If there is one book in the Bible that really gives the doubting Thomas’s among us fits it’s Jonah, the reluctant prophet. It wouldn’t be so hard to swallow, pun intended, if it wasn’t for putting that silly big fish in the story, but more of that below. As for the rest of the story, you have to love Jonah, he’s so much like all of us, sinners by nature who just don’t want to do what God commands. That is in fact the job description of a sinner! We’re rebellious little Cretans, as the Apostle Paul says, God’s enemies, literally by nature at war with him. So before we get all high-minded and “judge” Jonah, he is us! And it is just this kind of negativity that that brings out a realness in the story that speaks to its authenticity. Jonah is the criterion of embarrassment on steroids, meaning human nature being what it is, people just don’t write things that make themselves look so horrible. In fact, we naturally go out of our way to make ourselves look good, to excuse ourselves and mitigate our guilt. We don’t tell a story like Jonah unless it’s true.
Jonah’s tale begins with rank disobedience. The Lord tells him to go preach a warning to Nineveh, the great Assyrian city, and he runs in the exact opposite direction, and a very long way. God as He does with His people chases him down until he finally relents. Jonah decides to take a ship that he must think will surely allow him to escape this odious request (the Assyrians were a brutal people and Israel’s enemies), but you can tell he really doesn’t believe that. What makes the argument in Uninvented so persuasive to me is that the characters in the Bible behave psychologically like real people would, and Jonah reads as real as it gets. He knows like all of us really do that running from the Lord is futile, and as soon as the storm hits and things start getting bad, Jonah goes below deck and falls “into a deep sleep.” He’s basically depressed. The captain wonders how in the world he can sleep, and tells him to call on his god to save them.
In that time prior to “science” when people believed storms and weather were controlled by the gods, that’s what they did. Jonah knew better who actually controlled everything including storms. The sailors cast lots to see who’s to blame, and the lot falls to Jonah. When they ask who he is:
9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
I can almost see and hear a board and blasé Jonah saying this. No other ancient people believed in an eternal Creator God and you get the sense Jonah also wishes it wasn’t true at this point, but the sailors are terrified because Jonah’s already told them he’s running away. The sea is getting rougher and they ask him what they must do to calm it down, and he says throw him into the sea. What? Won’t that tick off of your Creator God, Jonah? They decided not to chance it, and try everything else, but it keeps getting worse, so they throw him over. Then we read the words that give the skeptics and doubters fits:
17 Now the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Impossible! They think. No way a human being can last inside of a fish, no matter how big. It’s really gross if you think about it for too long, not to mention dangerous. And impossible! Is it?
Let’s address the word impossible. I’ve heard people say that over the years regarding this story, but what exactly does it mean. How about this:
- not possible; unable to be, exist, happen, etc.
- unable to be done, performed, effected, etc.
Now a question for those who think it’s impossible for a man to be swallowed by a great fish and stay alive three days and nights. How exactly do you know this? That such a thing is impossible. Are you not begging the question? In other words, aren’t you only assuming such a thing can’t happen? And in fact you really have no idea if it could happen or not? But, you say, it is literally physiologically not possible, stomach acids, lack of oxygen, etc. Well, that really depends on what one assumes, doesn’t it.
Let’s assume something else, my own question begging, if you will. Nothing is impossible with God. If God exists, then preparing a great fish to swallow a man and keep him alive for three days and nights is a piece of cake, easy peasy, not a problem, can do it in His sleep, so to speak. Why? Well, because by definition as the notion of God has come down to us from the ancient Hebrews then through Christianity, God is all powerful. God is all mighty. God has all knowledge, all wisdom, all understanding. We can also add something that’s truly beyond comprehension to us, as if all this is not. He is everywhere, omnipresent. Try to wrap your mind around that! But don’t, you’ll hurt yourself.
Why burden yourself with the Enlightenment philosophical baggage (naturalism, miracles can’t happen, rationalism, etc.), and just read the text as if it could very well possibly be true. Then judge the text for what it is. Does it read real? Does it have the magic word, verisimilitude? For those new to the word, it means the quality of appearing to be true or real. Like a great work of fiction or movie, if it has verisimilitude you’re all in, if not you won’t engage with it for long. The Bible has verisimilitude written all over it, from beginning to end, if only it isn’t shackled to someone’s anti-supernatural assumptions, which are in fact rightly called a bias. And it’s a groundless bias if God in fact exists, which he obviously does! As I often say, there are relatively few philosophical, materialist (matter is all that is) atheists. Everyone else knows God exists because, well, everything couldn’t possibly come from nothing!
One of the reasons the Bible reads so real to me, and why I wrote Uninvented, is because most of the characters who encounter the miraculous are just as incredulous as we are. The ancients in this were no different than we post-Enlightenment Westerners. Such things do not normally happen, so can they ever happen? I’ll end this with one powerful story that reflects this dynamic so wonderfully, the story of Abraham and Sarah. Who does God choose to bring kings and nations through, like sand on the seashore and stars in the sky? A barren old couple, of course! And we’re talking really old. The Lord called Abram and Sarai at 75 and 65, beyond child rearing already, promised him that sand and those stars, then made them wait another twenty-five years! God would leave no doubt whatsoever who was responsible for those nations. In Genesis 18 the Lord visits them and says Sarah will have a son in a year. Then we read these very real words:
13 Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”
But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”
Is that verisimilitude or what! And talk about the criterion of embarrassment. Notice the rhetorical question the Lord puts to them. Of course not! Nothing is too hard for Him, including Jonah in a big fish kept alive for three days and then vomited onto dry land.
Recent Comments