I am reading a book for review that is entitled, Reading with Feeling: Affect Theory and the Bible.[1]  It is a very thought-provoking collection of articles about how to read the Bible in a way that takes feelings seriously.

While it is a good book, sometimes it provokes my thinking, and sometimes it simply provokes me.  However, I often need to be provoked.

I just finished reading a chapter entitled “Prophecy and the Problem of Happiness: The Case of Jonah,” by Rhiannon Graybill.[2]  Graybill argues that we need to take seriously Jonah’s unhappiness at God for sparing Nineveh.  While many readers fault Jonah for his unhappiness, Graybill argues for Jonah’s “freedom to be unhappy.”  She thinks of God as coercive in attempting to deal with Jonah’s unhappiness.

I agree that we must take seriously our own unhappiness and the unhappiness of others.  I also agree that unhappiness can provide an incentive for hope and change.  These are very important points in a society (and in churches) that has made a fetish of a very superficial approach to happiness.

However, my disagreement with Graybill’s approach is with one thing that she seems to me to be explicitly saying, and another thing that I think her approach implies.

First, I am not sure that God’s approach should be described as “coercive,” as Graybill states.  God provides some object lessons and asks some questions.  If this is coercive, it is a fairly open-ended brand of coercion.

Okay, the big storm and the big fish were pretty coercive, I grant.  Perhaps some coercion is a good thing.  Anyone who has ever tried to get a three-year-old to go to bed might recognize that simply letting a child marinate in their own unhappiness might not be the best approach.  The same is true for adults, I suspect.

But the Book of Jonah does not end with the storm and the fish.  It ends with object lessons and questions from God.  Jonah does not answer.  Apparently, God is willing to leave Jonah (and readers of the book) the freedom to be unhappy.

That brings me to my second disagreement with Graybill’s excellent article.  She seems to me to be implying that it is okay to let people continue in their own unhappiness.  Yes, we are indeed free to be unhappy, and we need to give others the freedom to be unhappy.  But is this really the best use of our freedom?

It may well be the best use of freedom—in the short time.  However, as a long-term strategy it isn’t.  That is unhappiness isn’t a long-term strategy.

Now, I need to come clean.  I am reading Graybill’s reading of Jonah from my own autobiography.  I have struggled with depression for most of my life.  If I am alive today, it is because of support from my generally even-dispositioned wife, friends, and two specific insights.  One of the insights is from a book, and the other, from a friend.

Years ago, when I was struggling with profound unhappiness, I read a book entitled Happiness is a Choice.  The title made me even more deeply unhappy, if that was possible at the time.  And yet, I continued to read.  Eventually, the book began to make some sense to me.  I have found that this statement, “Happiness is a choice,” has become a mantra for me.  It has frequently headed me away from the brink of suicide.

A second deeply helpful insight was shared many years ago by a friend after a Bible study I had led.  Mike Young said, “I think that you have more joy than you know.”  That was said to me in about 1990.  I have lost touch with Mike, and I doubt that he ever knew what a profound influence that statement had on me.  The fact that I remember it some thirty years later is a powerful and non-coercive reminder to me that I don’t need to take my unhappiness with ultimate seriousness.  Seriously, yes!  Ultimately, no.

[1] Fiona C. Black and Jennifer L. Koosed, editors, Reading with Feeling: Affect Theory and the Bible, Semeia Studies 95 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2019).

[2] Ibid., 95-112.