I posted this as a comment on Rachel Held Evan’s blog. Even though I have long believed in and practiced women’s equality in ministry I am regularly frustrated by the implicit assertions of how power is used between us in conflict. Jesus came not just to hold another revolution, but to undo the way in which we do revolution.
What character did Ruth display? That is the question we must ask. Strength is not neutral, and power has a quality and that quality means everything.
Ruth is the hero of her book because of the strong character she displayed, but that character had a particular quality. If you want to see Ruth in that story watch how the story sets up a series of deliberate contrasts. Ruth vs. Naomi, Boaz vs. Elimelech, Israel vs. Moab. The village is the “Greek” chorus of sorts. The contrasts are not static, are historical and subtle, and the direction of the contrasts foundational.
Elimelech and Naomi abandon Israel in her time of struggle and head for Moab where they can secure life for themselves. Don’t forget that “Moab” is the son of Lot. Moab was conceived after the destruction of Sodom. Lot’s daughters (not weak persons either in the sense that our culture views power and weakness) fear for their future (men were required for future security, women learned how to manipulate and secure men as vehicles for their own future security) and so they get their father drunk on two successive nights and rape him. These are strong women. One of them is the mother of Ruth. The question is what is true strength?
Elimelech and Naomi and sons leave Israel (whose strength is supposed to come from dependence on the good covenant of Yhwh) for Moab and begin to live a Moabic lifestyle.That lifestyle, however, which was supposed to secure their future was one of barrenness (OT theme). All the men die (coincidence?). Men were supposed to be security (Lot’s daughters) and they are not.
Naomi (sweety) becomes Mara (bitter). She is filled with bitterness and with Ruth by her side skedaddles back to fallback Bethlehem (house of bread) and announces “I went away full (of men) but came back empty (no man next to her, just this stupid barren Moabitess who foolishly bound herself to a bitter, decaying failed Israelite.
Ruth now, a daughter of her man manipulating and securing ancestor, begins to act how Naomi should have acted all along. The daughter of Moab begins to act like a true daughter of Israel.
This is a story of election. God can make children of Abraham out of stones, even daughters of Moab.
Ruth, step by step, practices reckless, irresponsible self-donation towards and unworthy mother-in-law foretelling the reckless, irresponsible self-donation Christ will express towards his mother Israel. Boaz, likewise, unlike Elimelech, will also act like a true son of Israel and this man and this woman together (image of God in Genesis) will in their union bring hope to mother Israel.
The climax of the story will take place at the threshing floor where Boaz, like Lot, will have already had a lot to drink. Here Naomi hatches a plot that echoes the man securing strategy of the daughters of Lot. This is the first and only time in the story where Ruth is rebellious towards her mother-in-law and fails to carry our her explicit instructions. Boaz, unlike Lot, acts like a true son of Israel, and risks his own inheritance (something the nearer kinsman was unwilling to do, again now a man re-echoes the theme of trying to secure his own future) and recklessly marries Ruth, the pearl of great price. Boaz by extending himself in rescuing Ruth now echoes what Ruth did in extending himself to rescue undeserving Naomi.
In the end Naomi, like Israel, is both undeserving and extended grace and a future. This is the gospel.
I embrace the outcome (women fully free to use their gifts in the church) while resisting the self-salvation narrative that many are employing in this effort, liberation by means of demand and self-assertion. Ruth is an example of reckless self-denial while Naomi and the daughters of Lot are examples of taking whatever power they had available to them (not much given their position in the prevailing culture) and using men to achieve their goals (future security). People (men and women) are to be loved, not used.
Both men and women must be liberated but the liberation comes not by self-assertion and grabbing power, but by self-denial and self-donation in a more reckless for of love of enemy (Naomi ironically) that shames the powerful and Yhwh blesses.
If the church simply assumes the world’s style of liberation (my wellbeing at your expense, my use of power to secure my future for myself through using people via institutions) then women’s access to ministry is a hollow victory because the real conflict is not over what chairs we get to sit in or what roles we play but how we treat each other (love your enemies) and how we use power, to bless, not to harm, poured out for the powerless, poor and weak and the wellbeing of the community.
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Left a follow up comment both on election in this as well as how Ruth disobeys Naomi and why.
1. Election: When people here the term (including RHE) they usually associate it with some a-historical lottery that invites the few to be proud of a favored status. Read the Bible with the idea of election in mind: God chooses Israel, not because she was the oldest, or the strongest, he chose Israel to be his nation of priests to reveal himself to the world.
Ruth is elect to rescue Israel from herself. She is a judge of sorts, but not the kind with a sword. She will lead Israel and rescue her through cruciform self-sacrifice. John the Baptist would have been confused by her like he was by Jesus. She helped those around her, Boaz, Naomi, recover their inheritance that was slipping away. How could some random Moabite girl do such a thing? It wasn’t Naomi or Elimelech’s influence, Orpah did the reasonable thing. Ruth is called by God, annointed by God, empowered by God to rescue his people. It is amazingly mysterious. That is God’s election. We have no idea why he choose who he chooses to do what with, but he does. Election is always for the sake of the other. This is why Jonah is such an important book in the canon. Abraham was chosen to bless the world, and it cost him plenty, as it did the rest of his family.
