Book Write-Up: In the Field of Grace, by Tessa Afshar

Tessa Afshar.  In the Field of Grace.  Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2014.  See here to buy the book.

In the Field of Grace is a novel that is based on the biblical Book of Ruth.  Here are some of my thoughts about the novel.

A.  In the novel, Ruth is not particularly valued by her Moabite family.  She finds more of a home in the family of Naomi, an Israelite.  This feature of the story had positive and negative repercussions, in my opinion.  The positive side was that, because Ruth was marginalized within her own Moabite family, she later reached out to and mentored her grandson David, who himself was the youngest and was marginalized within his family.  The negative side was that it somewhat dampened the power of Ruth leaving behind her family and homeland to go to Israel.  After all, in Tessa Afshar's telling, Ruth was not leaving  behind that much: she was leaving behind a family that did not love her.

B.  Boaz's first wife in the novel, Judith, had a loyal pet dog named Melekh.  There is a positive and a negative to this, and yet Tessa Afshar does deserve credit for attempting to deal with the negative.  The positive is that the presence of the dog makes for moving scenes, especially for animal lovers like myself.  The negative, of course, is that dogs were not highly regarded in ancient Israel.  Search under "dog" or "dogs" on Blue Letter Bible or Bibleworks, and you will see that to be the case.  Job 30:1 indicates that dogs could be used to watch the sheep, and yet, often in the Hebrew Bible, dogs are scavengers, or people are compared to dogs in a derogatory fashion.  Afshar does put research into her books, so she is probably aware of this.  As I look at the scenes about Melekh the dog a second time around (particularly on page 9), I notice that Afshar acknowledges that dogs were not really seen as pets in ancient Israel.  This, in the story, was what made the bond between Judith and Melekh so unusual!

C.  When Naomi and Ruth were still in Moab, Naomi was telling Ruth the story of Deborah the Israelite judge, and Ruth had never heard the story before.  On the one hand, this scene was good because Ruth's sick and neglected grandfather was listening to the story and asking questions about it, and that made for an endearing scene!  On the other hand, the scene looked a bit unrealistic.  Moab is right next to Israel.  Would the Moabites have been completely unaware of the events that took place in Israel during the time of Deborah, events involving threatening powers?  It's possible, I suppose, but I have difficulty imagining that.  That said, Afshar's portrayal of the Moabites' vague knowledge of Israelite Yahwism was a positive feature of the novel.

D.  Ruth and Boaz are described as not being particularly good looking.  This is typical of the books by Afshar that I have read thus far: readers can identify with the protagonists because they are somewhat marginalized, or they deal with low self-esteem, or they are vulnerable.  At the same time, Boaz does find Ruth physically attractive, and Boaz is an eligible bachelor.  Is this inconsistent with the portrayal of them as plain, or as awkward-looking?  A little, perhaps.  At the same time, Boaz was a wealthy man, and that could have made him an eligible bachelor.  I should also note that, while romance is a salient factor in this novel, Afshar also discusses the significance of Levirate marriage, so the marriage between Ruth and Boaz is about much more than romance in this novel.

E.  The novel did address the marginalization that Ruth would have experienced as a Moabite in ancient Israel.  I think that the novel could have dwelt more on that, and that the Israelites' acceptance of Ruth was a bit rushed in the novel.  Stories about people gradually overcoming their prejudices can be powerful.  At the same time, the direction that Afshar went did allow for moving aspects of the story: Ruth making friends among the Israelites and getting to the point where she truly saw them as her people.  Afshar also did well to note the significance of Deuteronomy 23:3 to the story of Ruth.  Deuteronomy 23:3 prohibits a Moabite from entering the congregation of the LORD.  Yet, Ruth was a Moabite, and she not only intermarried into Israel but also was the ancestress of King David.  David and Solomon wrestle with that question in the book's epilogue.

F.  The novel was encouraging in that it talked about God being with people in times of despair.  The novel also had good passages about seeing value in the marginalized, and experiencing God's powerful (yet loving) presence.  The novel does more than fill in details about Ruth and Boaz, for there are characters in the story who are not in the biblical story (i.e., Dinah), plus scenes that are not in the biblical story.  That made the novel interesting.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review. 

Solomon vs. Ruth, or Maybe Esther

Joe Biden reminds me of Solomon, whereas I associate Sarah Palin with Ruth, or maybe Esther. Let me explain.

I realize that comparing Joe Biden to Solomon is problematic, since Biden doesn't always think before he speaks, violating several Solomonic proverbs. But he's reflective, like the Solomon we encounter in Ecclesiastes. I can think of two examples: in last night's debate, he told how he learned not to judge others when he discovered that his political enemy, Jesse Helms, had adopted a boy with cerebral palsy. And, in the Katie Couric interview, he talked about his favorite movie, Chariots of Fire, which inspired him to stand by his convictions, whatever the consequences.

