Episode #56: Ruth Chapter 4 - Church

Jan,16 2026

<-#55: Ruth Chapter 3 - Money#57: Ruth Chapter 5 - Termination ->

The chapter people most often bring to me is the one my father numbered twenty. They say it is confusing, that it wanders, that it does not end where a proper argument should. They ask me to explain what it really meant, as if I possess a key Christopher never handed to anyone.

I do not.

What I possess is memory of how we gathered.

We did not have a church building. We met in the fields when the weather allowed, and in the town hall when it did not. The benches were rough, and the roof leaked in the spring. No one wore any more clothing than the rest of the week. There was no choir, no singing. Only voices exchanging without structure.

We read the Bible together, not selected pieces but the whole long river of it. Children took turns with adults. A boy with dirt still under his nails might stumble through a psalm, and his grandmother would continue where he lost his place. We did not separate the easy pages from the difficult ones.

After the reading, we broke bread. Not as a ceremony with silver cups, but as a meal that tasted of yeast and smoke. Then we talked about what we had heard and what it might ask of us this week: which neighbor needed help with a roof, which child had been unkind at school, and whether the passage about strangers meant the family camping by the river.

Christopher rarely led these discussions. He listened, sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning, and only spoke when we had tangled ourselves into knots of our own making. He wanted us to feel the wisdom rather than borrow his.

There were passages that unsettled us. Lines about war and slavery, about women being silent, about punishments that felt harsher than any God we recognized. Someone would say, "These do not feel from God. Perhaps they were added by men." Others would gasp at the thought.

Christopher never gasped.

He would say, "The Bible was not written by God. It was inspired by God." Then he would add the part that made visitors nervous: "Inspiration is time sensitive. A message that was wise two thousand years ago may not resonate today, and that does not mean it was not once wise."

He spoke this without heat, as one might discuss weather patterns. To him, the book was a field with old and new plantings side by side. Some crops still fed us; others had served their season and should be allowed to rest.

The pastor in my father's chapter did not understand this way of reading. He wanted a gate and a guard. We had only an open yard and a long table. He feared disorder; we feared hardness of heart. Both fears were real, which is why the conversation circled like smoke and never found a door.

People now ask me whether those gatherings were a church. I do not know how to answer. We had no membership cards, yet we belonged to one another. We had no altar, yet we thanked God before eating. We had no priest, yet we were not alone.

I will not judge those who worship in tall buildings with bells. I have sat in such places and felt comfort there. But I have also felt something missing, the sense that the words on the page were meant to land directly on my own life, not on a committee's interpretation.

Christopher taught us to read with our hands as well as our eyes. When a verse spoke of feeding the hungry, he asked who was hungry this week. When it spoke of forgiving an enemy, he asked whose share of the crop was taken without thought. That habit is difficult to maintain in rows of polished pews.

Do not mistake me: I am not saying churches are frauds. I am saying only how we lived and how that living shaped the way the book sounded in our ears. If others find God differently, may they be blessed in that finding.

The chapter feels confusing because life feels confusing. My father recorded the storm without pretending it was a clear day. I will not rewrite his weather report to suit those who prefer sunshine.

What mattered to Christopher was not that we agree, but that we remain gentle while disagreeing. If this confuses readers, then they are experiencing exactly what we experienced.

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