“Often Ruth is viewed as a simple love story, a shining moment at a dark time in Israelite history. While Ruth teaches us a lot about love, the book is also packed with deep insights about God and his relationship with his people. This can be said about any portion of the Bible. So, whenever we study God’s Word, our main quest is always to discover what he is telling us about himself. If we marginalize God or make someone else the focal point, we will always miss the main message of the book. Always.”

In The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules, Carolyn Custis James studies the theology of the book of Ruth, drawing from the work of numerous Old Testament scholars, and finds more than a fairy tale love story.  She finds instead a version of the ultimate love story of God for His people – even, or perhaps especially, for those who are outcasts, strangers, poor, and downtrodden.  As in all of Scripture, the book of Ruth is about the good news of God’s plan for redemption – we can find the Gospel in the book of Ruth.

I think James did a really good job of making the biblical scholarship on Ruth and the time period accessible, without resorting to a lot of speculation or falling into the trap of viewing the story through 21st century eyes.  I learned a tremendous amount from this book about the culture in Israel at the time, and how traditions had sprung up from the letter of the Law, and sometimes had veered from the spirit of the Law.  James’ discussion of the impact of barrenness and widowhood in that culture added greatly to my understanding of the book.

“When widowhood or anything else alters a woman’s life, the center of her identity doesn’t disintegrate, for she is not defined or redefined by circumstances, relationships, her resume, or public opinion. God defines her.”

As she skillfully writes about what the Scripture says and provides cultural context and word meanings, James also shows how what this book teaches about God has applications for us.  I found her study of Naomi particularly compelling.  People tend to think of Naomi as being sort of sour, or sinfully mired in bitterness and woe, but James describes how Naomi’s faith, like Job’s, is honest enough to tell God when she’s deeply in pain, and also open enough to accept His lovingkindness as shown through Ruth.  I loved how James used Naomi’s example to underscore that all of us, in every culture and situation, draw our identities from God, not from our circumstances.

“The letter of the law says, “Let them glean.” The spirit of the law says, “Feed them.”

Another strength of the book is James’ description of the biblical concept of hesed (sacrificial lovingkindness that characterizes how God deals with us and how we should relate to one another in biblical community) and how God uses Ruth and Boaz to challenge the cultural expectations that seemed to follow the Law but actually missed the point.  James outlines how Ruth’s commitment to God, first expressed on the road with Naomi, makes her committed to God’s ways even when they seem countercultural.  This is where the subtitle about breaking the rules comes in – I think the subtitle is a bit unfortunate since it seems to suggest that this is a book of ends justifying means.  The book does not go that way at all.  Instead, James shows how Ruth’s position as an outsider does not disqualify her from speaking out for God’s justice, and what a real sacrifice (and deeply godly response) it was for Boaz to listen to her and be humble enough to accept that God could work through this woman – a foreigner, a recent convert, a widow, and a barren one at that.

“Do our definitions of submission actually trivialize what it really means?…When dealing with fellow believers, submission aims much higher than simply keeping the peace or resolving stalemates. A bone-of-my-bone oneness is in view, like the oneness Jesus enjoyed with his Father. Not a reluctant, resentful compliance, but a full embrace of a common vision and a mutual delight.”

James notes that the book of Ruth can be uncomfortable both for people who emphasize submissiveness in women and people who dismiss submission.  On the one hand, Ruth is completely unconventional – she breaks cultural taboos, essentially and somewhat dangerously asks Boaz to marry her, and confronts powerful and righteous men and demands action from them.  This is not really the “women should be seen and not heard” brand of submission some groups advocate.  However, we also see Ruth in surprisingly abandoned submission to Naomi, total submission to God, and humble submission to Boaz’s decision once she has spoken her piece.  James points out that both extremes of the submission question fall short of what God has in mind.  The book of Ruth suggests that submission is not about women sitting back and letting men do God’s work, nor is it about women not needing men and doing whatever they want.  Instead, the book offers a more nuanced view, and comes back again to the fact that true submission begins with being submitted to God, out of which flows our ability to submit to one another.

“When women are strong, do men become stronger, or are they weakened?”