I identified with Biden there, since I'm somewhat of an introspective introvert. I saw a lot of depth as he discussed his own personal growth.

Palin, by contrast, strikes me more as a "just do it" sort of girl. What I'm learning from my weekly quiet time is that Ruth didn't spend a lot of time contemplating her navel. She saw that her family was hungry, so she went out to the fields to glean some barley. She took action. She was also big on relationships, since she stuck with Naomi no matter what. And that's what I get from Palin: she doesn't talk much about personal growth, but about relationships and getting the job done.

She also reminds me somewhat of Esther. Esther was rather passive at first, in that she basically did whatever Mordecai told her. But when she got her own voice, watch out! She wanted to kill everyone who sought to slaughter her people. That's why Martin Luther thought the book was so bloodthirsty!

Sarah Palin, similarly, strikes me as someone who cares about the well-being of the people. At times, she's rather passive and has to be coached on what to say. But when she gets her own voice, watch out! She can wow people. She'll even fire those she thinks she can't work with.

Of course, some may also say that Palin is like Ruth and Esther because she tries to manipulate people to get what she wants--through her folksy charm, her winks, her "gonna" and "gotcha," her beauty. Ruth used a strategy to get Boaz to marry her, and Esther came up with her plan to save the Jewish people. But whether people acknowledge this similarity will depend on if they like Sarah Palin.

Ruth and James McGrath

As I did my weekly quiet time on Ruth 1 yesterday, my mind went back to some posts James McGrath did on Christian inclusivism:

Is Jesus the Only Way? Not according to most Christians...or the Bible!

"In the [synoptic] Gospels, Jesus praises Gentiles for their faith and sends them on their way, with no attempt to ensure that they understand about monotheism, much less about who he is. The Bible simply cannot bear the weight of the exclusivist system fundamentalists place on it. Nor can it, when one seeks to do justice to the various things the Bible says on the subject, be used to support the idea that 'believing in Jesus' alone matters or even matters more than (or apart from) what one does."

Bucket List of the Evangelical Nation

"What makes [Christine] Wicker's book so powerful is that she tells the stories of fundamentalist Evangelicals sympathetically even though she is an ex-Evangelical herself. On the one hand, she notes that the power of Evangelicalism seems to be available without the doctrine: the Twelve-Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous discovered that surrender to a Higher Power works even if the notion of that Higher Power is vague, or is clear but different from the Christian one."

"In a sense, [the movie Bucket List] is 'evangelistic', but for that non-dogmatic perspective that emphasizes not dogma but love, family, relationship, compassion, loyalty, and other things that are not the sole property of Christians, and which fundamentalist dogma is sometimes even a hindrance to."

Throw into the mix the Highway to Heaven episode "A Child of God" (see A Humble God in Ezekiel 22), and you'll see where I'm going. There, a pastor asserts that God doesn't care about people acknowledging him as much as he wants them to do good to others.

So why did Ruth 1 remind me of these quotes? For two reasons:

1. In vv 8-9, we read the following: "But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, 'Go back each of you to your mother's house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The LORD grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband'" (NRSV). In v 15, Orpah goes back to her people and her gods.

Naomi was not expecting Orpah and Ruth to become worshippers of YHWH. She knew that when they went back to Moab, they would worship the Moabite gods. That's the way things were back then! But she still believed that God would bless them because of their good deeds.

This isn't exactly the typical evangelical approach: "Apart from Christ, our good deeds in God's eyes are like filthy rags!" As far as Naomi was concerned, Orpah and Ruth did good to her and their dead husbands, so God would (hopefully) reward them accordingly.

2. Ruth 1 isn't really about the worship of God. Ruth doesn't leave behind her family, her people, and her religion because she cares about God, at least not as far as I can see. Rather, she does so because she loves Naomi. She leaves behind her comfort zone and God's blessing in Moab to help out a poor, defenseless widow--one who appears to be under a divine curse. But God takes note of her kindness and blesses her in the end.

So where should we go with this? I wouldn't go as far as James McGrath and deny the importance of Christian orthodoxy. There are plenty of Scriptures that emphasize the worship and glory of God while presenting Jesus as the only way to salvation. In addition, God may have been displaying his patience to the Gentiles prior to Christ's first coming, since he knew they were in spiritual darkness (Acts 17:30). I guess my point is that we shouldn't always assume God confines himself to a box. He can get outside of that box and interact favorably with whomever he wants: believer and unbeliever.