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Transformative Word
Finding God in the Margins: The Book of Ruth
2018 Top Shelf Book Cover Award Winner The ancient book of Ruth speaks into today's world with astonishing relevance.
In four short episodes, readers encounter refugees, undocumented immigrants, poverty, hunger, women's rights, male power and privilege, discrimination, and injustice.
In Finding God in the Margins , Carolyn Custis James reveals how the book of Ruth is about God, the questions that surface when life falls apart, and how God reaches into the margins and chooses two totally marginalized women who, in the eyes of the patriarchal culture, are zeros.
Against the backdrop of disturbing issues in today's world, this bracing narrative puts on display a radical gospel way of living together as human beings that shouts the Kingdom of God, foreshadows Jesus' gospel, and raises the bar for men and women, then and now.
In four short episodes, readers encounter refugees, undocumented immigrants, poverty, hunger, women's rights, male power and privilege, discrimination, and injustice.
In Finding God in the Margins , Carolyn Custis James reveals how the book of Ruth is about God, the questions that surface when life falls apart, and how God reaches into the margins and chooses two totally marginalized women who, in the eyes of the patriarchal culture, are zeros.
Against the backdrop of disturbing issues in today's world, this bracing narrative puts on display a radical gospel way of living together as human beings that shouts the Kingdom of God, foreshadows Jesus' gospel, and raises the bar for men and women, then and now.
128 pages, Paperback
Published February 24, 2018
79 people are currently reading
599 people want to read
About the author
Carolyn Custis James
17 books96 followersCarolyn Custis James (M.A. in Biblical Studies) is an evangelical thinker who loves God enough to break the rules--rules of cultural convention which attempt to domesticate the gospel message of the Bible.
Carolyn is president of WhitbyForum, a ministry dedicated to addressing the deeper needs which confront both women and men as they endeavor to extend God's kingdom together in a messy and complicated world. She is the founder of the Synergy Women's Network--an exciting new ministry for women in ministry leadership. www.synergytoday.org
Her books have been described as "provocative", "honest", and "deeply moving".
Carolyn is president of WhitbyForum, a ministry dedicated to addressing the deeper needs which confront both women and men as they endeavor to extend God's kingdom together in a messy and complicated world. She is the founder of the Synergy Women's Network--an exciting new ministry for women in ministry leadership. www.synergytoday.org
Her books have been described as "provocative", "honest", and "deeply moving".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
February 12, 2019
I very much enjoyed Custis James’ approach to Ruth. It brought out new insights about the main characters in the narrative as well as about the enduring love of God. The level of research and probing questions at the end of each chapter only added to the value of my reading/study experience. Who knew Ruth is a feminist icon? 😉
April 10, 2019
This was a quick, easy read, partially about the value and courage of women, but more about grief and loss and the ‘unfailing love of God that breathes new life into the soul of a grieving woman.’ I didn’t always agree with some of the conclusions she draws, but the points she makes are valuable. “One of the biggest obstacles to a deepening walk with God is resistance to rethinking our beliefs, listening to others, learning, and changing.”
January 18, 2020
Lots of really good and interesting insights into the little but wonderful book of Ruth.
May 21, 2019
Reflections on Finding God In the Margins
by Carolyn Curtis James
We awoke from a dream with warm feelings this morning. We were asleep, and in the room next door our friend Matt was playing loud music, my door opens and he walks into the room and finds our laundry money and as he takes some of the money, reaches out giving us a big hug, and looking into his deep blue eyes, we felt really safe, loved and at home; Our door opens and our five other friends circle us laughing, hugging, and just caring. They are not blue-eyed, one set of parents comes from Columbia and Guatemala, the others are of Mexican descent. When we are driving around together we are well aware that there is no danger of being stopped with the blue-eyed one in the car; with the brown eyed one's, there are chances we will be stopped. The blue eyed one's mother has never been questioned if she has a job; one of the brown eyed one's mother was asked at a school meeting if she was on government aid, when in reality she works in a hospital on the surgical wing; and so the list goes on and on. We were in a restaurant recently with two of our friends, and a woman asked us as we moved towards the restroom, "Are they illegal?" We responded, "Are you?" and moved on. Our blue eyed friend would never have received that response. We never take our brown-eyed friends to a town north of us after eleven at night, because the chances are one in three we will be stopped, with my blue-eyed friend, never happens.
