Nat's Reviews > Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels

Knowing a little of the background of the author, I honestly thought that this book would be a little auto-biographical. However, this book is about Jonah.

But in turn, Tullian ultimately uses the book to cause the story of Jonah to be about God. A strong selling point is that God could have used any other prophet or person to go to Nineveh, but why did he keep going after Jonah--especially when it doesn't seem that Jonah gets it? He's doing all these actions on the outside, but his heart is not in it.

The author does a great job showing how God demonstrates grace and mercy with all the characters in the book of Jonah: the sailors, Jonah, the Assyrian king, and the city itself.

I only have two minor gripes with the book. The first is that the author uses some classic and contemporary pieces of art to describe man's take on Jonah. It works well in some parts of the book, but not in others.

The second minor quibble happens in the last chapter of the book. The author uses two poetical writings, one by John Piper and one by Robert Frost. I guess they were used to speculate what happened to Jonah after Nineveh. (We don't really know. The story in the Bible just ends without a change in Jonah's life up to that point). Passages of Piper's poem were quoted, while Frost's was described (maybe the author couldn't get copyright?). Perhaps the author wanted to convey Frost's take on Jonah's life, but it just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. It's also odd that the description of the play goes on for a few pages as if a friend was describing it to you in person without quoting it.

Then the kicker comes. A quote from the book after going through the speculation:

"The bottom-line focus on God is why any speculation about Jonah's post-Nineveh experiences, as well as search for the more psychological details behind his actions and words in this story, are relatively unimportant."

I'm glad we took ten pages to examine that.

However, my comments above may seem harsh. Please don't take them to be an overwhelming negative about the book. I found it to be a rather enjoyable read, and I believe that the author did a great job of going through the book of Jonah passage by passage.

I also learned a few things about the sailing, Hebrew, and Assyrian cultures along the way that helps the book of Jonah make a lot more sense in regards to their actions.