Bewilderment: A spiritual guide to uncertain times

In his latest book Bewilderment, Robert Atwell uncovers how the book of Jonah offers a strikingly relevant theology for our time - one that grapples with isolation, protest, anger, fear, and depression, all under the shadow of divine presence in the midst of personal turmoil.
Mention the name of Jonah and most people (at least those with a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible) immediately think of whales and sea monsters. They either dismiss it as a fairy tale or view it through spectacles coloured by the film Jaws. They latch on to the bizarre elements of the story and neglect what is in fact a profound piece of writing. Jonah is a radical protest book, taking an apparently pious individual and turning everything upside down. There are undoubtedly elements of Hebrew folklore in the story, but this does not mean that we should regard it with suspicion. Anthropologists of religion have shown that folklore is a powerful way of communicating beliefs about God and the nature of the world we inhabit. Jesus certainly had no hesitation in referring to Jonah, and toyed with various aspects of the story, using Jonah’s time in the belly of the whale as an image of his own imminent death and burial. He applauds Jonah’s preaching to the people of Nineveh, but says intriguingly: ‘And I tell you, something greater than Jonah is here.’
I have always been fascinated by the story of Jonah. It caught my imagination as a child, as evidently it also did the first Christians. When I was a student, I was amazed to discover frescoes of Jonah dating from the fourth century painted on the walls and ceilings of the catacombs in Rome, such as those in the catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter on the ancient Via Labricana. Jonah is depicted boarding a ship, being thrown into a raging sea by terrified sailors, and being swallowwed by a large fish. Another fresco depicts him being spewed out of the mouth of the whale and preaching to the Ninevites. Yet another has him sitting under a makeshift shelter of branches as he awaits the destruction of their city. Because Jonah was in the belly of the fish ‘three days and three nights’ and because Jesus links this with his own death, the early Christians saw in his story a foretelling of Christ’s resurrection. Jonah was seen as heralding the salvation brought by Christ and his descent into the water as an image of baptism. Jonah became a figure of hope in the face of death and destruction.
As someone who cannot swim a stroke and who enjoys looking at the sea but not being in it, I have always been in awe of Jonah. He is admittedly an unlikely hero, and my admiration is eccentric. After all, we like to picture the prophets as strong, confident figures and Jonah is neither of these. He is a flawed individual, at times almost comic. He certainly stands apart from the other Hebrew prophets, particularly Obadiah and Nahum who loathed everything Nineveh stood for and were uncompromising in their condemnation of its tyranny. After their violent denunciations, Jonah’s story comes as a welcome relief and, as we shall see, a bit of a surprise. It is why I find Jonah such an attractive character. He is irascible, vulnerable, moody and disobedient, but he is alsohonest and courageous, qualities that are often overlooked.
We live in turbulent times. Our era is marked by confusion, fear and anxiety. One of the things that has led me to revisit this extraordinary story is Jonah’s evident fear and bewilderment in the face of the events that confronted his generation. One biblical commentator, the Dominican Paul Murray, goes so far as to describe the book as a theological exploration of bewilderment.I have never had a great conversion moment or enjoyed the intense spiritual experiences that some of my friends describe, so I warm to Paul Murray’s description. In my spiritual life I have just bumbled along, often stumbling in the process. As I grapple with the call of Jesus Christ to follow him, I continue to take comfort in a verse in the psalms: ‘Though you stumble, you shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds you fast by the hand’ (Psalm 37.24). This book is written for my fellow bumblers and stumblers.
In his play A Man for all Seasons Robert Bolt puts into the mouth of the play’s hero, Sir Thomas More, these words: ‘God made the angels to show him splendour, as he made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But man he made to serve him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.’ Who knows? Perhaps in our current bewilderment, in the tangle of our mind, Jonah may have unexpected things to say to our generation?
Bewilderment is available from the end of June