We can hope that Jonah learned what the Lord wanted him to learn and that he repented of his attitude and actions. This is something we all need to be careful of, not to let our own wants and desires blind us to what is truly important.
For some time I’ve been mulling over the story of Jonah in the Old Testament. Being a righteously vindictive man myself I seem to discern in the person of Jonah a not so dissimilar strain: a reason enough for me to get nitty-grity of the matter.
The interelationship between anger,depression and God’s intensions is surprisingly well portrayed in the story of Jonah. Most of us know that Jonah was swallowed by a monster whale, but only few realise that as he sank helplessly into the depths his cries slowly reflects emotional depression.
‘’YOU (God) threw one down into depths… I thought I Rad been banished from your presence and would never see your Holy temple again. The water came over me and choked me… and seaweed wrapped around my head I went down to the very roots of the mountains, into the land whose gates lock around forever.’’ (Jonah 2: 3-6).
Certainly we may feel sympathetic towards Jonah and any other depressed person. Yet we must not allow our sympathy to so blurr the overall picture that we forget how Jonah got into such predicament in the first place. For Jonah choose his faith. God called him to a task- to warn the enemy nixevites. Angry that God would give Israel’s enemy a chance to repent and be saved, Jonah opted to run away rather than do what God commanded. (Jonah 1: 3)
When Jonah withdraws to the hold of his getaway ship, God brings a sea storm that threatens to capsize the vessel. But rather than beg God’s forgiveness and surrender himself at last to God’s will, Jonah chooses self-pity and guilt to the very brink of dying. ‘’Throw me into the sea’’ he begs the sailors, ‘’and it will come down. I know it is my doing that you are caught up in the violent storm’’
Jonah’s depression stems not from his predicament but from his own self-deception; he feels banished from God whilst in reality he has chosen to run away from God. The story suggests that we choose to be depressed Insofar as we run away from God, because we don’t trust him to accept us as we are, hurt and angry, This sound harsh as if we’re simply blaming the person for being depressed. But it’s good news to discover your own role in your predicament. If we can identify particular choices that leads us into depression, we can make other choices to avoid it. Certainly a man chooses to jump into a pit may be so deep that he cannot choose to climb out of it. He can, however he choose to humble himself, trust God and cry out for help, This understanding undefines the non-judgemental twelve step programs which allows, for example that a man could choose to take a drink but be (on his own) helpless to stop, And so when Jonah ha cast himself into the merciless, guilt hidden sea of self-pity, God seizes him as if to say “If you insist on casting yourself Jonah that’s fine! I’ll take you all the way down, down into the depths of your broken self, down to where you must let go of your life and cry out your pain at last, until you know that you belong to me and I’m here as always to save you”
The book of Jonah is a very short book- a mere four short chapters, yet what a load of wisdom it contains regarding depression and the way out of it.
