the slightest, though. God does powerful things through Jonah, but he does them not because of Jonah’s righteousness, but rather because of Jonah’s sinfulness. Jonah disobeys God, runs away, lies, endangers the lives of innocent sailors, and begrudges God’s offer of salvation to the Ninevites. None of that is on anybody’s list for how to live a godly life, yet Jonah’s little sea voyage gave God the opportunity to display his power and authority in way that would capture the minds and hearts of people across millennia. Perhaps God chose Jonah for this work because Jonah could reliably be counted upon to run away at the first sign of trouble.

Modern Christians beat themselves up every day trying to be perfect enough for God to use them, but over and over again God shows his preference for working with broken vessels, not perfect ones. In the end, I think that it’s fundamentally incorrect to read the book of Jonah as a lesson on what Christians should do. Jonah shows us that God just might accomplish his plans through our lives whether we want him to or not. We can resist all we want, or we can go along for the ride, but our decision probably won’t affect the outcome. God’s plans aren’t thwarted by human choices.

The book of Jonah is a lesson in God’s mercy, and point number one on the heavenly PowerPoint is that we’re not always going to be happy about it. Mercy is a great and wonderful thing when it’s offered to us, but profoundly unfair when it’s offered to someone else. Jonah called God gracious and compassionate—but wasn’t offering God a compliment.

Christians easily read the wrong things into Jesus’s declaration that there’s a narrow gate to salvation, and only a few find it. They turn up their nose at their fellow human beings, convinced that those sinful harlots aren’t anywhere near God’s grace. The problem is that if Jonah and Samson are in Heaven, there’ll be all manner of disreputable people in there with them. God’s chosen people killed, pillaged, and whored around. They were like us: fallen, hurtful, self-consumed—but redeemable. It’s impossible to say for certain what the final judgment will be like, but we’ll almost certainly be looking around the crowd feeling outraged about who’s on the receiving end of God’s grace.

As grumpy as we might get with God for his irritating habit of extending grace to the worst of sinners, it’s important to remember that God’s grace is what the Christmas story is all about. Sure, there are fun bits about a manger, a heavenly choir, and some kings with fancy gifts, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that through the birth of one child in a relatively unimportant town, God redeemed his creation. He did it before anyone knew what was going on, before anybody made themselves presentable, before anybody cleaned up their lives enough to be worth God’s attention. He loved us before we were worth loving, and saved us before we were worth saving.

Who knows? Maybe God’s grace even extends to your disreputable neighbor. Maybe—the scandal!—it even extends to us.