If you have ever tried to feed an infant that obstinately refuses to accept it, then you know that willful defiance is not a behavior that takes years of social programming to learn. Not even one lesson is necessary for a child to grasp the effectiveness of a forceful, stubborn attitude. And it doesn’t fade over time. Adults lament the stubbornness of teenagers, bosses the stubbornness of employees and children the stubbornness of elderly parents.
Biblically, stubbornness is a trait often associated with unbelievers. Pharoah “stubbornly refused” to let God’s people go to the wilderness to worship (Ex. 13:15). God criticized Israelites that worshipped idols when He said, “They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways” (Jdg. 2:19). Stubbornness can also be generational.
But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do like them. (2 Kgs. 17:14-15)
Pharoah, idol-worshiping Israelites and haters of God’s law—what’s wrong with those people? It took Pharoah TEN plagues? The people that had experienced some of the greatest miracles in the entirety of human history reverted to idol worship? Those that received promises directly from the mouth of God became a multi-generational family of stubborn covenant-haters? What’s wrong with them? God provided clear and ongoing instruction. Why didn’t they listen?
It’s easy to identify stubbornness in others, and particularly in the unbeliever, but obstinance is not unique to that group. Consider the prophet Jonah. He was given a straightforward directive to call a city to repentance and to turn to the Lord under threat of judgment. God told him to “call out against it.” In other words, God instructed Jonah to go to the people of Nineveh to do his job as a prophet. But Jonah’s response was to flee in the opposite direction and to board a ship that would take him far away from where God directed him to go.
In Jonah’s defense, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, a people known for publicly impaling, flaying and amputating their enemies. To wipe out their enemies’ identity, Assyrians would dig up the bones of their ancestors and grind them to dust. Many other forms of torture, brutality and savage psychological warfare were employed by the Assyrians. The book of Jonah reveals that Jonah fled, not out of fear, but out of hate for those people. He was angry because he was convinced that God would show them mercy. He lashed out at God when the city responded in repentance to Jonah’s half-hearted obedience to preach to them.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. (Jon. 4:1–2)
Can you identify with Jonah’s attitude? Are you harboring a strong aversion to a directive that God has clearly given you? Of interest is that the ship to Tarshish traveled there infrequently. 2 Chronicles 9:21 records that ships ran that route once every three years. It seems, however, that when one wants to flee the will of God, there is always a ship at the ready. When you want to accommodate your stubbornness, a credible excuse is always close at hand. You can almost hear Jonah telling himself, “If God was serious about His instruction, this ship would not be here and available right now.”
In the context of telling His people to obey His commandments and statutes, God said, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (Deut. 10:16). God’s instruction to you from the Bible and its application through the Holy Spirit trumps any would-be “ship” that would carry you in a different direction. Do not confuse the existence of “reasonable” excuses with God accommodating your stubborn desires. On the contrary, He is the God that, while the ship is docked nearby, says, “Choose this day whom you will serve.”