Was Jonah Narcissistic by Today’s Standards?

This blog post is from a chapter in my next book, which is still being written entitled, “A Rogue Prophet and a City”

It is not a good practice to transform the message of the Bible into a secular one. What we find is that the people of the Ancient Near East were the same as we are in every way. It is easy for us to believe that we are better, definitely by technological standards, but actually, people are inherently the same across time. The message of the Bible becomes that much stronger when we see it in light of the fact that if we had lived in Jonah’s time, many of us wouldn’t have responded any better had we even spoken personally with God. And Jonah, a “silly dove,” as indicated by his name, was exactly who God had called out to be as a microcosm of the whole of Israel. He was a sample of the nation of Israel to which he belonged. And we are all likewise children of our time being influenced by the culture in which we live.

Although Jonah was privileged to deliver great prophecies of success and fortune to Jeroboam II, then king of Israel, God knew that their nationalistic zeal was egregious to the original intent of His people, Israel’s mission.

God had planted Israel in the most central and interconnected point of the Ancient Near East so that they could more easily witness to the surrounding nations about the greatness of Israel’s God. They were supposed to convert and bless the nations, not seclude themselves on their own. In fact, one mission from God would turn this prophet’s whole outlook upside down, exposing his deep-rooted sin.

In the midst of this inconvenient experience for Jonah, we discover his heart. It is not peculiar for God to do this either. Deuteronomy 8:2 says, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.” God is a God of relationship. He desires to be in relationship with us, and how He tests us with trials and difficulties is a part of that.

The test for us can be a test of inconvenience, difficulty, physical handicaps, or disease. It can be a simple but difficult command. And that is in fact what He issues to Jonah. He tells him to do something which might result in the salvation of his and Israel’s enemies! And this is just after Jonah has already prophesied (with pleasure) of the success of his own king. Ironically, Jonah’s response, all the way to the “bitter end” of this book, solicits certain correlations with Narcissism:

The definition for narcissistic personality disorder states that it comprises of a persistent manner of grandiosity, a continuous desire for admiration, along with a lack of empathy. It starts by early adulthood and occurs in a range of situations, as signified by the existence of any 5 of the next 9 standards (American Psychiatric Association, 2013):

A grandiose logic of self-importance

A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love

A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions

A desire for unwarranted admiration

A sense of entitlement

Interpersonally oppressive behavior

No form of empathy

Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her

A display of egotistical and conceited behaviors or attitudes¹

So, was Jonah Narcissistic in some way? Dr. Girgis, a Christian psychiatrist, thinks yes. He writes:

After seeing that Nineveh was saved, Jonah became very angry at God for wasting his time, in Jonah’s mind. He basically told God that he knew that God would save the Ninevites, and so felt that it was a waste of time for him to go to them. In fact, Jonah became so upset that he asked God to take his life as he felt that he no longer had a reason to live.

One does not have to be a psychiatrist to immediately recognize the grandiosity, hubris, and narcissism that would be required for Jonah to question God in such a manner. And Jonah was not a nonbeliever, uneducated, or ignorant. Rather, he was one of God’s chosen prophets. Yet despite fully understanding who God is, he felt that he knew more than God. This is an incredible description of narcissism, foremost demonstrated by Jonah’s hypertrophied sense of arrogance and haughtiness that is typical of such people.²

Actually, the depression that Jonah seemed to drudge up afterwards is very much in keeping with someone who has this accompanying personality disorder that we call narcissism.

I think that oftentimes, the first objection we tend to make is that if we could actually talk with God like Jonah could, then we never would have responded with such animosity towards the Ninevites or run in the opposite direction, but the fact is that it doesn’t matter if you speak directly with God or not. the Bible is filled with stories of saints and sinners who heard directly from God or saw miracles and did not obey or believe. Add to that the political animosity of a violent and hated nation, and certainly we have room to see that if God had called us to bless the Nazi’s in 1940 Germany during World War II or after, then there would have been a vast number of us who would have dissented and objected. But that comparison is not very far from who the Ninevites were in their day.

It should strike us with little wonder that Jonah seemed to exhibit these traits. He was a sinner, same as any of us. The strange thing is that we are able to repent at all. And Jonah, the man, becomes an object lesson for all of us, as well as the ancient nation of Israel, who needed to focus on her purpose, which was to evangelize. They needed instead to stop loving themselves and their success at this juncture of their history and use their privilege to reach out to other nations. On some level that is needed in all of our lives, especially as 21st century Americans.

But even though there are some similarities between the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s definition for narcissistic personality disorder and the man in question, it is inconsistent with the ancient context to “diagnose” Jonah as it were. People are in fact just people in whatever age they reside. We have always loved ourselves whether encouraged to or not. That is the point Jesus made when He said to love your neighbor as yourself. The fact is that you already love yourself. If you can love your neighbor just as much, then you are an incredibly generous person! But to love your enemies is even better than that. This is the counter-intuitive nature of the Gospel.

Let me say it another way, It does no good to wax about Jonah’s supposed narcissism. I like the comparison, but there is nothing transformative about the accompanying presumption that the man himself was “sick” and hence in “need of therapy” as we supposedly are today, due to mental health problems. That is to superimpose the pathological over the spiritual and thus cheapen God’s grace that can transform those of us who could be diagnosed as narcissistic as well. The tragic thing was that Jonah wasn’t just sick! He was really only being himself! But it is helpful to recognize that the Bible has relevant stories for people who are narcissistic today, though it is not helpful to take that diagnosis and posthumously diagnose either him or to potentially apply the term to ourselves either. Another way to look at this is that God knew exactly how to deal with these twisted personality traits in Jonah. And He did. Do you want to avoid the harsh judgement of God? Then humble yourself.

Jonah certainly loved himself and his nation and his own comforts (as seen with the plant in chapter four of Jonah), and he despised the people of Nineveh even their children and animals. It didn’t matter that some of the inhabitants were innocent of the crimes of their fathers, Jonah wanted them all wiped out, and that lack of empathy certainly sounds like a narcissist, but the answer to Jonah comes in God’s providential arrangement of circumstances and commands that antagonizes the prophet’s pride! Beloved, blessed are you if God antagonizes your pride. I can speak from personal experience, that if we respond to the Lord’s even painful grace with humility, then we are given contentment.

To Transform or to Translate?

It is equally important to keep in focus that Jonah is not a tale about answering your proverbial call. It is not a story about the consequences of a failure to act or even to obey God. The book of Jonah is an object lesson about God’s sovereignty over history and people. God wins in this story. Jonah loses, but he is blessed, yet not according to his wishes! But God loves every one of the characters in this story as much as He loves you too. And ironically, it seems that the harder Jonah pushes back in this book against God’s desire to reach out to the Gentiles, the more Gentiles are converted!

It would be a sorry excuse for a sermon to make this text about how to overcome your weaknesses or how to answer God’s call on your life. These pop psychological aspects of interpretation fail to meet the criteria of theological depth. The Bible doesn’t revolve around us. It is a testimony about God. It is the revelation of Himself. And the theology of the Bible is the interpretation of the Bible. And this small book is about God and His work in the life of a rebellious prophet and a hated city.

When Moses penned the first five books of the Bible, he set a standard for pattern and history. These patterns and events, and the words that described them, often repeat in history and writing. They are in the Biblical documents as a witness to future fulfillment. When Jonah is alluded to in the New Testament, there are rich depths of meaning that point to Christ. We should be transformed by this witness rather than to transform what we have been given into something that speaks from our own narrow but purportedly “open-minded” themes. We must not make the book about Jonah himself or either about what this book means to us. It is not about us or Jonah, strictly speaking. It is about how God changed a rogue prophet, who loved himself, into an instrument of God’s love for that prophet’s most hated enemies. For God so loved Jonah, the people of Nineveh, and us as well.

Side Note – Notice my images of “Narcissus” flowers for this blog post – and there is a fascinating Greco-Roman myth about Narcissus from which we get the term for Narcissism – click here