The truth is all of us are immigrants, our nation is made up of immigrants, and we immigrants are the ones who pushed the Native Americans off the grid. We are all "foreigners".
In Finding God in the Margins, we read:
"For many refugees, if they have any dreams at all, their only dream is of returning to their homeland. However deep those longings may be, thoughts of returning home inevitably are a cauldron of mixed feelings--a sense of relief at the prospect of home, of the familiar, of shedding the "foreigner" label, and of belonging, accompanied by uncertainty and dread at what "home" will look like, who will be missing, and how much of their former life will be destroyed.
So far, the twenty first century has been a gut-wrenching education on what life is like for refugees. Terrorism, bombings, civil wars, and the accompanying threat of starvation as food supplies are cut off have driven millions of refugees away from home in a desperate, often fatal quest for sanctuary. Whole cities have been reduced to rubble. Communities have been dismantled. Civilian casualties are in the hundreds of thousands. Countless friends, relatives, and neighbors are gone forever. The Mediterranean Sea has become a watery graveyard of thousands of unmarked graves. . . p.26".
This book brings home the plight of our national and world crisis, but more importantly this book calls us of all faiths to look deeper within ourselves, and rather than see national or political boundaries open ourselves to the boundaries of God--all loving, all caring, seeing no political boundaries. This book calls us to view our own racism, our own fears, and place them in the hands of God, and let us become one people. And as one people to share of our wealth, so that all might be fed, clothed, have health care, and housing. This book calls us to see all borders as false, and move to openness. This book calls us to move out of our comfortability and care for those on the margins, so that we will have no margins. Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.
P.O. Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
www.temenos.org
415-305-2124
by Carolyn Curtis James
We awoke from a dream with warm feelings this morning. We were asleep, and in the room next door our friend Matt was playing loud music, my door opens and he walks into the room and finds our laundry money and as he takes some of the money, reaches out giving us a big hug, and looking into his deep blue eyes, we felt really safe, loved and at home; Our door opens and our five other friends circle us laughing, hugging, and just caring. They are not blue-eyed, one set of parents comes from Columbia and Guatemala, the others are of Mexican descent. When we are driving around together we are well aware that there is no danger of being stopped with the blue-eyed one in the car; with the brown eyed one's, there are chances we will be stopped. The blue eyed one's mother has never been questioned if she has a job; one of the brown eyed one's mother was asked at a school meeting if she was on government aid, when in reality she works in a hospital on the surgical wing; and so the list goes on and on. We were in a restaurant recently with two of our friends, and a woman asked us as we moved towards the restroom, "Are they illegal?" We responded, "Are you?" and moved on. Our blue eyed friend would never have received that response. We never take our brown-eyed friends to a town north of us after eleven at night, because the chances are one in three we will be stopped, with my blue-eyed friend, never happens.
The truth is all of us are immigrants, our nation is made up of immigrants, and we immigrants are the ones who pushed the Native Americans off the grid. We are all "foreigners".
In Finding God in the Margins, we read:
"For many refugees, if they have any dreams at all, their only dream is of returning to their homeland. However deep those longings may be, thoughts of returning home inevitably are a cauldron of mixed feelings--a sense of relief at the prospect of home, of the familiar, of shedding the "foreigner" label, and of belonging, accompanied by uncertainty and dread at what "home" will look like, who will be missing, and how much of their former life will be destroyed.
So far, the twenty first century has been a gut-wrenching education on what life is like for refugees. Terrorism, bombings, civil wars, and the accompanying threat of starvation as food supplies are cut off have driven millions of refugees away from home in a desperate, often fatal quest for sanctuary. Whole cities have been reduced to rubble. Communities have been dismantled. Civilian casualties are in the hundreds of thousands. Countless friends, relatives, and neighbors are gone forever. The Mediterranean Sea has become a watery graveyard of thousands of unmarked graves. . . p.26".
