Reimagining Jonah: A Flight to Freedom

What would cause a proclaimed prophet to run away from everything he called home and dodge the

unyielding God of his tribe? Devoted to an uncompromising commitment to selfhood, Dr. Doug Wheeler

challenges the traditional assumption that Jonah was a miserable coward by examining him as a deeply

conflicted, courageous, and soulful man. With a poetic flair, Reimagining Jonah provokes and confounds

with language flavored by trauma and empathy, producing a richly contemplative and profoundly human

version of this well-known tale.


“Here is the story of Jonah like you have never heard it before! Doug Wheeler brings to his writing his

long wise years as a pastoral therapist. He knows that every story we tell — including Jonah’s — is thick

with subterranean transactions and freighted with background. It turns out that the story, in his gifted

artistry, is an account of being “born again” in freedom as a true self, engaged with the real world, and

partnered with the holy God who is well beyond all of our idols. Wheeler insists in an inescapable way on

our being participants in the narrative, with an earnest of good outcomes for our role in the story that is as

contemporary as it is ancient.”

— Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary