There’s a story that’s been on my mind for some time. One that we all believe we know. Jonah and the whale. Every Sunday school child knows this story. However, people frequently divide the story into two pieces, although it is actually one story.

The story relates that God commands Jonah to go to Nineveh and warn them that their city will be destroyed if they stop not their evil ways. Jonah does not like the people of Nineveh and tells God no. He gets on a ship and sails west in the opposite direction.

God causes a storm to come up and envelop the ship. Jonah realized he is the reason for the storm and convinces the ship’s crew to throw him overboard into the sea. They do, and the sea grows calm. But a whale or large fish swallows Jonah whole.

Jonah spends three days in the whale’s belly before he does what he was originally asked. The whale spits him out onto the shore, and Jonah goes to Nineveh.

He warns the people of the city, saying, “Repent or God will destroy your city.” The story turns into a morality tale about obedience.

While this is a key feature of the story, this is only half of the story. Jonah’s time in the whale’s belly is not his dark moment it is the midpoint. He does not repent and learn a lesson, but he pivots because of external pressure. His flaws remain intact. Jonah hates the people of Nineveh and believes that if he simply ignored them, they would get what he feels they deserve.

Even after God drags him to the gates of Nineveh, his heart hasn’t changed. He still hates them. He delivers the warning and then goes out of the city, sits in the dirt, and waits to see fire rain down on it.

Then comes the object lesson. A plant grows up around where he sits, providing shade from the sun and heat. And Jonah is happy. At night, a worm attacks his plant, and it dies. (If you’re a gardener, this is an all too painful lesson about the fragility of plants). But the object lesson is not about the worm; it’s about the plant.

The next day, Jonah sits again in the sun and heat while the city still stands. He is angry and full of self-pity. He asks God to let him die. This is his dark-night-of-the-soul. He comes to the end of himself and must face the lie he clung to up to this point.

And here is the meaning of the object lesson. God explains that if Jonah mourns the loss of the plant that lived only a day and a night, how much more should He not mourne the loss of a city full of people. God hated the evil things they did. Jonah felt he was better than they were and that they were not worthy of his sympathy. He had more sympathy for an unnamed plant, whose life was naturally short, than for hundreds or thousands of people all made in the image of God. If Jonah should feel pit for the plant, how much more should God feel pity for the loss of the people of Nineveh.

The lesson: C.S. Lewis said that as humans we are part animal and part angel. It is all too easy to hate our enemies and see them only as the animals we believe them to be. We forget there’s a part of them that God made and loves that will live forever. No matter who someone is or what he has done, he possesses intrinsic value in the eyes of his maker.

We’re never told that Jonah learns to forgive or to value others as God does. The story cuts short with no resolution. But the lesson is the last thing we hear.