Can you imagine how the conversation about becoming a kinsman redeemer might go if it involved a woman of the 21st century? The man might say: Dear, my brother has died and I would like to bring his wife into our home so that I can be a husband to her as well as to you.
A modern woman might well respond: If you try to bring her in here she will end up right next to her dead husband in the cemetery. And you might end up there as well! Clearly, the idea of a kinsman redeemer is not how we should try to solve this problem in the 21st century.
However, while the solution in the book of Ruth is not acceptable, the problem described in the book of Ruth goes on and on. What do we expect people to do when there is not one man for every woman? As we affirm and encourage those persons in our congregation who are “living single in a marriage culture” what direction can we offer them?
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First of all, let’s remind single people that there is nothing wrong with them. There are no characters flawed attached to being single. It is a fact of life for nearly one-half of the world’s population.
Both Paul and Jesus lived as single men in a society that assumed that men should be married. All of the disciples seem to have left their families, at least for those three years and perhaps completely in order to follow Jesus. In I Corinthians 7:1, Paul said it is “good for a man not to marry.” In 7:8 he says to the widows and those who are unmarried, “it is good for them to stay unmarried as I am.”
All through history it has been an accepted fact that for one reason or another there would be persons who would never get married. No big deal was made about it; it was a simple fact of life. Sometimes a person cannot find a spouse they want as a lifelong companion. Other times it seems as if no one wants them as their lifetime companion. In other instances, they may have been married before and they simply do not want to enter into that relationship again. Remember that there are a variety of reasons for why a person might be single.
Either way, Paul puts his finger on a very real problem that being single creates for so many men and women in our society; it is the problem of intimacy or human sexuality. Paul said in 7:9, “It is better to marry than to burn with passion.” This is where the problem becomes even more intense for singles. The possibility of finding a spouse may seem limited, but the reality of passion or the drives attached to human sexuality do not go away just because a person is not married. People do not cease to have sexual urges or desires just because they do not have a spouse.