Along those lines, James also examines the idea some people advocate that when women are strong, they force men to step back and prevent men from taking leadership.  The book of Ruth would seem to belie that idea.  Rather, Boaz is described initially as a righteous man, a “man of valor” before he ever meets Ruth, but his position is not in any way diminished when he listens to Ruth’s challenge, considers how it fits with God’s commands, and accepts it.  In fact, he is praised in the gates for so doing, and Ruth is called a “woman of valor” for having courageously done God’s work even when it was countercultural.

While the majority of The Gospel of Ruth is strong and well written, containing an abundance of scholarship and willingness to really examine what we learn about God from this book of the Bible, at the end James seems to sort of break down and not quite know what to do with how Ruth winds up with a husband and a baby and a happily ever after ending.  I think this is in part due to the fact that James was wrestling personally with how often our lives do not have happy endings (she writes openly of her own struggle with infertility and the loss while she was writing the book of her husband’s brother and how that rocked their family).  She seems to want to find a way to make Ruth more than a tidy “all a woman’s problems are solved with a man and a baby” story, and she does make some good points about how Naomi’s loss will never really be ameliorated by baby Onan’s birth, but that it’s a redemptive ending showing how God’s grace can bring joy out of ashes.  James just seems to have trouble really wrapping up the book.

That said, I think the book is still very strong, thoughtful, and useful for an in-depth study of the book of Ruth and I would highly recommend it.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money is a personal finance book geared toward people with investments.  At the moment, our only investments are our 401Ks and IRAs and we aren’t skittish about it, so I found myself saying “yeah, yeah, OK” a lot as I read.  However, if you are nervous about the stock market, the book contains a lot of solid advice.

That said, several of the sections were helpful even if you don’t play the stock market.  They cover some of the same topics as All the Money in the World, although I think you’d get more out of All the Money than Behavior Gap, if you aren’t reading for the stock market advice.

At any rate, I liked how the author emphasized that there is no one-size-fits-all financial plan, because a financial plan is really based on your individual life goals.  Richards gives ideas for how to integrate your financial decisions with your life decisions, including diagnostic questions and practical suggestions.

Another helpful section offers advice on how to talk about money.  Richards points out that often when we think we’re having the same old tense discussions about money, we’re really talking about something else.  If you can take a step back and consider what you’re really afraid of or hurt by or frustrated about, you can talk through that issue and then get to the money problem more effectively.  Richards also describes ways couples frequently miscommunicate about money and ways that parents can inadvertently freak their kids out about money.

Overall, The Behavior Gap is a quick and easy read, with several helpful points that apply to everyone even if you’re not a skittish investor.

Just out of curiosity, do you have trouble talking about money?  How do you talk to your kids or teach them about it?

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

“After all, money is just a tool, like fire.  Some people misuse fire, and some people assign too much meaning to money – whether they love it or hate it.  But like most tools, it’s really just a more efficient and useful means toward whatever ends we desire.  Even achieving happiness.”

In her latest book, All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending, Laura Vanderkam (who also wrote 168 Hours) helps readers to be deliberate and thoughtful about the question of money, challenging widely accepted ideas about it, and offering suggestions for how to better get and use it.

A lot of personal finance books offer advice on how to set up a budget, cut your latte factor, or get out of debt, but I’d argue that reading All the Money in the World would be a better investment of your time because of how it will challenge you to really think through your assumptions and beliefs about how you get, spend, and give money.  Vanderkam points out that money is a tool to help you live your life, so thinking about money and finances is really about thinking through what kind of life you want to lead, what you want to do, and what you want to achieve.

Vanderkam exposes quite a few common assumptions about money, and provides  research and suggestions for why you might want to reconsider things like:

• Spending a fortune on an engagement ring and big wedding versus spending that amount over the course of your life to invest in your marriage (since happiness is more about frequency than intensity),
• How much you really need a lawn (since so few people love to take care of one and they are so expensive to maintain),
• Whether or not you can really expect to retire (and why you might want to just get a job you love instead),
• How many kids you can afford (and what “afford” means when it comes to a family),
• Aspiring to a big house (when that means more housework and yard work, tasks which most people don’t enjoy).

