Edges and Coverings

The book of Ruth is truly amazing. There’s no part of this story that doesn’t impress me. Most of my life I thought of it in the standard Sunday-school way we know much of the Old Testament: a person went somewhere and did something, which shows God takes care of us. This is not wrong. However, when it came my turn to be the volunteer Bible class teacher for the week, we’d been going through Ruth, and chapter four was on the docket. In my studies, I’ve found this little book to be deeper by far than I once thought.

Background

First, “levirate marriage” from Deuteronomy 25.5–10:

If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.” Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, ‘I do not wish to take her,’ then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, “So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, “The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.”

This doesn’t apply directly, but it’s good to keep in mind. Also, as a brief summary of Ruth to this point, Naomi and her husband Elimelech moved to Moab during a famine and married their two sons Mahlon and Chilion to two Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah, but then Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion all die. Naomi can’t take care of her daughters-in-law, and as both the brothers and their father are dead, there’s no levirate marriage to be had, so she sends them back to their families. Ruth won’t go: apparently, Naomi has made a good enough impression that Ruth pledges to follow her in that most famous passage, Ruth 1.16–17:

Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.

They both go back to Naomi and Elimelech’s hometown of Bethlehem in the territory of Judah, and (chapter 2) as they’re gleaning[1] the fields, this man Boaz is nice to her. He tells Ruth that everything will be okay, and if she wants to gather grain, that his servants will take care of her and protect her. In chapter 3, Naomi tells Ruth to approach Boaz about this protection. He offers to protect her, but he says that he can’t do anything official because, as per verse 12, “there is a redeemer nearer than” him. So even though Boaz has been set up by 2.1 and 2.20 as a close relative of Naomi’s husband Elimelech, 3.12 clearly shows that even though Boaz is a prominent man in Bethlehem, a man who has a field big enough to employ multiple young men and young women as reapers and gatherers, he is not the closest relative, and Boaz is either so well-connected or had been thinking about this beforehand so much that knows who that man is.[2] That’s what brings us to chapter 4.

Text

In 4.1–8, Boaz meets with the kinsman[3]. He does it in the open, at the city gate, in front of the elders of the city. This shows just one aspect of Boaz’s virtue: there is a law, and he does things by the book, in the open, with witnesses. Now, Deuteronomy 25 doesn’t apply directly in this case, because it’s only about brothers, not cousins, but because there are strong parallels, we can infer that even if Deuteronomy 25 isn’t an applicable law, Boaz is acting in his present murky case using it as a precedent. Again, Boaz doesn’t just go and do whatever he wants—he wants to rest his actions on something solid. Notice what happens:

Now Boaz had gone up to the gate and sat down there. And behold, the redeemer, of whom Boaz had spoken, came by. So Boaz said, “Turn aside, friend; sit down here.” And he turned aside and sat down. And he took ten men of the elders of the city and said, “Sit down here.” So they sat down. Then he said to the redeemer, “Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our relative Elimelech. So I thought I would tell you of it and say, ‘Buy it in the presence of those sitting here and in the presence of the elders of my people.’ If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if you will not, tell me, that I may know, for there is no one besides you to redeem it, and I come after you.” And he said, “I will redeem it.” Then Boaz said, “The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance.” Then the redeemer said, “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.” Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, the one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other, and this was the manner of attesting in Israel. So when the redeemer said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself,” he drew off his sandal.

Note how Boaz crafts his words carefully to see the kinsman’s interests: “do you want to buy a parcel of land?”” “Sure,” he says. But there’s a catch: it comes with a wife. “Maybe not,” the kinsman says, “lest I impair my own inheritance.” What does that mean? I’ll tell you, I had to re-read this section several times and think on it a bit. He was willing to buy land, but it’s a risky investment if it comes with a wife? Here’s my guess: he would have marry Ruth, take care of her as a wife, father a child with her, and, if Boaz is using Deut. 25 as a precedent in front of witnesses, if that child would be legally considered the heir of Mahlon and then Elimelech, so the property that the kinsman buys from Naomi for would then go to that child rather than to him. Here’s the deal: get married to a woman, take care of her mother-in-law and her land, and let it pass to her child, not any of your other children or your own family. Use your own resources to tend it for her as a custodian, not an owner. And because it was done (per Deut. 25) in front of the city elders, he has to take the deal all-or-nothing, with no cover for weaseling out of it later. So we get verses 6–8: “Too rich for my blood.“ But also note that this is done without any malice or anger! Ruth isn’t spitting in anybody’s face (per Deut. 25), and it looks like the sandal business is less a sign of theft or inappropriate action than just signing on the dotted line.

Done and done. Now what? Verses 9–12:

Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, “You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and to Mahlon. Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day.” Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.”

Boaz marries Ruth in the presence of witnesses—not just the ten elders, but “all the people,” and they make some specific references in their blessings:

1. “May she be like Rachel and Leah,” that is, may she have a whole mess of kids to establish a major dynasty, in a way that connects her to the matriarchs of the entire land of Israel.
2. “May you act worthily”: of course, sure.
3. “May your house be like Perez’s”: May your son have a big family himself, yes, but as we welcome you in, let’s connect you with Tamar, the wife of Boaz and Elimelech’s ancestor Judah in a not-exactly-by-the-books levirate marriage

That last one is kind of an embarrassing story for their patriarch Judah, but here’s what’s happening. First, yes, it’s from Genesis 38, the most famous levirate marriage in the Bible: Judah marries Tamar to one son, who dies, then to another son, who God kills for avoiding fathering a child, and then with two dead sons and only one left, Judah tells Tamar “wait until he grows up a bit.” Tamar waits on her thumbs for a few years, and after it’s clear that Son 3 is really truly grown up, she pretends to be a prostitute, gets Judah to sleep with her in exchange for his signet ring, then later when he gets mad that this woman “intended” for his son seems to be pregnant on her own, Judah accuses her, only to be presented with the ring. Judah says, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah” (Gen. 38.26) praising her and disclosing his own dishonor—after all, Tamar earnestly strived for a place within Judah’s family when he wanted to send her back to her father. This is kind of an awkward story—and I can only imagine it would be more awkward in a time when, as per verse 24, she would have been burned to death for adultery. But this is the story that the people of Bethlehem dredge up to emphasize the worthiness of Ruth. Yes, she’s a foreigner in an very exclusive ethno-religious part of the world. But the people welcome her in and knit her into their community. Ruth isn’t a Moabite woman who married an Israelite when he was traveling abroad. She’s in the family of Naomi, of Boaz, of Bethlehem Ephathrah, of Tamar and Judah and Rachel and Leah. Ruth will be a Fine Upstanding Member of the Community, not just some dead man’s Gentile wife. Ruth wants to be with them, and they want Ruth right back.

Message

Throughout the whole book, I see edges and coverings everywhere. Ruth begins her story on the edge of Israel, on the edge of a family, but she hangs on to Naomi and to God, who cover her in protection and help. Ruth returns with Naomi, who has no husband and is herself on the edge of society, as a single older woman with no husband or sons to protect her. Only Boaz, a relative of Elimelech, is there: but Boaz is a distant enough relative for the nature of their connection to be unclear: not Elimelech’s brother, for instance, but more distant—on the edge of Elimelech’s family. Ruth gathers from the edge of the field, from the leftovers provided by the kindness of Boaz and the laws of God.[4] Ruth gathers at the edge of a group of other young men and women, but Boaz’s commands and Naomi’s advice cover her in protection. Ruth comes in to the edge of Boaz’s bed, an act that is on the edge of propriety, but under the cover of night she finds the protection of Boaz as he covers her in his robe. When he sends her home, he even covers her in barley! Even then, another kinsman is closer, but he himself doesn’t wish to risk himself by extending protection to her, highlighting Boaz. In the end, Ruth is brought back into society by Boaz, by the elders and all the people, covered in their love and protection. She and Naomi are given a son, further cementing them within the society.

In sum, then, Ruth’s story is about how the people at the very edges of God’s earthly kingdom are welcomed, taken care of, redeemed, blessed, and secured. What a message for us all today!

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1. That is, picking up leftover grain in other people’s fields because they have no other way to get food for themselves. They aren’t in the best of situations.  ↩
2. Though the author doesn’t tell us that name  ↩
3. Ruth uses the term “redeemer” in accordance with the language of Deuteronomy, but I’ll use “kinsman” to emphasize his familial order of preference  ↩
4. Leviticus 19.9–10: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.”  ↩

The Gods of Our Amorites

Some hold that the Reformation held within it the germ of modern atheism, as the emphasis on personal choice for God also must allow for the personal choice against God. On a long view, however, that must have been the point from the beginning. God desires that nobody would fall, but desire implies a lack of domination, an acceptance of the possibility or even probability of rejection. In all, we know that the straight path is narrow and the wayward path is wide.

