Years ago, my family and I were locked in a virtual escape room with several friends in different parts of the country. In an online place of guaranteed doom, we fruitlessly poured over haphazard clues in an attempt to proceed to the next tier on our way to “freedom.” It wasn’t going well. We were stuck in the first of four levels of riddles knowing we could only ask for help three times; after that, we were on our own.
In the “room” were gifted, intelligent, well-educated professionals. Careful scientists and precise mathematicians assumed the virtual escape room would be rather easy: child's play, in light of all the degrees standing behind our names. Certainly the riddles of the escape room could not outsmart our vast array of intelligence. Yet here we were, reviewing clues with a fine-tooth comb and uncovering nothing helpful.
Almost as an obnoxious interruption slicing through the intelligent discussion of the well-educated, my daughter—who must have been 8 at the time—mentioned something about a cat. “That’s cute, dear, but let the grown-ups do the thinking.” Getting no further and assuming we had pulled out all the stops, we humbly asked the game director for our first hint.
“Well, sure, I guess, but the little girl already said it.”
Those words are forever burned into my memory. The key to getting into that second layer of riddles was, indeed, the cat. I immediately apologized to my daughter and from that moment on, the wisdom of a second-grader put all of our degrees to shame. Amid the chaos and confusion shared by the people who should have known better, the unwelcome interruption of a little girl was exactly what we needed to chart our way forward.
That’s what the book of Ruth feels like.
The book of Judges is a case-study in the moral collapse of society. It begins where Joshua left off, at the height of spiritual energy and fervor. But in the story of the 12 supposed “heroes” who served as Israel’s Judges, each successive leader is just a little bit worse than the one before, rapidly and violently descending into moral decay until God’s people have become worse than Sodom and Gomorrah (Don’t believe me? Read Judges 19 and Genesis 19—they are the exact same story).
Society devolves into a chaotic and destructive moral nadir, characterized by violence, murder, and carnage of every sort. They are locked in a nationwide moral “escape-room.”
We are conditioned to lean heavily on the experts to solve the right riddles and develop the right strategies that will give us the proverbial “keys” to unlock freedom. But we trusted the experts before and they only let us down.
Barak was the expert, but he abdicated to Deborah.
Gideon was the expert, but was enticed by the lust for power.
Jephthah was the expert, but descended to human sacrifice.
Samson was the expert, but was ruined by careless pleasures.
The professionals, the "heroes," the experts—they all let us down. And almost as an obnoxious interruption slicing through the intelligent discussion of the well-educated, Ruth interrupts the flow of thought. At the tail end of the moral collapse of society, Ruth briefly suspends the narrative with a bizarre love story. Not between a man and a woman, but between a woman and her mother-in-law, Naomi.
The men in their lives all die, but instead of allowing Naomi to journey back home with no dignity and no hope, Ruth tags along—at the very least, her mother-in-law will not go alone.
Instead of allowing Naomi to suffer in abject poverty, Ruth puts herself to work, earning more than enough food to share for the better part of a year.
Instead of allowing Naomi to grow old with no help until she dies in disgrace, Ruth provides yet again by bearing a son who will continue the mother-in-law’s line and provide for both of them in their old age.
This brief interruption in the long narrative of the Old Testament is the equivalent of a little girl telling a room full of experts, “I think it’s the cat.” And therein lies the key—the way out of the chaos and destruction. Ruth's story sets the stage for what comes next: a great grandson named David who sets God's people free and truly transforms society. Redemption comes not at the hands of the experts, but by way of the faithful and loving acts of relative nobodies.
Society was characterized by hatred and violence. War had divided the nation across party lines. The experts and professionals they should have leaned on to provide a better way and unlock a hopeful future proved unreliable at best. For the Old Testament people of God, the key that began to unravel the societal decay came from one young woman whose small acts of love, mercy, and kindness for—of all people!—her mother in law, were enough to begin the transformation of society.
And the metaphor lands today. We are, in many ways, locked in a national, political, and societal “escape room” where we breath the air of hatred, strife, dissension, violence, and decay. Returning violence for violence hasn’t done the trick—we’ve tried it, and the only result is an escalation in the chaos. And our political heroes? The experts among us? The ones in power we have been leaning on to forge a new and better day? They have all let us down, on all sides. Worse, they have actually betrayed us, stepping on us to gain more altitude on whatever ladder they are climbing.
The way forward is the way of little girls who interrupt the chatter with solid advice. The way forward is the way of Ruth, whose selfless acts of love toward an unexpected person are what God uses to transform society.
I believe there are more Ruths in the world than there are Judges. The Judges certainly yell the loudest, punch the hardest, and their fame has a greater reach. But that isn’t what we need. What we need are more and more small acts of genuine, self-giving, other-elevating love. What we need are more 8-year-old girls and unreasonably faithful daughters-in-law to interrupt the mindless chatter of the experts and let them lead the way forward.
We tend to overestimate the influence of the powerful. We should never underestimate the power of small, deliberate acts of love.
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