Alternative Social Reality

Some passages we come across in the Bible seem pretty obvious. But that doesn't make them any less troubling. Take for example a passage like Deuteronomy 23:6 "As long as you live, you must never promote the welfare and prosperity of the Ammonites or Moabites.” Wow, God really didn't like these people. In fact, God tells them to uphold this for ten generations (Dt. 23:3)... which is another way of stressing this isn't a temporary thing.

Many of us badly crave a spiritual justification not to like certain people. And if that's you, you can find verses like the one in Deuteronomy 23 that seem to suggest God feels the same way.

But then we find a story about "Ruth the Moabite" (Ruth 2:2) that doesn't fit this. And that's just the start. In week two of my series, "Them vs. Us," I offered a way to navigate this tension. I titled the message an "Alternative Social Reality" as this is what we find when we trust God with the outcomes in our life.