finding god in the margins -- a book review

Carolyn Custis James' Finding God in the Margins provides a fresh look at the Book of Ruth.  She takes the three main characters of the story -- Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz -- and weaves together a reading of the text that helps us follow the characters in their discovery of hesed, that beautiful notion of sacrificial covenant love that is at the heart of the Hebrew Bible.  This is a love that surpasses circumstances, grief, power structures and culturally-appropriated roles.  It's a love that is other-focused, selfless, and the love we are all called to demonstrate as followers of the covenant God of Israel.

James helps us read with fresh eyes one of the smallest books of the Old Testament, in a way that makes it far more than a simple romantic story about a woman and her new-found husband.  Instead, this story is a richly textured one that parallels the biblical story of Job, harkening all the way back to the Garden of Eden and looking forward to an earth filled with those who live into the image of God in which we are created.  A team -- where the man and woman function together as strong equals to bring God's Kingdom on the earth.

That means readers will find Finding God in the Margins challenging the way we commonly think of women and the powerful men who make their lives "better".  Because the stories of Naomi and Ruth aren't romantic at all.  Following the death of their husbands, these women experience some of the worst that human society has to throw at powerless women -- hunger, poverty, marginalization, oppression, the threat of abuse, and the questioning of God's love for the broken.  There is a deep lament in this story -- a lament at the brokenness of that social world.  But even in the heartache, God breathes new life in the story of those women.  

Because in that story we hear of Boaz, too.  We find in Boaz (a man of power, prestige, and wealth) a counterculture character, a man ahead of his time, in his compassionate treatment of Ruth and Naomi.  He not only helps them escape a desperate situation, he follows Ruth's lead and fulfills her plan to rescue Naomi and restore the family name.  A poor, widowed Moabitess teaches this man of hayil (valor/strength/virtue) and leads him into a deeper understanding of the spirit behind the levirate and Mosaic laws and ultimately to the heart of God.  Ruth herself becomes known throughout Bethlehem as a woman of hayil.

Finding God in the Margins is an amazing reading that, at just over 100 pages, would be ideal for church groups and Sunday School classes.  It's filled the kinds of questions we should be asking of one another as we approach the biblical text even while we live in the real world.
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I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.