This book brings home the plight of our national and world crisis, but more importantly this book calls us of all faiths to look deeper within ourselves, and rather than see national or political boundaries open ourselves to the boundaries of God--all loving, all caring, seeing no political boundaries. This book calls us to view our own racism, our own fears, and place them in the hands of God, and let us become one people. And as one people to share of our wealth, so that all might be fed, clothed, have health care, and housing. This book calls us to see all borders as false, and move to openness. This book calls us to move out of our comfortability and care for those on the margins, so that we will have no margins. Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.
P.O. Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
www.temenos.org
415-305-2124
April 5, 2024
There were a lot of great things packed into this one small book.
“Finding God in the Margins: The Book of Ruth” is written by Carolyn Custis who is an author, speaker, and advocate for gender equality within the church. This book really challenged all of the beliefs I previously had about the book of Ruth. I had a very simple understanding of this story but this book completely changed that for me.
I was so intrigued by Naomi being compared to Job and being called a "female Job". I have never seen this parallel before. Why do we not have the same empathy for her that we do for Job?
I never realized how desperate it was for a woman of that time to have no husband or sons. They were considered a "zero" in society. Their situation was so dire.
Also, this story is so countercultural. Ruth and Naomi, despite living in a patriarchal time, both took matters into their own hands to try and rescue each other. The "hesed" love that they show throughout the book is very inspiring.
And Boaz. I previously thought he was the rescuer of the story. Redeeming these women. How valiant. How romantic. But…it was Ruth who set this all up, she was not only a very intelligent woman, but also had such strong character.
Boaz risked a lot to respond with a "yes" to her proposal.
He also had such strong character. I love that Boaz treats Ruth the same way Jesus treated women. He truly saw who Ruth was, her character. He didn’t care how society saw her. He saw her heart. How beautiful is that.
This book showed me that there is so much more depth to the stories of the bible that I have to learn.
A great read.
“Finding God in the Margins: The Book of Ruth” is written by Carolyn Custis who is an author, speaker, and advocate for gender equality within the church. This book really challenged all of the beliefs I previously had about the book of Ruth. I had a very simple understanding of this story but this book completely changed that for me.
I was so intrigued by Naomi being compared to Job and being called a "female Job". I have never seen this parallel before. Why do we not have the same empathy for her that we do for Job?
I never realized how desperate it was for a woman of that time to have no husband or sons. They were considered a "zero" in society. Their situation was so dire.
Also, this story is so countercultural. Ruth and Naomi, despite living in a patriarchal time, both took matters into their own hands to try and rescue each other. The "hesed" love that they show throughout the book is very inspiring.
And Boaz. I previously thought he was the rescuer of the story. Redeeming these women. How valiant. How romantic. But…it was Ruth who set this all up, she was not only a very intelligent woman, but also had such strong character.
Boaz risked a lot to respond with a "yes" to her proposal.
He also had such strong character. I love that Boaz treats Ruth the same way Jesus treated women. He truly saw who Ruth was, her character. He didn’t care how society saw her. He saw her heart. How beautiful is that.
This book showed me that there is so much more depth to the stories of the bible that I have to learn.
A great read.
August 20, 2020
As someone currently working on her own interpretation of Megillat Rut (The Book of Ruth), I enjoyed this book. The author does a great job of succinctly and accessibly summarizing points about the story's importance. I get the feeling that she would be great at writing speeches or sermons.
Many of the author's allusions to the modern world seem unecessarily hamfisted (e.g., comparing Naomi's grief to Sandy Hook parents) and her language sometimes anachronistic (I only need one ancient and modern map -- no need to then discuss Ruth's journey from modern-day Jordan to modern-day Palestine when in the text she's going from Moab to Judea). She also makes the odd claim that westerners do not live in a patriarchy.
