A few days ago, my wife and I headed to our county clerk’s office and we cast our votes for this year’s election. It was really pretty uneventful; there wasn’t even much of a line. As I write this, we are just a couple days away from election day when votes will begin being counted and hopefully it won’t be long before the winner is decided and this crazy, contentious election cycle will be over. (If you don’t live in Iowa, you can’t imagine how incessant and nasty the political ads are right now.)

I have been reflecting on the story of Jonah lately for a couple reasons. The first has to do with how we read the Bible; the second has to do with how we handle this election.

Let’s start with the first. Jonah stands out to me as the perfect example of historical ambiguity in the Bible. It is a stand-alone story which fits very well within the world of the Old Testament. But it doesn’t obviously connect to the rest of the narrative. For these reasons we can read Jonah as actual history, or as a parable. And if you engage the scholarship on this issue, you’ll find that it is really hard to determine conclusively which one is the better reading.

The good news is that it doesn’t really matter. The story of Jonah teaches us the exact same lesson whether it really happened or it was told as a parable. This shouldn’t surprise us; Jesus taught in a variety of different ways too. Now we could get all wrapped up in how Jonah fits into the timeline of the rest of the Old Testament, or with what kind of fish swallowed him, or in looking for historical evidence of the repentance of the Ninevites, but those would all be adventures in missing the point. They are all secondary questions. They may be of some interest but should never distract us from the hard truths we find in the story: That God loves our enemies more than we do. That our enemies might actually be ready to respond to God in repentance. That our enemies might just be more righteous than we are.

How often do we do this? We focus on the extraordinary parts of the biblical stories and try to prove that they really happened and in doing so we miss the reason the story was told in the first place. We lose the forest for the trees. We do this with Genesis 2, where we can’t seem to see anything in the chapter beyond the question of “were Adam and Eve real humans.” We do it in Jesus’ ministry: his feeding of the crowd is just as miraculous if the disciples estimated and rounded (or even exaggerated) the number of guests. We do this with Revelation when we try so hard to connect John’s vision to historical events that we lose sight of the hope that the book offers.

Whether Jonah really happened or not, the message it teaches is important for us to remember. Especially in the coming days and weeks. Can you imagine the humiliation that Jonah endured when he entered the despised city of his hated enemies preaching repentance, and they actually repented? He literally would have rather died than reach out to the Ninevites (he tried). That is how strongly he felt against them. But God didn’t release Jonah from his task, and God didn’t release the Ninevites from His love. And this is often more than we can bear. We would like nothing more than to be assured that God hates our enemies as much as we do. We would like nothing better than for Him to sanctify our hatred.

But He won’t.

Which brings us back to the election. The candidates may vilify their opponents. Online forums may justify our hatred for those on the other side. Cheap talk can help us to dehumanize those who disagree with us. But God won’t. God refuses to let go of us, or our enemies. God seeks the repentance and redemption of every human on this earth.

So when it comes to this election, don’t vote like Jonah. Don’t vote out of your hatred or fear of the other side. And after you vote, remember that God loves your enemies. He loves them more than you love your own parents, or your own children. No matter how this election turns out, I suspect that we would all be better off keeping this in mind.