The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules - Softcover

James, Carolyn Custis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310330858 ISBN 13: 9780310330851

Publisher: Zondervan Academic, 2011

Synopsis

God is counting on his daughters to build his kingdom.

This isn’t the Ruth you thought you knew. Award-winning author, Carolyn Custis James has unearthed startling new insights from a well-worn story that have life-changing implications for us today.

Through careful and dynamic biblical scholarship, rediscover the story of Ruth and its characters. Naomi is no longer regarded as a bitter, complaining woman, but as a courageous overcomer. Ruth, typically admired for her devotion to Naomi, is seen as a gutsy risk-taker and a powerful agent for change among God’s people. Boaz, the Kinsman Redeemer, is repeatedly caught off-guard by Ruth’s initiatives. His partnership with her models the kind of relationships that the gospel intends for all who follow Jesus.

Carolyn Custis James drills down deeper into the story where she uncovers in the Old Testament the same passionate, counter-cultural, rule-breaking gospel that Jesus modeled and taught his followers to pursue. Within this age-old story is a map to radical levels of love and sacrifice.

The Gospel of Ruth vests every woman’s life with kingdom purposes and frees us to embrace wholeheartedly God’s calling. This story of two women who have lost everything contains a profound message: God created women not to live in the shadowy margins of men or of the past, but to emerge as courageous activists for his kingdom.

About this title

About the Author

Carolyn Custis James (MA, Biblical Studies) travels extensively as a popular speaker for women's conferences, churches, colleges, seminaries, and other Christian organizations. Her ministry organization, WhitbyForum, promotes thoughtful biblical discussion to help men and women serve God together. Carolyn founded and is president of the Synergy Women’s Network. She is a consulting editor for Zondervan's Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament and author of When Life and Beliefs Collide and Lost Women of the Bible. Carolyn and her husband live in Sellersville, Pennsylvania. They have one grown daughter.

From the Back Cover

This isn't the Ruth, the Naomi, or the Boaz we thought we knew. Carolyn Custis James has unearthed startling new insights from this well-worn story ... insights that have life-changing implications for you. Naomi is no longer regarded as a bitter, complaining woman, but as a courageous overcomer. A Female Job. Ruth (typically admired for her devotion to Naomi and her deference to Boaz) turns out to be a gutsy risk-taker and a powerful agent for change among God's people. She lives outside the box, and her love for Yahweh and Naomi compels her to break the rules of social and religious convention at nearly every turn. Boaz, the Kinsman Redeemer, is repeatedly caught off-guard by Ruth's initiatives. His partnership with her models the kind of male/female relationships that the gospel intends for all who follow Jesus. James drills down deeper into the story where she uncovers in the Old Testament the same passionate, counter-cultural, rule-breaking gospel that Jesus modeled and taught his followers to pursue. Within this age-old story is a map to radical levels of love and sacrifice, combined with the message that God is counting on his daughters to build his kingdom. The Gospel of Ruth vests every woman's life with kingdom purposes and frees us to embrace wholeheartedly God's calling, regardless of our circumstances or season of life. This story of two women who have lost everything contains a profound message: God created women not to live in the shadowy margins of men or of the past, but to emerge as courageous activists for his kingdom.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Gospel of Ruth

Loving God Enough to Break the RulesBy Carolyn Custis James

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2008 Carolyn Custis James
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-33085-1

Contents

Foreword......................................................10Preface.......................................................12NIV Text of Ruth..............................................15Introduction: What Women Want to Know.........................231 Looking at God from Ground Zero.............................352 Left Behind ? A Woman on Her Own............................553 Wisdom Gleaned from Empty Arms..............................754 Breaking the Rules in Bethlehem.............................915 The Power of Hesed..........................................1096 Finding God's Fingerprints on Our Lives.....................1257 A Holy Risk Taker...........................................1398 The Three Faces of Submission...............................1579 When Women Initiate and Men Respond.........................17310 Good to Great..............................................191Notes.........................................................211

Chapter One

Looking at God from Ground Zero

"So much for your God."

Those scornful words were aimed at a friend of mine as she stood with coworkers around the office television watching the tragic events of September 11 unfold. The unexpected barb came from the business colleague next to her, a man with whom she had shared her faith on numerous occasions, all to no effect His words ? uttered as the second World Trade Center Tower collapsed ? verbalized what a lot of horrified people (including my friend) were thinking.

In our post?9/11 world, we've watched Christian leaders confronted by journalists who want to know, "Where was God on September 11?" It's a fair question, whether we like it or not Still, I always cringe when I hear it because I'm not sure how to answer the question It doesn't cause me to doubt God's existence, but it does force me to admit there's a lot about God I don't understand To simply say, "His ways are not our ways," doesn't ultimately satisfy or soothe a wounded heart The consternation we all feel is the price we pay for life in a fallen world.

Yes, September 11 troubles me. But there are other troubling days on the calendar ? not just the ones that make the evening news, but also the ones that end up in my journal Thumbing through the pages of my private reflections, I come across entries written in the middle of sleepless nights, when anxiety took over and robbed me of rest. When my personal world is falling apart and something or someone precious is at stake, it is frightening when God doesn't show up to hold things together, especially when I'm begging him to come. No voice calls out from heaven to calm the troubled waters. There's no miraculous healing or change of heart. No unseen army of angels shields me from disaster Instead of getting better, things are only getting worse. My mother used to tell me, "Things always look worse at night." For the most part, I believe her But some of the troubles that keep me from sleeping look just as bad in the morning.

Christians are great pretenders We tell ourselves it's not supposed to be this way for Christians, and so we resort to a cover-up For the sake of the gospel, we don't want to let on (especially in front of a watching world) that things aren't working out so well. We try to smooth things over for God, send in our best damage-control team to deal with these embarrassing questions, and polish up God's reputation. We feel it's our Christian duty to look our best. We can't afford to show our flaws Let's give the world (and each other) the airbrushed version of ourselves as proof that the Christian life really works.

God won't and doesn't participate in this kind of masquerade. If the Bible tells us anything, it is that this world is fraught with perils and hardships Eugene Peterson is candid enough to tell us the truth: "No literature is more realistic and honest in facing the harsh facts of life than the Bible. At no time is there the faintest suggestion that the life of faith exempts us from difficulties On every page of the Bible there is recognition that faith.... encounters troubles." We are broken ourselves and can't escape the brokenness and loss of our fallen world.

An honest reading of the Bible reveals a God who does not shy away from awkward questions. In fact, he almost seems to welcome them. The ruined lives of Job and Naomi pose disturbing questions about God without censorship ? a surprising indication that the disconcerting questions journalists are asking about God are not off-limits for us either. An honest reading also reveals a God who doesn't explain himself. He didn't tell Job about his earlier conversation with Satan and he didn't give Naomi three good reasons why her world fell apart. Both sufferers went to their graves with their whys unanswered and the ache of their losses still intact. But somehow, because they met God in their pain, both also gained a deeper kind of trust in him that weathers adversity and refuses to let go of God. Their stories coax us to get down to the business of wrestling with God instead of chasing rainbows and to employ the same kind of brutal honesty that they did, if we dare.

A Female Job

So what was Naomi thinking as she sifted through the ruins of her life and contemplated the God she had believed in since she was a child? Did she mutter a "So much for your God" to herself? What did her two Moabite daughters-in-law think after witnessing the tsunamis that swept away Naomi's world without a whisper of interference from her God? Not only were they eyewitnesses of their mother-in-law's losses, they were caught in the tidal wave of her sorrows and were drowning in grief themselves.

The collapse of Naomi's world did not happen in a day but was spread out over years of heartache and tragedy. There were no heroic rescue workers rushing in to carry her to safety, no grim-faced news anchors choking back the tears as they reported a relentless sequence of disasters that sent her into shock, no half-mast flags or weeping nation to grieve her losses. Naomi's grief was a long time coming, the buildup of years of major disappointments, setbacks, and losses retold by the biblical narrator as cold facts in five short verses, without so much as a sigh or a tear.

I never connected emotionally with Naomi's losses until I heard her compared to the legendary sufferer Job. That got my attention Until then, her sufferings seemed to serve as props to set up the real drama ? the love story between Ruth and Boaz. In my eagerness to get to the part where Boaz enters the narrative, I stepped over a shattered Naomi and, in the process, missed the real power of the story ? a story of a woman's struggle with God.

Glossing over Naomi's agonies comes at a high price, for by minimizing Naomi's pain, we inadvertently minimize our own. We owe it to Naomi and to ourselves to stop and contemplate the collapsing towers in Naomi's life ? to sit with her for a while at ground zero ? for without a better grasp of her sufferings, we will miss the impact of her doubts about God and the power of the Gospel of Ruth.

Entering Naomi's World

Naomi's sufferings didn't begin in Moab but started back in Bethlehem with a famine ? a frightening humanitarian crisis that is difficult for prosperous, well-fed America to fathom. When the average American says, "I'm starving," it is a prelude to a midnight raid on a well-stocked refrigerator or a sudden trip to the nearest fast food restaurant. Sometimes we starve ourselves in a determined quest for fashionable thinness It says a lot about us that we are able to pass over the word "famine" in the biblical text without at least pausing to shudder at the horrors this word implies. Prosperity puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to comprehending the devastating conditions that drove Naomi and her family from famine-ravaged Bethlehem ? which means "house of bread" ? to Moab (today's Jordan), where there was food.

A documentary report of a bone-weary Somali woman brought me closer to the true face of famine. Barefoot and hungry, she trudged for ten days over hot dusty roads to reach the UNICEF mother-and-child clinic in Waajid town. Back home, two of her six children lay in small shallow graves, victims of the famine still threatening the rest of her family. Moaning listlessly at her breast, her emaciated one-year-old was too weak to nurse and in desperate need of medical attention. When the ground hardens and cracks under blistering skies, parents will do anything ? even move to Moab ? to save their children's lives

Naomi's famine came during a notoriously dark period in Israel's history ? the days when the judges governed The book. of Judges is an appalling letdown after the glory days of Moses and Joshua, where we read to our dismay that the following generation "knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel" (Judges 2:10) God raised up judges to rescue them from the trouble they brought on themselves and to lead them back to Yahweh Biblical writers tell us the people habitually did "what was right in their own eyes" (17:6; 21:25, NRSV), which is just another way of saying they turned their backs on God. From there, it was a short step for the Israelites to start worshiping the idols of their neighbors and to embrace their pagan ways. A terrible downward spiral ensued. Catastrophic judgments followed, taking the form of military invasions, government collapse, foreign oppressors, and famines.

Just as the rains fall on the good and the evil, so God's judgments on an adulterous Israel fell on the faithful as well. Indications seem to place Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, in this latter group, which makes their suffering all the more pitiable Famine drove Elimelech's family from their home. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow. I can only imagine Naomi's thoughts as she plodded along the dusty road to Moab with her husband, their two boys, and other famine refugees. "Promised Land? House of Bread? Chosen people? If God loves us so much, why doesn't he help us?" But famine was only the beginning of Naomi's troubles.

An Outsider in Moab

If you've ever lived in a foreign country and don't possess the chameleon's natural ability to blend into your surroundings, you will have some sympathy for what Naomi endured after the move to Moab. Immigrants aren't always welcome Even in America's melting pot ? where all but Native Americans descended from immigrants ? we no longer greet new arrivals with open arms, but with raised eyebrows or something worse. Foreigners here and throughout the world face the inevitable difficulties of language barriers, cultural gaffs, bouts with homesickness and depression, and the sense that you're never really "one of them." After migrating from Judah, Naomi lived as an outsider among the Moabites. A long history of political tensions between Moab and Israel certainly didn't ease matters any.

Although the relocation of Elimelech's family to ride out the famine in Moab was originally intended as a "sojourn," it gradually settled into a more permanent arrangement that lasted over ten years. Without the modern blessings of e-mail to keep in touch with family or of El Al Airlines to facilitate occasional visits from relatives or a quick trip home, Naomi's longings for home went unrelieved Homesickness was minor, however, compared to what happened next.

A Mounting Death Toll

The death of Naomi's husband was a milestone she never meant to cross. The loss of a spouse is hard enough to bear But when the death occurs on foreign soil, the tragedy takes on new dimensions. I remember the shock my family felt when my Uncle George ? halfway around the world on a trip of a lifetime with his wife and three children ? telegraphed us that he had just buried his beloved wife in Pakistan. None of us ever envisioned their great adventure turning into a nightmare or his coming home to the States as a widower.