As a Hebrew speaker, I was impressed that the author had a decent understanding of some significant biblical Hebrew terms, even turning to the great Robert Alter for notes on translation.
Finally, this is a Christian book. I bought it knowing that, but as a Jewish reader there were several sections that were not for me (the Jesus bits, obviously). But to my fellow yidden on Goodreads, I'm pleased to say that this book is actually not cringy or proselytizing. There are a small handful of Jesus bits but the book does do a good job of generally focusing on Ruth and the relevant textual context (Tanakh, esp. the Chumash and Shoftim/Judges).
Many of the author's allusions to the modern world seem unecessarily hamfisted (e.g., comparing Naomi's grief to Sandy Hook parents) and her language sometimes anachronistic (I only need one ancient and modern map -- no need to then discuss Ruth's journey from modern-day Jordan to modern-day Palestine when in the text she's going from Moab to Judea). She also makes the odd claim that westerners do not live in a patriarchy.
As a Hebrew speaker, I was impressed that the author had a decent understanding of some significant biblical Hebrew terms, even turning to the great Robert Alter for notes on translation.
Finally, this is a Christian book. I bought it knowing that, but as a Jewish reader there were several sections that were not for me (the Jesus bits, obviously). But to my fellow yidden on Goodreads, I'm pleased to say that this book is actually not cringy or proselytizing. There are a small handful of Jesus bits but the book does do a good job of generally focusing on Ruth and the relevant textual context (Tanakh, esp. the Chumash and Shoftim/Judges).
April 23, 2021
This was an easy, quick read with some quality insights into the little story of Ruth. She rightly places a good amount of emphasis on hesed in the story and forces the reader to keep Naomi as the focal point of the drama. She argues that the story of Ruth is a female version of Job that is more akin to the kind of suffering we might face in life. However, the author's politics do shine through and could be annoying to some. And she would certainly be on the feminist reading trend when it comes to this book. For example, she writes as if Boaz was only doing the good/right thing because of Ruth's boldness. That being said, the author is correct in emphasizing the patriarchy of the day and its complete influence on the story. And finally, I realize that authors are excited about their work and absolutely should be but, sometimes, she overstates and overemphasizes something as if to manufacture excitement or importance (i.e. Ruth's "rule breaking"). Some of the best lines are quotes from her other works on Ruth - but this is a common issue when authors write widely on the same subject.
October 5, 2020
I like reading stuff that comes with a bit of a different lens on it, and this book certainly does that. I think it is important to note that it definitely does come with a a certain lens on (that of the place of women in the world). I think at times this lens dominated and a sometimes things were read into the text that I don't see as being the point of what the text was trying to communicate. The author points our the importance of not taking and eisegetical approach to a text, but she does a fair bit of that herself. To be fair, I would argue that it is impossible not to eisegete to some extent. This book, when taken with other resources that round out other viewpoints on the text, helped to broaden my thinking a bit on what the book of Ruth might be saying. It was a worthwhile read.
May 3, 2018
She's done it again. Custis James gets inside Scripture and reveals a deeper, more meaningful through-line than what we typically get on Sunday mornings. In this case, she explores the book of Ruth and helps us to see Boaz, Naomi, and Ruths' conversions. Far too often, this book is reduced to sappy sentiment. It's not a sentimental book. It's radical. There are so many prevailing norms that get overturned, so many ways that God breaks in, giving us a preview of the power of the gospel. This book, as is true for all of her work, is a gift to the body of Christ.
May 20, 2019
The way that Carolyn Custis James writes the story of Ruth in "Finding God in the Margins: The Book of Ruth" I felt like I was right there with Ruth, Naomi and Boaz. She has a way of drawing the reads into the story. James also gives the readers more then just a theology lesson she bring us in the social and culture time. She helps readers understand that God's mercy (hesed) is still there for Naomi even when she does not think He is there. I would recommend this book to people that want to learn more about the story of Ruth.