2. Naomi’s intent is clear. Naomi no longer has the equipment to trap a guy like Boaz who can sleep with whatever young thing he wishes on the threshing floor. Naomi is going to use Ruth to secure Naomi’s future. Naomi again stands in continuity with the mother of Moab. Ruth, obediently follows the script, until one last detail. I think the best commentary on Ruth is by Kirsten Nielsen. She notes that Naomi basically tells Ruth to use her assets and keep her mouth shut. Use sex as a weapon, not a sacrament. Ruth follows the script until the key moment when she opens her mouth. She is NOT a passive hotty who traps with her groin and only speaks up after the trap has sprung.
The story of Tamar is behind this text too. This is what Tamar did, but in her case too it was to redeem failing Israel (Judah) that was in mortal danger of losing the path. God’s election is VERY historical. Election is FOR history.
Anyway, notice Ruth doesn’t shut up. At the key moment she proposes to Boaz. “you are the kinsman redeemer”. This isn’t a role in the hay with an available young thing that is looking to take advantage, Ruth lets him know that this is the real deal. Naomi tells Ruth to be passive, Ruth speaks up.
Ruth redeems sex and restores it to its sacramental nature rather than using it (like the mother of Moab) like a weapon wielded for self-preservation.
3. The book of Ruth is all about the war of the sexes. Ruth shows how you don’t win the war by power even if the only power you have is the power of sexual attraction or reproduction. In the ancient world women who could reproduce wielded considerable power. Note the power struggle in Jacob’s family, in the next story in the canon between Hannah and Peninnah. In both case the wives beloved by their husband (Rachel and Hannah) are barren and therefore invalidated. The adoration of their husbands are insufficient.
Ruth is a model (not the only model) of how God’s elect redeemed and saved even in the midst of an unjust system. Like Paul in Philemon, the system wasn’t necessarily itself immediately overturned, but you can see in the manner of redemption that how the world uses is critiqued. “Power under” prevails and whispers that “power over” is over-rated and insufficient to combat the age of decay.
And another comment I made on the WICO discussion right now.
I think there are a lot of layers to this issue. While I don’t think the complementarian assertions about universal male headship really holds water, it is quite clear that culturally, right now, it is easier to be an egalitarian. It is easy for complementarians to adopt a victim mentality. This kind of blogging initiative can feel like piling on.
Having said that, in reading enough of these blogs what I can feel is a real history of pain from women in the church subculture, especially in the American south where there are a lot of other cultural things going on with respect to women. There is some “acting out” I think, having tasted the new found freedom wanting to rub the faces of their former oppresors into the mud. When this happens it reinforces power-conflict where might makes right.
Power itself must be critiqued and examined. The Bible has a very nuanced approach to power that many people simply miss, especially if you read the whole canon in the light of Jesus’ work of self-sacrifice and resurrection.
So yes, I read some of this as a revolutionary dynamic. Those newly in power are taking reprisals on their old adversaries. What troubles me is that this cycle just perpetuates itself when power itself is not critiqued. Hurt people hurt people. That is how the world works.
If we assert that the problem is that power is used to create or preserve injustice, then the obvious solution is to give power to a different group that will not create nor preserve injustice. OK, seems simple. There are always two problems with this: (1) who can wield power justly and (2) how can such a transition take place.
The first problem usually gets answered by “people I trust more than those who currently have power” but the second problem often doesn’t get addressed. What is implicit in the second problem is that to “take power away” from someone itself is an exercise of power, so the first question also implicitly gets answered by “me”. “I will take power away from the one and give it to the other” which ironically puts ME in charge and asserts that I am the one who can be trusted. This places us back in the Garden in Genesis 3 with Adam and Eve taking power with the fruit.
What is remarkable about Jesus is that in his garden, on the night of his betrayal he resists the answer we all give. When one of his servants takes a sword to strike the servant of his adversary he heals the other servant. This is a break in the expected narrative. We all assumed Jesus would use whatever power was at his disposal to TAKE power away from those in power who he had been criticizing. He did not do it.
There isn’t much question that various groups and persons have been the victims of unjust exercise of power in this world. The stack of applications for status as recognized victim is unending. Most approaches like you’ll find in the blog comments are 1. establish the injustice and identify the victim 2. use power to correct the wrong.
In Ruth Naomi comes out of Moab protesting Yhwh’s management of her life. God through Ruth addresses far deeper stuff without taking power over anyone.
We will often have some power to use. Ends in themselves don’t necessarily justify. Power is hard for us to use well.
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