{"id":10321,"date":"2020-11-01T00:55:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T06:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=10321"},"modified":"2020-11-01T13:12:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T19:12:57","slug":"keeping-our-own-demons-in-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=10321","title":{"rendered":"Keeping our own demons in place"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Naomi makes us, with our Western cultural roots, a little nervous with her seeming disrespect of God. Yes, her life is hard, but should she blame God? Her open passion sends shivers down our stoic-tuned religious sensibilities, and we instinctively clamp down with our theology and say, \u201cNaomi, God is orchestrating this. He\u2019s in control. Don\u2019t blame him.\u201d Her grief and anger unsettle us and open doors to unbelief in our own lives. We\u2019d rather quiet her with good theology. We think we\u2019re comforting her, but maybe we\u2019re trying to keep our own demons in place. <\/p><p>How does God respond to her accusations? In the context of the whole book of Ruth, Ruth\u2019s love is God\u2019s response to Naomi\u2019s lament. God often uses human agents to show his love. So God weeps with her: \u201cThen they lifted up their voices and wept again\u201d (Ruth 1:14).<\/p><cite>Miller, A Loving Life, 33)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Naomi makes us, with our Western cultural roots, a little nervous with her seeming disrespect of God. Yes, her life is hard, but should she blame God? Her open passion sends shivers down our stoic-tuned religious sensibilities, and we instinctively &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=10321\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-counseling-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scquest.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/img_6412-3-scaled.jpg?fit=1920%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34kFn-2Gt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10322,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321\/revisions\/10322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}