Editorial November 12, 1982 Issue

Overcoming dogmatic opinions

DeWITT JOHN

Many of the frictions and conflicts of life are traceable to the irrational rigidities of the human mind. Fortunately the warming influence of pure Christianity melts frozen attitudes and regenerates human character. This healing influence replaces mortal mulishness with the graces of Love. It brings the refreshing mental resiliency derivable from Spirit.

There's a considerable need everywhere for this moderating, stabilizing, civilizing influence of the Christ-spirit. The punishing angularities of mortal mind range from ordinary bullheadedness to the excesses of monomania and obsessive zealotry. Fads and crazes show at a casual level how susceptible the human mind is to its own frailties; more serious indeed are opinionated tendencies to harp on a fixed idea, prejudices deeply entrenched, and the rigid intolerance that inflicts so many cruelties and sorrows.

One finds some of these mortal elements exposed in one of the shortest documents in the Old Testament, the book of Jonah. Twentieth-century commentators regard this little book as an object lesson, even an allegory. One authority sees it as a "humorous satire" that "takes on the character of parable."^{ Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1971), pp. 480–481 .} Another describes it as containing "the high-water mark of [Old Testament] teaching."^{ J. R. Dummelow, The One-Volume Bible Commentary (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1954), p. 576 .}