Joni Eareckson

In 1967 Joni Earekson was a 17 year old girl when she went for a swim with her sister in the Chesapeake Bay. She dove off a raft, hitting a sandbar fracturing her spinal cord. She instantly became a paraplegic. (Listen to her tell her story.) She spent 8 months in the hospital and 2 years in the geriatric unit of an institution. She became angry, bitter and depressed. There she played “Blackbird singing in the dead of night” over and over and over again.

The Liability of a Personal God

Joni explains that in a very evangelical way accepted Christ at age 14 and “put him in my back pocket. I pulled him out on Christmas and Easter. I prayed like putting dimes in a vending machine.”

What she describes is something like the basic religion of American culture, what Christian Smith calls Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism. Now suddenly, after this calamity ugly questions start to bubble up. Isn’t it God’s job to keep this kind of thing from happening? Why should a supposedly all powerful God allow something like this to a good person, even a Christian person?

When bad things violate our American expectation of a nice, happy, normal life, we find that the Christian version of God quickly becomes a liability. Not only did a catastrophe strike, but now you also feel betrayed.

If there is no god and the universe is just one long string of chaos or physics then there may be a human to blame (the person who build the raft, you for diving, your parents for letting you, etc.) or there is no one to blame. It sucks, but really, if you think about it, you’re just a product of chance anyway and if you had 17 good years you should be happy. A lot of people don’t even get that. Suicide then of course becomes a rational option.

If it is just an impersonal universe, well it still sucks but then it’s just odds or karma. If its karma maybe you were a pedophile in a previous life and you’re just getting what you deserved. Better make the best of the wheel chair or your next go round might be even worse!

But if you live in a worldview where God is good and supposedly loves you and then THIS happens? Then it’s personal. Then it’s betrayal!

Call Me Bitter!

Over the next four weeks we’re going to follow the story of a woman who was named Naomi by her parents which means “sweet.” She returns to the village of her youth having left with a husband and two healthy sons and changes her name.

“Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara (which means bitter), because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

Mara doesn’t Speak for Herself

Last week we saw how life in “the promised land” among “God’s chosen people” had fallen into catastrophe. What began as a domestic dispute between a man and his partner (concubine, not wife) led to her gang rape, death and dismemberment leading to a civil war, near genocide and the kidnapping teenage girls. This is the state of the land and people that God had planned to use as a sort of remake of the garden of Eden to show the world his love and mercy. It had descended into hell.

So Naomi grew up in the town of Bethlehem which means “house of bread”. Bethlehem was in a reasonably productive region for wheat, barley, almonds and grapes, not unlike Northern California. It was, of course, dependent upon rain for this and, again like Northern California, semi arid.

In Bethlehem she grew up, married a man named Elimelek which means “God is my king” and had two sons, Mahlon and Kilion. This was the kind of life a girl from Bethlehem could want and reasonably hope for. She was living in God’s promised land, his new Eden. What could go wrong?

Famine

Ruth 1:1 (NIV)

¹ In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.

If you read the book of Deuteronomy you’ll see that God entered into a covenant with his people. If they would keep his covenant he would give them security and prosperity. If they failed his covenant then they would become the victims of their neighbors and suffer want.

Again, if you’re a secularist and you’re having a dry year what do you say and what do you do? You say “ah shucks, sucks to be me. I need to go somewhere else where things are better!”

This is what Naomi and her family did. They were famine refugees of sorts and they went into Moab which had often proven to be a bit more drought resistant. But what lingers again, because of this relationship, is a sense of angry, betrayal and blame. Wasn’t God supposed to take care of this kind of thing? Well maybe they hadn’t done everything in the covenant but how could one woman determine whether the whole nation would be faithful? Surely its not her fault. Why should she suffer?

More Religious Judgment

So Naomi and her family go to Moab as famine refugees try to get by. Things seem to be going pretty well. Her sons take both find girls and get married.

Here again, this religion thing is getting in the way. People back in Israel would have some judgment about this because of their nationalism, or we might even call it racism or tribalism. Religious people in Israel would say that it was wrong to marry girls from Moab. For Naomi having her sons find wives would be really important because she was hoping for grandchildren. What’s with these religious ideas about Moabite women?

Moab the Son and Grandson of Lot

These ideas began long before in stories found in the book of Genesis. God called Abram to leave Ur and head into Canaan, then also the supposed “promised land”. There was trouble in the land back then like there was in Naomi’s time. When Abram went in to Canaan he decided to bring his nephew Lot, partly because he didn’t trust that God would actually fulfill his promise of biological children. When they got into the land they flourished so much that they were competing for grazing space so they had to separate. They went up onto a mountain to pick land and Abram let Lot pick first. He picked the “cities of the plain”, the good land, and settled in the town of Sodom.

Some of you know the story after that. Sodom tried to treat the angels like Gibeah treated the Levite’s concubine. The angels saved Lot and his family but his wife turned back to long for the comfortable life she had enjoyed in Sodom and became a pillar of salt. Lot then fled into the hills with his daughters all probably suffering from PTSD. There they hold up in a cave and Lot probably starts going a bit nuts. His daughters panic because they’re afraid they’re going to die up there in their hermit lifestyle and never have a future. The decide to have sons they will get their father drunk and have sex with him. They do so and one of them names her son Moab.

The book of Genesis for Israel is not just a book of stories. It defines Israel’s relationships with her neighbors. Most of the lands around Israel are cousins of sorts and Moab is one of them. Moab is one of two cousins whose namesake had lot for both his father and grandfather. They were those kind of cousins for Israel.

There was also a bad history between Moab and Israel after Israel came out of Egypt. Moab didn’t receive Israel well but instead a king of Moab tried to have a prophet curse Israel. When that didn’t work he decided to assimilate Israel into his religion and therefore kingdom by having the young and available women of the nations, the “daughters of Moab” lure the “sons of Israel” into bed and eventually marriage and their religion. This didn’t go well for Israel either.

So when we read that Naomi and her family are in Moab and that her sons marry Moabite girls? This sounds a certain way to the original audience of the book and to Israelites at the time.

For Naomi and her family they are just doing what’s practical, but in the longer context of God’s story with Israel this all looks tainted and wrong.

From our eyes we probably again see how this particular god and religion are a practical impediment to making life work in this world. Better off without the whole thing.

Now this seems like an option to us. We live in a modern, western, secular state. For us in our worldview “religion” is an option. If you decide that your religion doesn’t work for you just pick a different one.

Calamity in Moab Too!

So Naomi is in Moab and things are going pretty well, but then they turn sour. We’re not told what happened but Elimelek her husband, and her two sons all die and she is left with her two Moabite daughters in law.

For anyone this would be an enormous catastrophe, but for a woman in the ancient world is goes way beyond that, especially now that she is a famine refugee and she has no family to fall back on.

A Tiny Shaft of Light

One of my favorite passages from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is found late in the trilogy at an especially dark time when it seems Sam and Frodo’s quest is futile and surely ready to fail. They are trying to make their way through terrible enemy territory.

Frodo sighed and was asleep almost before the words were spoken. Sam struggled with his own weariness, and he took Frodo’s hand; and there he sat silent till deep night fell. Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.

J.R.R. Tolkien (2009-04-17). The Lord of the Rings (p. 922). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

In this first chapter of this book of Ruth this moment looks like this.

Ruth 1:6–7 (NIV)

⁶ When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. ⁷ With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

While this may be a prophetic turning point in the book Naomi is far from ready to receive it. In some ways it may complicate it even further. In her imagination this could be just a cruel trick of God’s. Why couldn’t he have shown his favor earlier? Why has she now lost her husband and sons?

When Naomi gets back to Bethlehem in Judah she’ll have her speech to give to the women of the town. When she rolls into town they women will gossip with shadenfreude at how she returns.

Silly Religion Disparaging Good People

On the way back there is a scene here that is of vital importance as we will see later on.

These Moabite girls don’t seem as bad as their reputation would communicate. Isn’t this just confirmation of bigoted the Bible and traditional religion is?!

Ruth 1:8–18 (NIV)

⁸ Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. ⁹ May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud ¹⁰ and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.” ¹¹ But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? ¹² Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—¹³ would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!” ¹⁴ At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. ¹⁵ “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” ¹⁶ But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. ¹⁷ Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” ¹⁸ When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

A Far Bigger, More Complicated Story

Why would the Bible include this story if it’s so tribalistic and patriarchal? Why would the Bible include both the backstory of Moab, the caution to Israel about it and also these women who seem exemplary?

People who don’t know much about the Bible will see it all in black and white terms. The more you actually get into the book the more you begin to see its complexity. The Bible is a long story with arguments and cross conversations about all of these topics. Does Moab have a dark history? Yes. Is the situation more complicated than that? Yes.

Israel is the “chosen nation” but her status and story is far more complicated than karma or “if you do the right thing God will give you a comfy life.” Israel’s calling and election is not for her comfort and security but rather for the rescue of Moab and the rest of the world.

In our moments of pain we grab onto victim status so we can milk the self pity out of them. Self pity is finally a selfish spirit that would burn the rest of creation for our own vindication and self-righteous anger.

Naomi has a lot to feel sad about but her self-pity and bitterness is already blinding her to a much bigger story that she is central to and is completely oblivious to. She is a daughter of Israel, called to be used by God to rescue the world but she can’t see past her pain.

The Paraplegic God

Through the sacrificial love of Joni’s friends and family she too would have a moment where beyond the clouds of her paralysis. At one point one of her friends mentioned to her that Jesus couldn’t move his hands or his feet when he was nailed to the cross.

All of the ammunition of self-pity gets magnified exponentially when you look at the Jesus story.

• He comes to this world to do good for us and we nail him to a cross and for what?
• God his father who sends him forsakes him on the cross!
• He never marries and then is killed at age 33!

If anyone has grounds to be angry at God and to hate him and walk away it’s Jesus.

Misery

While I won’t for a moment try to dismiss the horror of what happened to both Naomi and Joni there is something we need to see about ourselves. While Naomi and Joni actually suffered real tragedies, levels of tragedy some of us will thankfully never taste, victims of catastrophe don’t have a corner on the self-pity market.

There is something deeply wrong with each of us where we set ourselves up for this. If you would life a life of relative happiness and comfort and lived to 100 you’d probably count yourself quite blessed. If, however, the life expectancy were 200 and everyone around you were twice as wealthy as you and twice as beautiful, smart or strong and you only lived to 100 you might very well wallow in self-pity.

If you take a child and give that child everything the child asks for you may likely make that child spoiled, miserable and miserable to be with. What is with us?!

Go out and find someone who as never suffered anything, no disasters, discrimination, hardship etc. What kind of person do you often find? Someone who is shallow, self-centered and often completely unable to feel or care for the miseries of others.

If this is how we are how can God save us from ourselves?

Deliverance

This of you who know the Book of Ruth might be wondering why we’ve hardly mentioned her. Be patient, we will. Ruth, the Moabite, as the book continues to remind us, will save Naomi from something that Naomi doesn’t even know she needs saving from.

If we take Naomi out of her historical contact and place her into a Christian conversation and bring in old CS Lewis as a conversational partner Lewis would probably note that Naomi actually has something far greater to be worried about than her economic welfare or the loss of her family. As a creature who’s soul or embodied story/character will live forever this self-pity and bitterness is in fact a terrible thing. At the moment Naomi is giving her big speech in Bethlehem about “coming back empty” there standing next to her is her savior, this Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth who probably in Naomi’s mind is more liability than asset.

Naomi is in fact in danger of hell more than she can realize and she can’t appreciate what God has given her because she’s blinded by her self-pity.

Ruth will of course be a matriarch of Jesus and Jesus will take after her. This God that we have seen all along as an emotional liability is actually our rescuer for a problem we didn’t know we had. We imagined our problems were all about having a happy and secure life when we didn’t realize that our biggest problems were ourselves and that happy and secure life we thought was so essential was actually something rather hazardous for our much longer story than we thought we knew.

This Jesus becomes the victim of victims and in the pain of abandonment would not surrender to self-pity but in fact continue to pity us while he died for us.

Gratitude

Joni would in time come to a much more complex and deep understanding of the events of that afternoon of swimming in the bay. Never I imagine would she, nor should she, wish for this on herself or another, but somehow by God’s grace it was woven into a story that is more complex and less selfish than the little dreams we usually concoct for ourselves. What actually came for her was a strange sort of gratitude. Not gratitude necessarily for the loss and calamity, but gratitude for the good that God could bring out of it and how it seems the suffering could be used to rescue her, and others, from herself.

This will also be the story of Ruth and by it our story. The Christian life is in fact a life of gratitude. We don’t necessarily thank God for the calamities, but somehow by the calamities, including the calamity of Jesus’ crucifixion God brings life to a world lost in itself.

Over the next three weeks we’ll explore more of the story of Ruth and Naomi and maybe even more of Joni.