Choosing Trust Over Cynicism: Reading Through JonahSýnishorn

It’s Not About a Whale

“And then, Mommy, Jonah got ate up by a whale,” my son explained from the backseat of our car after school. Every month, his school focused on a different character from the Bible, and that month it was Jonah.

“So, what is the story of Jonah about, honey?” I asked, to keep the conversation going. One, because I will never pass up the opportunity to hear a child retell a story from the Bible that I already know. And two, because my son’s love language is telling me the intricate details of his day, and my decision to listen would register with him as a display of love.

I glanced at him through the rearview mirror, and he rolled his eyes—a reaction I didn’t expect considering I was doing him a favor by pretending I hadn’t heard this story 19,679 times.

“Mommy, you know. He didn’t listen to God. That’s why he got ate up!”

If we were honest, most of us would give the same synopsis about Jonah. God told him to go to Nineveh. Jonah didn’t want to go, so he fled, and in doing so he was “eaten” by a giant fish. He inevitably got spat out by the fish after deciding to obey God, and then he headed to Nineveh. The moral of the story is simple: obey God or get “ate up.”

But the book of Jonah, according to many scholars, is what we would consider a satire that isn’t about the whale or even Jonah running away. Jonah is a prophet who has a spirit like that of the older brother from Jesus’s parable in Luke 15. He’s deeply hypocritical, and he flees God not because he doesn’t want to do what God said but because he doesn’t want God to display His Character to the Ninevites. He doesn’t want God to show mercy to a city he believes is beyond mercy. Jonah’s heart runs deep with roots that keep him spouting God’s Goodness while staying skeptical about how it could be poured out on those Jonah deems undeserving.

It’s sometimes difficult to identify cynicism because it masquerades as intellect married to mature faith. Cynicism impersonates righteousness and discernment, and it does so to perpetuate our own desire to judge what we do not understand or prefer. Jonah is a prophet of God. His life is centered around the ministry of doing what God tells him to do in Nineveh. But somewhere along the way, his “rationality” leads to his rebellion.

Jonah’s rebellion centers around his own limited and self-­serving understanding of God. According to Jonah, the people in Nineveh do not deserve the mercy of God, an attitude that turns Jonah from remembering that he also has not deserved God’s mercy to believing he is a better judicator of the Ninevites than God. In the end, the book of Jonah is not about the whale. Though Jonah possesses the same dramatic antics I’ve seen in my three-­year-­old when she doesn’t want to do something, it’s not about a grown man having a tantrum over what God asks of him. This is a story about how cynicism can transform a heart. Jonah is satisfied with a God who would show mercy to him but could not and would not witness the mercy of God toward others.

Cynicism did to Jonah what it does to all of us: it renders our understanding of God smaller and smaller.

Today we read chapter 2 of Jonah and hear him praying to God about his situation. Take note of the moments he says he will remember God and praise Him gratefully.

“When my life was ebbing away,

I remembered you, Lord,

and my prayer rose to you,

to your holy temple.

Those who cling to worthless idols

turn away from God’s love for them.

But I, with shouts of grateful praise,

will sacrifice to you.

What I have vowed I will make good.

I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.” (Jonah 2:7-9, NIV).

Have you ever prayed a prayer like this in a moment of distress and then forgotten to thank God later for the ways He provided for you?