[A Card Talk in two acts]

But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. (Jonah 3:8, New International Version)

I

How should we read The Book of Jonah: as a historical event, an allegory, an epic poem, a cautionary tale, some combination thereof?  Our card highlights a moment in the book which has led some scholars to pronounce The Book of Jonah as an example of Biblical humor. Over the centuries many have argued for Jonah to be read as ironic, a satire, comedy, and while we are not (completely) sold on the idea, it is easier to imagine than you may think.

Throughout the narrative the prophet Jonah is like a character in a play who despises the playwright: he changes his blocking from stage left to stage right, from Nineveh to Joppa (Jonah 1:3); his method-acting is so overly dramatic, he prefers suicide-by-sailors to delivering his lines (Jonah 1:11-12); and when he does speak, he ignores the script completely, ad libing for the destruction of Nineveh (Jonah 3:4). If not comically tragic, Jonah easily reads like a farce.

Jonah is constantly at war with the narrator. We— the audience— know who he is supposed to be, what he has vowed to do (Jonah 2:9), but he continually does the opposite. As with most comedic situations, the reality is heartbreaking when removed from a humorous frame, when it is embedded in our lives.

Consider: Jonah sits on a hillside overlooking the city waiting, hoping, praying that he botched God’s message enough that it will result in the city’s destruction. He was called to deliver a message of repentance, instead he delivered one of damnation. He literally only had one job. After the people repent, and destruction does not follow, Jonah gets pissed off that God would be compassionate on an entire nation of people, but gets really sad over a wilted plant, to the point he wishes for death (Jonah 4).

Oh and did we forget to mention that the whole story is predicated on the idea that a prophet of the LORD could run across the dry land and the sea to get away from God, the same God that the prophet says made the sea and the dry land (Jonah 1:9)! (We like to think the icing on the idiot-cake is that Jonah thought, because Tarshish is believed to be near or in Spain, that God couldn’t hablas espanol, so he would be safe from the divine call. Either that or he was subject to the theological notion that God was tied to the Holy Land due to the presence of The Ark being in the First Temple.)

But, as should always be the case, God has the final word in this story. The joke’s on Jonah. All he tried to undo came to pass. The more he ran away from God to prevent gentiles from being saved by God, the more gentiles (on sea and dry land) were saved by God. In the end, God (patiently) reminds Jonah that the destruction of humans is not the only thing at stake in this story. There are also thousands of innocent animals who would die, including the aforementioned cows in sackclothes.  

Scholars argue about the humor permeating and enhancing the profundity of the story. The utter foolishness of the one person in all of the created order of the story, who was supposed to do God’s will and failed. The sun, wind, waves, big fish, plants, worms, cows, and pagans all respond to God’s call immediately. But not the prophet of LORD. Sadly, that’s some funny shit.

Jonah had his reasons for running: He hated the Ninevites. The Assyrians were violently oppressing, slaughtering, and enslaving the children of Israel. The earliest forms of crucifixion were being piloted by the Ninevites, which was a method of impaling someone, anal entry of a none to pleasant variety, splinters and all (of course we have a Card Talk about that). While all of this is true, Jonah put his nationalistic fervor and ethnic rage ahead of doing what he knew was God’s will.

Perhaps we don’t fare much better when called upon to complete a task we find to be laughably horrible?

(But seriously, who got the job of fitting each and every piece of livestock, every pet in the land, with a hirsute coat of lamentation?)

II

It must also be noted that The Book of Jonah is also a litmus test for many outside the Christian faith, as well as some within the faith.

“Do you really believe that someone could be swallowed by a big fish, or whale, whatever, and survive?” is a question asked with raised eyebrows, and depending on the person’s penchant for controversy, a hope that the hearer will say “uhm, no.”  That this isn’t one of the stories of the Bible that they take literally: It’s a great metaphor, allegory, symbol, or parable with a good moral message, but intelligent people can separate fact from productive fiction.

We tend to get edgy when devotion can seem like madness, when our belief in something strains popular or scientific credulity.  But we also forget the inconvenient truth that we grow accustomed to suspending our disbelief in regards to our own faith claims.

It’s second nature. It’s how the system works: we see what makes sense because our eyes have grown accustomed to it. We don’t remember— if we ever knew— what things looked like from the outside. But when we’re honest we can completely agree with the rabid atheists and rabble rousing agnostics who mock theists.

If you’re a Christian reading this you have to admit that, in some fashion, you believe in an invisible sky daddy (or mommy, or being beyond gender) who became a human man, and somehow was his own father, but was born of a virgin. He died (for reasons your leaders have literally been fighting about for thousands of years), but can make you live forever if you vocally and/or telepathically tell him you accept him as the master of your life, allowing you access to his eternal kingdom, which you were initially blocked from entering because of an apocalyptic battle with invisible forces of spiritual evil, all of which is encapsulated in a story of the first humans eating from a magical tree after advice from a talking snake, which may or may not be literally true. In the midst of all of this, the vast majority of your like-minded family members (because your sky-daddy, who is also your brother, and an invisible phantom thing) symbolically (or literally) partake in a ritual where they eat your deity’s flesh, imbibe his blood, take a public death-bath in Its honor, and regularly intone chants, songs, and creeds (sometimes in foreign languages) led by men (and sometimes women) wearing outfits David Bowie would admire (RIP). And this says nothing of the fact that your part poetry, part prose holy book contains so many witches, giants, unicorns, ghosts, sea monsters, dragons, and reanimated corpses, George R.R. Martin is probably jealous. It’s an epic fantasy tale for the ages with an underlying rom-com meets snuff film backstory. 

At this point cows wearing sackclothes seem tame.

Understand, we’re on the inside of this, and we know it sounds humorous at best, batshit-crazy at worst.

Perhaps we should remember how easy a lack of faith can be.

Perhaps we should remember that William James argued that some need a preliminary will to believe in order to jump on the faith bandwagon in the first place.

Perhaps we should also consider Jonah from the perspective of a pastor friend of ours, who once said, “no I don’t believe someone can survive inside the belly of a big fish for three days and then be spit on shore. And that’s exactly why I believe the story as literal, because I believe that is something only God could make happen.”

Perhaps we should also not piss off a God who would do that to a prophet who has gotten too big for his sandals.

Perhaps we should remember to have a sense of humor more often, especially in our interactions around subjects as sensitive as faith and practice.

But what do we know: we made this game and you continue to think we’re going to Hell.