This is what Joshua told the people of Israel. We concentrate on the "choose this day who you will serve," but there's more there. Joshua emphasized choice in serving God, but in particular he was speaking to those who did not want to serve God, those who in his words found serving God "evil" in [their] eyes." Joshua emphasized his own choice of God, but confronted the rebellious, disgruntled Israelites with a dilemma: either serve their fathers' God, or serve the Amorites' God. There are only two paths, after all, and either we must choose to submit to the God who loves us, or submit to the gods of those who hate us and want us dead.

For our Amorites, whether philosophically atheist or simply uncaring, want not to glorify us but to glorify themselves. They don't want to save us eternally, but to prolong the suffering of this world under the guise of "preserving life." Our Amorites praise the man as opposed to the God who has brought us this far. Our Amorites praise the seemingly immortal god Mammon, who shall be destroyed with his gold in the fires that end the world, as our God and his faithful look on, sad for the great loss but safe eternally. Our Amorites worship science but not the Creator of nature, asking questions of the universe that provoke more questions, not seeking solace in the God who satisfies fully in the waters that satiate all thirst.

Our God made this world for us, and brought us into it, but we are here because of him and the service he asks of us. While in this world, it tries to distract, distort, taint, and corrupt, and destroy us. The gods of the Amorites demand death and blood unending, while our God desires clean hearts and loving service. The King of all that is came to us as a pauper, serving us to his own death, and begs us to let him in to our hearts, knowing that he has made the rock he cannot lift: he has given us the keys to our own hearts.

A beast, a monster, a demon might compel us to be his slaves. Our God asks us quietly, in hopeful patience, and the only time limit is our own.

The Minority

We know, because Jesus says so, that the only path to Heaven is a narrow one. This can only mean that the minority of humans will be in Heaven, and that the minority of humans at any given time will be faithful—do we expect that this minority is 49%, or much, much less?

In our society, in our world, majority rules. The government is run on elections more than inheritance or appointment, and the popular mob dominates culture, and so we faithful must always expect that the government will be outside us. Some governments value protecting minorities, but that's never something we or any other minority can depend on or put our trust in. We are aliens in a foreign land, our king ever-present but seemingly distant.

We are the minority in a sinful world; by very nature of a narrow path this is so. Luke 6 holds us to bless those who hold themselves as our enemies, not to gain power over them, to force them to obey in body but not in spirit, but rather to allow them to boss us around and dominate us, and to serve them lovingly. Our subservience is our mission technique; our oppressors are our mission field.

If we seek to be the majority instead of seeking to minoritize its members, we seek the trappings of this world and their impermanence. If we seek thrones rather than to serve at God's throne, we seek revolution and strife, not the peace of service—service as loved sons and daughters. We are salt and light, and salt and light are very small things, things that project their flavor, their radiance, far outward. That is our mission, our goal, our path in this lost world.

Section 31, Osama Bin Laden, and Christ

I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with my wife. It’s pretty awesome, I’ll tell you. It’s all that I like about Star Trek—Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, character studies, diplomacy—infused with dire seriousness. Characters fall in love, get married, and die. People change. Religion matters. And at its center is a war that actually threatens the Federation, the eternal goody-two-shoes of the galaxy. And here, in the last season, is Section 31, an off-the-books Federation Intelligence agency, acting with the tacit non-disapproval of Federation authority, assassinating leaders and leaving potential friends to suffer to help conceal Section 31’s double-agents. Introduced in a sixth-season episode, Section 31 comes in and darkens the show considerably.

Many Star Trek fans since the sixties hate Section 31, because the original idea of the Federation was an organization of peace and tranquility. Gene Roddenberry created the show at the height of the Cold War to show humans from different ethnic and regional backgrounds working together, black and white, American and Russian. The idea that the Federation leaders were more or less okay with covert assassinations of foreign political leaders—of erstwhile allies, no less—struck many as being to its very core anti-Federation. And it is. I love DS9, and part of what I love is not the concept that the ends justify the means, but that we should think about whether the ends justify the means. We should meditate. We should argue. We should lose sleep at night. We should pray. We should worry. Regardless of whatever decision is reached, we should know that it’s a hard decision and a decision we didn’t want to make in the first place. We know that even if we have to make the decision again in the future—again, whichever way we decide—it will never free us from the burden of torturing ourselves about it.

