Impact

I had no idea when I started preparing materials for the classes I plan to teach in China, on the book of Ruth, that it would have the effect on me that it did. It wasn't necessarily the book of Ruth but how I viewed it that impacted me the most. I had read what some others had written about the book and several times watched a DVD on Ruth that I have. I had talked with my friends and with one exception, my sources referred to Ruth as a love story between Ruth and Boaz. The one exception was a book titled, “The Gospel of Ruth” by Carolyn Curtis James. She stressed the importance of choosing the right cultural lens when interpreting Scripture. If you look at Ruth through the lens of the Western culture you will get a different interpretation than when you look at it through the ancient culture in which it was written.

As I continued to take this little book apart and studied it phrase by phrase to really understand what was being said I soon realized the "interpretation of the west" was reading into it what they wanted, not what the Scriptures were saying. From a careful study one determines that it was next to impossible for Boaz to even think of a marriage relationship with Ruth based on affection. It simply could not have happened in that culture. The impact of this on me was to ask what else the western culture was not seeing correctly?

As I sat back and chewed on this I began to wonder what is going to happen to Christianity when the majority of the believers are not in a Western culture but in an Eastern culture. When the interpretation shifts from western Christians to Eastern Christians they will tend to bias the interpretation from their viewpoint like we have. I can see how easy and tempting it is to adjust the interpretation to fit your way of thinking. This can be done by choosing certain words from your language when translating to slant the interpretation a little bit. To see this, read some verses from different translations, and you will see different emphasis by different translations.

Already there is a difference of translation of Ruth. When you look at the book of Ruth through an Eastern cultural lens you obtain a strong Biblical application, but when looking at it through a Western cultural lens you obtain a love story with very little practical Biblical application. What the world needs is the cultural interpretation of the culture of the time Ruth was written. It is an interpretation that will face intense opposition as Carolyn is finding out. I have already experienced some of this myself from what little I have written.