There are a couple of issues wrapped up in this question.  The first is what makes scripture, and the second is what is faith?  The story of Jonah and the whale is a story about how God’s servants serve Him and it is about how God serves his servants.  But it is not a story that is to be read like we would read a modern newspaper.  We all remember how we received some of the great lessons of life.  I think of Grimms Fairy Tales, the Uncle Remus stories, and Aesop’s Fables.  These are the ways that human beings have shared some of our greatest truths since time began.  Walt Disney elevated the medium of film when he began using animation to tell our children some of our fundamental stories about truth, and fairness, and honor, and sacrifice and Good and Evil.  It is that sort of education that the story of Jonah brings into the realm of scripture.

Let me share a few of the jewels that one can discover in the book of Jonah.  Jonah is first tasked with going to Nineveh to preach to the people there about their wickedness.  He responds by booking passage on a boat bound for Tarshish.  When given a job to do by God, we also decide to run away and we do that by a number of means and for a number of reasons.  For instance, why would Father Keith want to go to Bridgeport to preach to the people there?  Wouldn’t he be more effective preaching to a larger congregation in a larger city and with more influence in the world?  Given that Jonah and Father Keith ran away from their respective true ministries how would God go about encouraging them to return to what they were called to do?  In Jonah’s case the weather intervened and the sailors on the boat finally cancelled Jonah’s passage and disembarked him from the voyage.  In Father Keith’s case he had a miserable time and didn’t fit in and was disembarked from his voyage with a couple of congregations.  Both of them found themselves drowning in a dangerous sea.

But while God may make life uncomfortable for His servants who disobey, God does not abandon them.  For Jonah, God sent a fish to save Jonah.  God’s salvation was not soft and cushiony for either Jonah or for Father Keith, but it was still salvation and they both rejoiced that God saved them from a stormy sea.  The fish puked them up on some foreign soil, which had to be disgusting, but still it was salvation and so they continued to rejoice.  God spoke to His servants and told them “Go do what I sent you to do, originally”.  And they did.  The story goes on from here, but you get the idea.  The story of Jonah is the story of ministering in the service of God.  It is about being faithful.  It is about human lack of faith and about God’s sometimes severe faithfulness to those who would serve Him.

So, what is faith and what is faithfulness?  Faith is sacrificing and believing and obeying.  If you are not obeying you do not believe, and if you are not sacrificing then you are not obeying.  Faith involves all three.  You must believe in God.  You must obey what He tells you.  And you must give everything you have; all that you are, all that you have, and all that you love in order to be His faithful servant.

That’s what the book of Jonah is about and it is the story of each and every one of us.  And that’s what Scripture is all about.