Have you ever read Ruth and wondered, "Why did Ruth get her own book?" Why was it so important to tell the story of this one woman, of all the women on Earth, all the women in Biblical history? Deborah was the only woman to ever lead Israel, and she didn't get a book. Mary gave birth to the Messiah, and she didn't get a book. Why Ruth? She didn't preach a famous sermon, perform a miracle, win a battle, or save a people. She wasn't even an Israelite. She was a Midianite widow who got married and had a baby. Hardly the stuff of legend. And yet, at some point the Spirit of God inspired someone to write a book about this one, average woman, and the people of God preserved it and retold it for thousands of years. What did she do? In one common view of the Gospel, she did nothing very special--she just happened to be the great grandmother of David. If the Gospel is only about evangelism, if the only point of being a believer is making more believers while you
(or, A Fragment of Theology)