“The thing that’s strange about the story is, Jonah doesn’t seem to be scared of anything, even when he should be.”

“No?”

“No. The story goes that God tells Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh to preach, and Jonah doesn’t want to, so he gets on a ship for Spain. God sends a violent storm, and the ship’s crew is scared. But when they go down to the hold to find Jonah, he’s sleeping.”

“Yeah?”

“Sleeping. Through a storm that has veteran sailors scared. So they wake him up and tell him, ‘We’re pretty sure we haven’t done anything to anger our gods, might you have done something to anger yours?’ And Jonah suggests that if they think this is the case, maybe they should throw him overboard.”

“Huh.”

“They’re way out at sea. Jonah’s effectively asking to be drowned. The crew says no at first, but later they decide he’s right, and they throw him over, and then comes the whale part that everyone knows about. That’s what it takes for him to finally decide that maybe he’s in trouble. He prays to God-it’s kind of a pretty poem, by the way-and God intervenes, so the whale spits him up onto dry land. And then he does go to Nineveh, and everyone in Nineveh really gets with the program, from the king on down. They repent in a big way. And Jonah isn’t happy about it. He gets mad. He goes out in the desert and argues with God about destroying Nineveh.”

“He wants Nineveh destroyed?”

“Yeah, but the bigger point is, he’s arguing with the God of the Old Testament, the all-powerful white-beard guy who used to strike people dead. Doesn’t that seem a little insane? Shouldn’t Jonah be a little more afraid?”

“You think Jonah was suicidal.”

“No. I mean, not necessarily.”

“Then what’s your theory? You sound like you’ve been putting a lot of thought into this. You must have one.”