(I was given this book to review for SpeakEasy)
(I was given this book to review for SpeakEasy)
May 28, 2020
“When life and belief collide” by James has been one of the most impactful books in the last 20 years of my journey so my expectations were high of this book. It reads more of a retelling of the story with insights scattered throughout. James is truly a well-read theologian but this book left me wanting more. It is a very thin book (104 pages) which include study questions at the end of each chapter but I would recommend reading her earlier writings before this one.
February 8, 2021
"She brings a perspective to Mosaic law that too often is missing, for she speaks as one whom the law is designed to protect and bless—the hungry, the poor, the widow, the foreigner, the oppressed. How easy it is from the safe security of power and privilege to read God’s law or to draw conclusions from the life of Jesus that won’t cost us so much. How would our understanding break open if we listened to those whom the law and Jesus’ teaching are intended to shield, relieve, and prosper?"
January 6, 2023
Excellent read for male Christians
I really liked the book. Maybe a few stretches of the text here and there but that's just my biases also.
In any event, I think the author does a great job of writing about patriarchy. As a man, I found her writing very good and approachable for men. She writes factually, not preaching a feminist gospel per se'. A very good look from a different angle on a superb Biblical book.
I really liked the book. Maybe a few stretches of the text here and there but that's just my biases also.
In any event, I think the author does a great job of writing about patriarchy. As a man, I found her writing very good and approachable for men. She writes factually, not preaching a feminist gospel per se'. A very good look from a different angle on a superb Biblical book.
June 7, 2019
This is an amazing little book on another amazing little book. Carolyn Custis James masterfully walks the reader through the biblical story of Ruth, pointing to its subversive undertones and overt challenges to patriarchy and our traditional assumptions about faith and belief in God. Highly recommended.
November 10, 2020
The story of Ruth is familiar to most readers. However this book takes the reader deeper into the meaning behind the actions of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. Finding God in the Margins is the exact truth that was revealed. I will always remember to look at Scripture as a means to point to Jesus, even in the most unlikely passages.
October 11, 2018
Absolutely amazing! James unpacks Ruth with such accuracy and relevancy that you can't help but see how applicable it is today and how the teachings of Jesus are aligned with what God is saying in Ruth.
June 20, 2023
"Finding God in the Margins: the Book of Ruth" was one incredible read. A refreshing take on one of my favorite books from the Bible. Carolyn Custis James encourages the reader to do in-depth studies of Biblical characters.
August 25, 2024
Este libro ha sido uno de los que más me ha impactado en 2024, la forma en que está escrito demuestra como una buena explicación puede sacar a luz la belleza de la escritura hebrea, además de la profundidad teológica de un libro como Rut, además de devolver la humanidad a los personajes.
May 30, 2018
Excellent read!!!
An excellent look at the hidden depths of a story often taken at face value. How different is God’s way from that of society!
An excellent look at the hidden depths of a story often taken at face value. How different is God’s way from that of society!
June 18, 2018
An extremely relevant and well written commentary on the book of Ruth and the Believer’s call to obey not simply the “letter of the law” but the spirit of it.
December 30, 2018
I wish the author had resisted the urge to bring current American politics into this otherwise fine little book.
January 30, 2019
Great insights on the story of Ruth!
February 22, 2019
This author provides a different take on Ruth with additional insight. I enjoyed her writing and want to read more of her books. Ruth is one of my favorite books of the Bible.
April 6, 2019
This is a captivating, short, punch in the throat little book! HIGHLY recommend!
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January 5, 2021Interesting observations about the book of Ruth. Very timely as she was an immigrant and we as a country are struggling with immigrants.
February 23, 2021
This book was a waste of 2 hours.
Read
January 27, 2022For a parish book group. They loved it.
February 27, 2022
Great book! Wonderful illustration of the power of Hesed. Narrative provides understanding with comparatives to today’s culture.
November 2, 2022
Very interesting interpretation of the book of Ruth. I had never thought of the events this way .
February 4, 2024
4.5 stars. Wow, what an alternative (and I believe, accurate) perspective on the book of Ruth. Highly recommended reading for both women and men.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews