What a Moabite Woman Taught Me About My Faith
"If globally 91% of adults simply adopt and keep the
religion they were raised in, is it fair that a birth lottery determines who
ends up believing what, or theoretically getting into heaven or hell? If an
all-knowing God places a person in a specific geographic location or family
where they are highly likely to adopt that local faith, hasn't God effectively
given certain individuals an unfair advantage over others regarding their
eternal salvation?" *
I recently sat listening to a podcast where an agnostic
flung this question at a well-known Christian apologist. The sheer force of the argument instantly paralyzed my thoughts.
Logic tightened its grip around me. The implication was that my salvation was a
cosmic genetic lottery win. After all, I was born into a Christian home in
India, and today I live in the UK. True, I was handed a ready-made Christian culture
on a silver platter. But did that mean my genetic predisposition made me choose
to follow Jesus?
As I sat with that question, a familiar, deep ache started
to gnaw at me. Accepting the "lottery" narrative means accepting that
I somehow deserved this, or that I had earned it.
I look back at my own lineage and realise that centuries
ago, my Indian ancestors were completely outside this covenant. Somewhere in
the shadows of my family tree, a line of generational history was rewritten,
and a legacy of redemption began. You inherit the culture, the language, and
the expectations, but my faith was definitely not some beautifully wrapped
family heirloom.
How do I know this? Because there was a point in life where
I did make a conscious choice to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. My God
is not just my Father and my Defender and Protector; He is the omnipotent,
omniscient God of the universe.
Although I could not put my finger on it, I knew that I knew
the answer. I just had to find it in the Bible. So, I asked, and He pointed me
to a story that is so familiar I was surprised I had not thought of it earlier:
the story of Ruth.
The Ultimate Outsider
We love to clean up Ruth's story. We preach about her
ultimate loyalty, her obedience, and how she hit the jackpot by marrying Boaz,
a prominent Israelite with a stellar spiritual pedigree (although his mother had
been a foreigner too). We look at her security blanket, ignoring the brutal
reality that she had to lose absolutely everything before she had even
got a glimpse of that reality.
The truth is, if there was a genetic lottery, Ruth drew the
absolute worst hand. She was a Moabite, born out of an ancestral line of incest
(descended from the incestuous union of Lot and his daughter), brokenness and
pagan idolatry. By all theological accounts, she was an outsider with no
rightful place on God’s redemption agenda. She was a second-class citizen in a
foreign land, who chose to follow Naomi into Bethlehem. She wasn't
stepping into a fairy tale; she was stepping into the unknown, as an unwanted
foreigner.
But Ruth wasn't just a random addendum accidentally grafted into the ancestry of Jesus. She was the main point of the story. Of her story. As far as she was concerned, she had simply gotten married, raised a son, and lived an ordinary life until she died.
God did not need Ruth to produce the Messiah. He is, after all, God. He could have used anyone. This leads me to a conclusion that completely shatters my conundrum: God chose Ruth before any of her days came to be, simply for herself.
He allowed the famine to displace Naomi, and He allowed the
mess of Moab to unravel, because He was intentionally going looking for Ruth.
He saw her in her isolation, wrapped her in His eternal plan, and chose her before
she even knew His name.
A Legacy Whispered in the New Testament
Ruth lived centuries before the cross. She did not know the
name of Jesus, nor did she understand the mechanics of the salvation we have a
claim to today. Yet, the blueprint of her life is the exact flavour of the New
Testament Gospel. Her journey from the back of the queue to the lineage of
Christ whispers the very truths Paul would later write to the early church.
When I look at Ruth’s displacement, I hear the echo of Ephesians
2:12-13:
"that at that time you were without Christ, being
aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of
promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus
you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ."
Ruth was the ultimate foreigner, excluded from the covenant.
Yet, God brought her near. Her story screams the truth of Romans 5:8:
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
God did not wait for Moab to become holy before He went
looking for Ruth. He pursued her while she was still an outsider. He chose her
according to the reality of Ephesians 1:4-5:
"just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of
the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having
predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the
good pleasure of His will,"
God does not expect us to present Him with a pre-approved family tree. He embraces our displacements and our unpolished
beginnings, using the complex reality of our past as the exact place to pour
out His redemption.
Conclusion: The Shattered Lottery
So, we return to the question that started it all: If an
all-knowing God places a person in a specific geographic location or family
where they are highly likely to adopt that local faith, hasn't God effectively
given certain individuals an unfair advantage over others regarding their
eternal salvation?
Through the lens of human logic, the system looks entirely
rigged. It feels like an unfair distribution of privilege, where a fortunate
few are handed a ready-made faith while the rest of the world is left to
scramble in the dark.
But Ruth’s legacy shatters the illusion of this birth
lottery.
God is not a passive observer of geographic statistics, nor
does He base His election on cultural luck. He is an active pursuer of human
hearts. What the world labels as the luck of the draw, God defines through His
sovereign design. If a Moabitess from an excluded, broken lineage can be
intentionally predestined, sought out, loved for exactly who she was, and woven
into the very DNA of the Messiah, then no one is outside His reach. No one is
born in a place too distant for the grace of God to find them.
My birthplace in India was not a winning ticket of unearned privilege, and your current location does not mean you have been bypassed by divine purpose. The Gospel is not a cultural or genetic inheritance to be hoarded; it is a universal invitation. True predestination is not about a cold system of favouritism. It is the reality of a loving Father who chooses us in Christ before the creation of the world, breaking through every geographic barrier to find His lost sheep. The statistics may say one thing, but God's sovereign heart says another.
He went looking for Ruth in Moab, and He is looking at you right now.
Centuries after Ruth, Jesus stood in her very lineage. On a
horrific day, at Golgotha, He was brutally beaten, broken and crucified. He took
the ultimate pain upon Himself.
I have the absolute assurance of eternal life today because
I was on His mind during that agonizing sacrifice. It did not matter that two thousand years later, my
birthplace would be India or that His earthly presence had been in the Middle East, any
more than it mattered that Ruth was from Moab.
The birth lottery is a human illusion, but your response
to His pursuit is entirely real.
The choice today is not about whether you can outrun the
statistics of where you were born, or whether you can rely on an inherited
cultural privilege.
The choice today is whether you will surrender to the
trustworthy truth that is completely deserving of full acceptance: that
Christ Jesus came into the world to save all of us sinners, for a place with
Him in eternity. For you and for me.
Will you hide behind the comfort of an inherited religious
identity, or will you step out? Like Ruth had done. Will you surrender your
questions and doubts, and choose Jesus for yourself?
Trust me, don’t wait to be convinced 100% by logic; He will
answer your questions as the days go by, in His time.
He is standing at the door of your heart, bypassing every
demographic line. The illusion of privilege is gone. But yes, He does leave the
choice of answer, entirely up to you:
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone
hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and
he with Me." Revelation 3:20
You know what my answer was. I wonder, what will your answer
be?
Footnote:
*Note: The opening question is a paraphrase
of a question posed to John Lennox by Steven Bartlett on his podcast, "The Diary of a
CEO."
Love it!!!
ReplyDelete