Scouting Values In the Scriptures – Ruth

This is the latest installment of the “Scouting Values in Scriptures” weekly series. We are in the Old Testament and will continue with other scriptures of the Standard Works.

Every single value in the Scout Law was already ancient by the time it was formalized in 1911.

They didn’t originate with Scouting. They didn’t originate with the Restoration. They didn’t even originate with the New Testament. These are the oldest virtues in scripture – thousands of years before anyone wrote them in a Scout handbook.

The Old Testament is full of people shaped by their attempts to follow these values. That’s what Scouting does for young people too.

Let’s look at another story about where they meet.

A Scout Is Loyal:  Ruth

The Book of Ruth contains one of the most remarkable sentences.

Naomi had just lost everything – her husband, both her sons, her security, her future. She was returning to Bethlehem with nothing. She told her daughters-in-law to go home, to find new husbands, to rebuild their lives among their own people. Orpah wept and left. Ruth would not.

“For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried…” (Ruth 1:16–17)

Ruth was a Moabite – a foreigner, a widow, with no claim on Naomi’s people and no guarantee of welcome in Bethlehem. She was choosing loyalty over security. Commitment over comfort. The harder road over the obvious one.

She didn’t do it because it was easy. She did it because she had made a covenant of the heart and she intended to keep it.

Ruth’s loyalty goes beyond a simple definition of the Scout Law. It’s not just whether you’ll stand by someone when it’s convenient, but whether you’ll stay when staying costs you something real. When your people have gone home, and you’re the only one still standing beside someone who has nothing left to offer you.

That’s the kind of loyalty that shapes a character for life. The kind that shows up not in one big gesture but in years of showing up anyway. Every Scout who sticks with their troop through a hard time, who doesn’t abandon a struggling patrol member, who keeps their commitment when walking away would be easier – that Scout is Ruth-level loyal. And the Old Testament honors that kind of loyalty as sacred.

Join us here next week for the next installment of “Scouting Values in the Scriptures”