I write this as Osama Bin Laden is dead. Our President, the leader of the free world, and his military, have caused it to happen. Bin Laden, who chose to murder thousands of Americans and would have murdered even more given the chance, is dead. His chapter in history is over, and now we can officially start arguing over the minutiae. The very first issue under discussion is proof. A week after Obama finally caved and gave the nation his long-form birth certificate (ignoring, of course, that even if he were born in Moscow he would be an American by virtue of his mother’s citizenship), many are calling on him to release evidence showing that Bin Laden really really really was the one shot. I get it—some people don’t like Obama and therefore don’t trust him (or the other way around—your choice). But to demand the release of photographs that show a human being’s head exploded is something else entirely.

Obama has thought it over and decided to not release the photos. Of course they’ll pop up in a FOIA request years from now, but I’m glad they’re not being released now. Partially, I agree with the President on his first point: the photos may be “an incitement to additional violence…a propaganda tool.” But I wholeheartedly agree with him on his second point: “That’s not who we are. You know, we don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.”

Sarah Palin disagrees. That’s no surprise. If Obama said he loved vanilla ice cream, Palin would campaign on a pro-chocolate ticket. She wants us to “Show [the] photo as [a] warning to others seeking America’s destruction.” Palin argues that although it may incite violence or serve as an anti-American propaganda tool, it’s most effective as a head on a pike, a horrible, bloody “Look what we did. Don’t mess with us.” I think it would work. I think that Guantanamo Bay may lead some to dislike America, but it has probably also lead many more to fear us. In the pale moonlight, we may be safer because of doing scary things—or even being suspected of doing scary things. If we show the pictures to the world, many will rally against us. But many more will certainly see that we are scary and will choose not to mess with us.

But that is exactly what I don’t want America to be. If we aren’t that yet, I don’t want us to become that. If we are that already, I want us to back off from it. I don’t want us to be feared around the world. I don’t want our enemies cowed into submission. Honestly, and I know this is naïve, I want people to love us. We have problems, yes, but our founding document, before we got serious and hammered out a code of laws, was a simple Declaration:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

This does not apply exclusively to Americans. This applies to human beings. If we ever discover aliens with bumpy foreheads or pointy ears, it’ll apply to them, too. The Constitution and Bill of Rights merely say, “Although all that stuff in the Declaration is true, we can only legally guarantee it for American citizens.” That certainly doesn’t mean that we should give up entirely, or that we should ever allow this, our guiding light, to dim. We are a city set on a hill, and like Jesus meant it, we should do everything in our power to help each other. We Americans should do everything to help everyone else in the world, not out of guilt or fear but out of love. As Jesus came to seek and eternally save the lost we as Americans must hope to preach our gospel of temporal human rights to the world. It’s a very different gospel, yes, but it’s a gospel nonetheless, and if we no longer preach it, we no longer deserve to call the Declaration of Independence our own. I don’t want other nations to fear us. I don’t want other people to fear us. Anybody who says “it is better to be feared than loved” is both accurate and a jerk. It may be safer. It may be healthier. It may be stronger. But that’s not the person I want to be to my friends or my students or my wife or my daughter. It’s not who I want to be to strangers. It’s not who I want to be to the people who already call me an enemy. It’s not who I want to be to people who haven’t made up their minds.

