John Acuff, This is my dream

John Acuff, This is my Dream

 

        A few days ago, John Acuff set forth on Twitter a challenge for those who received his twitter notes to consider that one dream they want to accomplish before leaving this life.  I instantly knew mine.  I want to write one book.  I want to write one book that will contribute meaningfully to someone else’s understanding of the Christian faith.  There was a time when I considered going to seminary and studying theology and entering the ministry.  But I came from a background of farm and blue collar workers.  An academic life seemed almost an artificial life.  Real life was the sort of thing people did who worked in factories and on farms.  They got their hands dirty and sometimes they felt like they were getting used and had a hard streak to them.  That seemed like real life.

            I never went to seminary.  I went to work at a radiator factory, and most of my life at an oil refinery, and now I work in a warehouse at the oil refinery.  It suits me well most of the time.  But a part of me never quit thinking about theology.  I have had to rethink my Christian life a few times.  I am doing that in some ways now.  But a few years ago I went through a period of time that definitely reshaped my thinking of the faith.  I had become a Christian and pursued what I thought was holiness, godliness, becoming righteous.  Then I went through a few church splits, found that I was cantankerous and almost a human wreck and figured I needed to reexamine my life and figure out where I had gone wrong.  In the process three (or four) books reshaped how I thought about the Christian faith.  The three books were Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together; C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves and Jaroslav Pelikan’s first two volumes of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.  Those three books made me think of how God became man, and taught me if anything that the goal of the Christian faith can almost be said not to be to make us godly but to make us human.  Somewhere in my Christian life I had gotten sidetracked.  I had lost just about any clue to what it meant to be human.  I wanted to be some super godly machine that could spit out right answers about every doctrinal question, live above my circumstances, and be some sort of Christian example to everyone around me.  But all of a sudden because of Pelikan, Lewis and Bonhoeffer none of that mattered as much as if I learned to simply become someone who had learned to live a truly human life.  That would be the sort of book I would want to write, something that said to another “I can’t write a book telling you how to be godly, and my humanity is far from anything perfect, but I would like to think by reading what I have to say you might be reminded that God became man, took on humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, and so what he really wants for you is to learn the simple beauty of learning to be a human being.  The book that has been on my heart for a number of years that I would write about if I could fulfill my one dream would be to write about the Book of Ruth.

            I am not going to tell you what I will write, I need this book to gradually take shape until it might be ready to be published.  I would want this book to be something that gets past the conventional telling of the story about the Book of Ruth.   It wouldn't be meant to be academic, but neither would it be anti-academic.  But mostly it would be an understanding of the book which takes into account how there are numerous Biblical themes that come into this little Book of Ruth, making it a meeting place of numerous theological streams.  Ruth may only be four chapters and perhaps five pages long in our Bibles, but there are numerous themes of Scripture coming into and out of the book of Ruth, making it a book full of theology, life, and the wonderful potential beauty of a human life.

            I believe I can write something that will challenge some of the conventional wisdom about the Book of Ruth, so as to be both fresh and encouraging.  I will give you an example of how I might write in such a way as to question conventional wisdom about the story found in the Book of Ruth.

            I can almost imagine someone giving a conventional wisdom sort of summary of the Book of Ruth.  They begin by telling how Elimelech left the land of Israel during a famine in Israel, went to Moab and died there.  They will describe that Elimelech showed a lack of faith and that is why he died and why his bad choice contributed to his two sons dying an early death.  He would tell us how Naomi had become embittered and shows us how Christians can become discouraged and how they need to get over being desolate and empty and learn to live again be faith.  Then he will tell us of Ruth and how she lived by faith.  So we would learn to be a lot like Ruth, very little like Naomi, and nothing like Elimelech.

            I know if somebody were to teach the Book of Ruth like that I’d probably say nothing.  I don’t much like controversy.  I am a weak Christian.  But if I were to become a man of integrity, of courage and conviction and if the person teaching the class asked if there were any questions, I would ask something like the following:

            I would say, “Abraham left the land of Promise during a famine.  Isaac left the land of Israel during a famine.  Jacob left the land of Israel during a famine when Joseph was highly placed in Egypt.  Both Jacob and Joseph died outside the land, while living in Egypt.  How do we know for sure Elimelech wasn’t doing exactly what God wanted him to do?  Is there anything in the text that tells us he was for sure doing something wrong when the patriarchs who did something very similar would have been regarded as following God?

            I might even ask him one other question.  I would ask, “What does the name Elimelech mean and do you think it is important to story of the Book of Ruth?”  I might expect nothing in reply.  Elimelech's name means “God is king.”  Do you think somebody who heard this meaning of Elimelech’s name would take notice and wonder what it means that “God is King leaves the land of Israel only to die before he is able to complete his return to the Promised Land?  The very thought seems so stunning that one might wonder if this statement might be central to the meaning of this entire book.  Why doesn't everyone try to explain why "God is King" dies at the beginning of the story found in the Book of Ruth?  Is this significant or just an attention grabber?

            I don’t think I would ask any more questions.  But I think a book about the Book of Ruth that did ask those questions might change how we perceive the entire book of Ruth.  That is the book that I want to write.  I know it won't be perfect.  I know there will be mistakes, but just maybe it will speak to someone so as to make their humanity important to them once more.