The Jonah Syndrome
February 24, 2010 10:01pm
Filed under:
Jonah in all of us
This book is a delightful sustained meditation on the Book of Jonah.
His study is in-depth research and shows extensive familiarity with theology, psychology, art, poetry, literature and Scriptures in both Christian and other religions such as Islam and Hinduism.
In this readable little book of 70 pages that includes the NAB version of the Book of Jonah text, he makes a compelling case that Jonah is in all of us and gives us insight and flight from our bewilderment.
p. 23. A quote from Paul Murray’s wonderful study of Jonah:
‘Modern consciousness, Buber writes, looks to the soul as the only sphere in which we can expect to harbour or discover the “divine.”
And this marks, of course, a complete shift away from transcendence to immanence. In Buber’s opinion,
“(Modern consciousness) will have nothing more to do with the God believed in by the religions, who is to be sure present to the soul, who reveals himself to it, communicates with it, but remains transcendent to it in his being.”
A spirituality of this kind – an exclusively immanent spirituality – at least in its extreme manifestations, represents a regress back to a safe, controlled environment, a return to “the womb” even. In terms of religion, it is nothing less than a spiritual manifestation of “the Jonah syndrome”.’