I’ll share something with you. I’ve only shared this with two human beings before now, an ex-girlfriend and my wife. I know how it may sound, but it’s personal, and it’s true. On September 11th, 2001, I prayed to God that he would spare the life of whoever was responsible for the attacks. First, I wanted to give whoever it was a chance to repent, to ask for forgiveness, and if at all costs, to change his life. As a Christian, if the perpetrator of even such an attack would come to Christ, I would accept him. It would not be easy, I admit, but Christ demands that I try. Second, I did not want what happened to Mussolini to happen to him. In Wikipedia’s words, “After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies [Mussolini and his compatriots] were hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of an Esso gas station. The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below.” I prayed that day, raw and shaking, that Mussolini’s fate would not befall whoever orchestrated those attacks. No human deserves that, whether or not his soul has left his body. Again, yes, I am naïve. But I think that’s part of being an American, and I certainly think that’s part of being a Christian. We’re not supposed to be stupid or foolish, but we’re supposed to be guileless, innocent, optimistic. We should not rejoice in the suffering of others. We should pray for our enemies. We should be people of peace, people of love. God gave Osama Bin Laden a soul, and Jesus died for him, and if he was my brother, I would not want his body displayed to the world. I see no reason, no matter how feasible, no matter how practically-minded, no matter how effective, that we should do it. I’m going to wrestle with this, much as for the past five years I’ve wrestles with what I prayed that day. I’m going to wrestle with the fact that God answered my prayer, that Bin Laden’s death, although not peaceful, seems to have been quick. I will continue to worry over every political decision I make, every vote I cast or opinion I voice. I will be—we will be—never free from the burden of torturing ourselves about it.

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Ignorance

So I took this quiz from the Pew Forum on general religious knowledge. Yes, it is Christian-slanted; no questions about Zoroaster or Sikhs here! Of course, so are the United States, the subject of the survey. Disclosure: I got 15/15 correct, because I’m awesome (Sin of pride).

Anyway, a few things cropped up in the post-quiz results pages. Really interesting things. One of the best statistical tricks I’ve found for ferreting out weird things is reversing a statistic. Take, for example, that 93% of self-described Mormons think that Joseph Smith was a Mormon. It doesn’t seem weird until you realize that 7% of Mormons think that he was either Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu, the other four choices. I guess I hope for Catholic, as it’d be closest for a second choice, but still—seven percent of Mormons didn’t know that the founder of their faith was a member of their faith. Seriously.

Other tidbits:

• 90% of Jews closely associate Moses with the Exodus—10% of Jews associate the Exodus with Abraham, Job, or Elijah.
  
  
• 81% of Mormons know that the golden rule isn’t in the 10 commandments, compared with 62% of Jews.
  
  
• 6% of Jews don’t think the Sabbath begins on Friday.
  
  
• 10% of Jews thought that Ramadan was either the Hindu festival of lights or the Jewish day of Atonement. I’m leaning towards that Jewish 10% mostly thinking Ramadan is Hindu, but one can never tell.
  
  
• Less than half (47%) of Hispanic Catholics think that Catholics think that communion is only a symbol, not the literal body and blood of Christ.
  
  
• Who knows who Job is: 7/10 of all Mormons, almost 6/10 of all White Evangelical Protestants, just over half of all Black Protestants, and just under half of all Jews.
  
  
• Most people know who Mother Theresa is: 85.5% of all people who aren’t Black Protestants or “Nothing in Particular.” Only 66% Black Protestants thought she was Catholic and 77% of the “nothing in particular” crowd. The other choices were Jewish, Buddhist, Mormon, and Hindu.
  
  
• That means, by the way, that 12% of White Catholics and 17% of Hispanic Catholics didn’t know Mother Theresa was Catholic.
  
  
• 17% of Hispanic Catholics and Black Protestants think that the Supreme Court allows teachers to lead class prayers. 84% of those two groups also think that teachers are not permitted to read the Bible as literature in schools. Based on my fuzzy math, does that mean that 2.72% of Hispanic Catholics and Black Protestants think that the Supreme Court OK’d prayer BUT NOT Bible as Literature?
  
  
• Non-mormon Christians don’t know much about Pakistan’s religion—an average of 36% don’t think that Pakistan is primarily Muslim.
  
  
• Atheists blow everybody else out of the water when it comes to Buddhist knowledge—62% know that Buddhism focuses on Nirvana, while only 35% of everybody else.
  
  
• Atheists similarly triumph over knowledge of Hinduism, with Jewish knowledge of Hinduism coming close behind (72 and 62%, respectively). Everyone else’s average: 35% Other options: Islam and Taoism (in Taoism’s sole mention. I imagine only 2% across the board would know anything, including connecting it with the Te Ching).
  
  
• Nobody knows anything about Jonathan Edwards. White Evangelical Protestants (15%) and Jews (12%) did best.

So what is the state of religious knowledge in America? Interesting. If you're a Black Protestant or Hispanic Catholic, though, I'd be concerned. Then again, when Atheists know more than everybody but Jews, it's egg in your face, Christian America. If you want to read Pew's report, check it out here.