Most interesting to me was the section where Vanderkam challenges conventional wisdom about cutting back expenses to save money.  She points out that most households spend 10% of their budgets on food and clothing, but 40-50% of the budget on housing and cars.  Sure, you can cut coupons and hit sales, but you might be better off keeping your housing costs lower or rethinking your vehicle situation.  She admits that the grocery and clothing cuts are easier to make immediately, but the way she discusses home and travel expenses is nuanced enough to be helpful even to families who already feel like they have those categories at bare bones level.

As I mentioned earlier this week, we are thinking deeply about what it means to pursue justice as a family, so I got a lot out of the section in the book about giving.  Vanderkam discusses why being generous and helping others is a good way to spend money and points out several examples and suggestions for how you can be a “microphilanthropist” even if you don’t have a lot of money to spare.  She advocates being involved and connected to causes you support, which I agree is critical, and lists resources for building that engagement.

Another great section discussed the hedonic treadmill (how something can feel so awesome when you haven’t been able to afford it before, but quickly becomes old hat) and how to combat it, including how to teach your children to appreciate their blessings without becoming entitled or misunderstanding the connection between work and money.  We’ve been talking in our family lately about how to handle allowances, so I appreciated the research Vanderkam highlighted.

The book ends with a series of exercises designed to help you think through the topics presented in the book.  These include the big picture, getting, spending, and sharing.  I can see how this would be a fabulous book to go through with a book club or to read with a friend or your spouse, because the questions lend themselves to a lot of reflection and discussion.

What I love about this book is that it’s not a how-to book for austerity or a one-size-fits-all prescription for achieving some particular level of financial status.  Rather, it’s an empowering book about understanding your own life and your own priorities and goals, and how you can use money to live a better, happier, more fulfilling life.  Understanding this is so critical, no matter what your situation or aspirations.  Having money won’t make you happy, but using money to achieve your purpose will.

I found All the Money in the World tremendously helpful and would highly recommend it, whether for personal reading or in a group setting.

To borrow a question from the book, if you had all the money in the world, what would you change about your life?  How could you make those things concrete goals and actually accomplish them?

If I had all the money in the world I would travel.  It’s something I really miss.  I would love to take the kids to visit the places we read about and expose them to the beautiful and interesting places and people around the world.  And I’d like to spend more time with my best friends, who live scattered all around and who would make marvelous companions for cheese tours of Europe and carpet tours of the Middle East and assorted Asian adventures.  I’d also hire a full-time housekeeper to clean messes and handle administratrivia so I could focus on my family and be more productive.  I’m still working on the implementation phase of these ideas.  How about you?

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.  The author of the book provided me with a review copy but the opinions in the post are my own.

How involved are you in pursuing justice in your community, your country, and around the world? In his compelling and thought-provoking book Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just Tim Keller unpacks the substantial amount of Scripture dedicated to God’s heart for justice and the oppressed, and suggests ways that Christians can apply biblical exhortations to pursue justice and care for the poor in our own realms of influence.

Keller argues that the gospel, rightly understood, will lead to a life of doing justice in the world.  He writes, “When you see that you have been saved in spite of your poverty and wretchedness, you will be compelled to see others as being in the situation you were in before God and will offer help.”

I always appreciate Keller’s careful exposition of scripture and I learned so much from reading so many passages about God’s concern for the vulnerable in the Old Testament, and Jesus’ caring for the poor and downtrodden.  Keller notes that Christians ought to seek to grow in Christlikeness in this area, which is often overlooked because people just don’t know what to do about it or feel like maybe the government is handling it.

Keller includes helpful explanations of word meanings and cultural context to illustrate how the biblical concepts of poverty and social justice are far more nuanced than what modern political systems and parties advocate.  He describes the different ways that justice and evangelism should work in tandem, rather than being seen as competing notions, and about the different ways Christians should care for individuals and families, communities, and seek social reform as they pursue justice.  Keller also breaks down the differences between relief (meeting immediate physical/economic needs), development (helping communities move beyond dependency on relief), and social reform (changing laws and customs to prevent injustice).

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I found Generous Justice convicting.  I’m definitely one of those Christians who has a concern for justice and poverty, but never knows what to do about it practically.  I had a great conversation with my husband about what our family can do about poverty and injustice, and we’re working on some family goals, including involving the kids.

I would highly recommend this book, both as a reference for what the Bible says about justice and care for the poor and as a helpful guide to get you thinking about ways to practically pursue those ideas.

How do you and your family pursue justice and care for the poor?  We’re still thinking of ideas and would love to hear your experience!  

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Did you know that “tension headaches,” “sinus headaches,” dizziness, fatigue, foggy thinking, and blurry vision that comes and goes are all related to migraines?  And that you can control migraines, even really bad ones, without a lot of expensive treatments?  Neither did I until I read Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Program for Taking Charge of Your Pain.

Written by a neurologist at Johns Hopkins who sees primarily “failed” headache patients that other doctors can’t help, this book explains the full spectrum of migraine, the way that migraine thresholds work, and how you can break the cycle of headaches and related symptoms by identifying and controlling the triggers that put you over your threshold.  While you can’t control a lot of environmental, hormonal, and situational triggers, you can be aware of them and reduce your other triggers to compensate.

This may sound too easy.  In fact, the author mentions that some of his patients have to have counseling for being so angry that they suffered needlessly for years, and others are so wedded to their identities as headache sufferers that they refuse treatment.

But if you have headaches, even occasional migraines (which is what I have), it seems worth a try.  One of my coworkers from my last work project, who recommended this book to me, said the program worked wonders for her headaches.  I’m planning to use the techniques in the book at times when I know the triggers I can’t control are highest, and also to avoid some triggers that I suspected before but now understand better.

If you suffer from headaches, or know someone who does, I recommend that you read this book.  If nothing else, it may help you to understand the mechanism of migraine more clearly and make an informed decision about getting your headaches under control.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

 In her book MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend, Rachel Bertsche describes her experience moving to Chicago when she got married, leaving her best friends behind in New York, and her unexpected finding that making friends was not easy in a new city.  She identifies lots of reasons for that fact, including some that I also found when I was in a similar situation here, such as people being “from here” already having enough friends, difficulty finding people who had time for more friends, difficulty finding people who really fit well with her personality, and so on.

However, unlike me, Rachel went out and got a book deal to do a year long experiment to find a new best friend.  In the book, she documents the 52 “friend dates” (she noted that finding friends is a lot like dating, at least in some ways) she went on, the friends she found, and the research she did along the way.  I find experiments like this interesting.

Friendship is an interesting thing in itself, isn’t it?  According to psychologists there are four major types of friendships:

• Acquaintances, who you’d chat with or meet up with casually and who give you a sense of belonging to a large group,
• Casual friends, who you would grab lunch with or who are friends in a specific sense, like someone you work out with or who you can talk to about parenting but not necessarily about everything,
• Close friends, who you trust and could say anything to, and who you could pick up where you left off with quickly,
• Lifers, who are deep friends like family.

Apparently to be happy a woman needs 10-100 acquaintances, 10-50 casual friends, 5-12 close friends, and 3-5 lifers.  Studies show that having lower levels of connection affects a person’s longevity the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic.  Wow.

Along the way, Bertsche learned a lot about herself, became more confident in doing things by herself in order to meet new people, and found out that most people are way more receptive to friendly overtures than you might think.  I also thought that her conclusions, while somewhat sad, had a hopeful twist.  She admits that no one in her new city will likely have known her from childhood, or know how she was in college, or from before she got married, and that friendships in adulthood are often different than those from childhood.  However,  the friends she makes now will be her long-time friends decades from now, and those friendships will deepen in different ways that are also valuable and lasting.

While I’m not going to go out and do a 52 friend date experiment after reading this book, I did gain some insight into making friends that I hope will be helpful.  If you’re interested in friendship, or are in a situation where you don’t have as many close friends as you’d like, you might also enjoy reading MWF Seeking BFF and find it useful.

Just out of curiosity, do you think the breakdown of how many of each type of friend you need statistic is accurate?  Do you have best friends where you live?  What has been most helpful to you in making friends in adulthood?

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.