Elimelech's death hurled Naomi into grief that ebbed and flowed for the rest of her life. But for Naomi, as for other widows with children, there was little time to think of herself or to nurse her own grief because of the pressing needs of her two sons. The death of Elimelech catapulted her into the ranks of single parents ? a daunting task in any era or culture. At least Naomi still had her sons

Naomi's boys were the family future and their mother's glory. In a culture that measured a woman's value by the number of sons she produced, Naomi was a woman worthy of honor for giving birth to Mahlon and Kilion. Her accomplishments in childbirth meant the Elimelech family line was a sturdy double strand. Even the woes of widowhood were blunted somewhat for Naomi by the fact that she had double insurance coverage for the future ? two sons to carry on her husband's name and to care for her in her old age.

We aren't told the ages of Mahlon and Kilion when their father died. We only know they were young and as yet unmarried. This posed a serious problem in Moab, where finding suitable brides for young, marriageable Israelite males was next to impossible. I thought of Naomi when I heard a mother confiding to friends her disapproval of her son's fiancie, a Christian girl who didn't quite measure up to this mother's hopes for a daughter-in-law.

The problem for Naomi, however, wasn't that the girls her sons brought home were less than perfect. Ruth and Orpah weren't even in the running. As Moabites ? pagan worshipers of Chemosh, a god that demanded child sacrifice ? these women represented a believing Israelite mother's worst fears. The Moab nation descended from an incestuous encounter between Lot and his oldest daughter ? distant relatives from the shady side of Abraham's family tree. Mosaic Law banned Moabites from the assembly of Yahweh's people to the tenth generation. Sordid chapters in Israel's past that resulted from romantic alliances with Moabite women gave Naomi further cause for alarm.

From the perspective of the local culture, there were problems too In the ancient culture, fathers typically negotiated arranged marriages, usually with an eye toward forging advantageous relationships with other families. The narrator omits the details, but we already know that in addition to the drawbacks of their immigrant Israelite status and the absence of a father, Naomi and her sons were without land, wealth, or other assets that might attract a Moabite family's interest. Fathers in Moab's high society would not be inclined to marry off their daughters to the likes of Mahlon and Kilion It is difficult to argue that the brides Naomi's sons took for themselves were the cream of the crop of young Moabite women.

Things went from bad to worse A decade passed, and neither Orpah nor Ruth conceived Calculating from a woman's normal monthly cycle, Naomi and her daughters-in-law suffered as many as 240 separate and increasingly devastating disappointments in a culture where it was a woman's business to produce children. In addition to the heartache this double barrenness brought to the women personally, their inability to conceive was a catastrophe for the family, for the survival of Elimelech's line depended on the birth of at least one male to carry on the family name, and in the ancient world survival was everything.

During those agonizing years, how many sleepless nights did Naomi suffer ? nights of tears and pleadings, begging God to step in and stop the madness? Where was he? Why didn't he do something? The future of her family hung in the balance, and God didn't seem to be listening. Yet, despite the beleaguered Naomi's prayers, trouble marched forward like an unopposed army trampling underfoot what was left of her life, every last cherished hope and dream. Naomi shared the psalmist's exasperation "Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" (Psalm 10:1).

Ten lean years of double infertility finally ended, not with a positive pregnancy test, but with the unthinkable ? the premature deaths of both of Naomi's sons. This was the worst possible scenario for a widow The light had gone out in the Elimelech household ? extinguished on Naomi's watch. Annihilation was a fate the ancients feared most. The deaths of Mahlon and Kilion bereaved Naomi of her beloved children, wiped out her life's work as a woman, and brought the curtain down with a merciless thud on the future. When they buried Naomi's sons, they were essentially burying Naomi too.

Overnight, her already diminished social status hit rock bottom, and Naomi was suddenly at risk. Without a male connection, she had no place in society and no source of income. Without a male protector, she was fair game for the unscrupulous who regularly preyed on helpless widows. Alone in a male-dominated world, Naomi was cast upon the mercy of a society that had little interest in her. But Naomi's social standing wasn't the only thing that was going down

3. Describe a situation in your life where you shared Naomi's view of God.

4. How do our circumstances influence our beliefs about God?

5. Why are our questions about God so important?

6. Why did Ruth reject Naomi's counsel?

7. How do our beliefs about God influence how we see our struggles?

8. What does Ruth teach us about God?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Gospel of Ruthby Carolyn Custis James Copyright © 2008 by Carolyn Custis James. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0310330858
• ISBN 13: 9780310330851
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224