please explain your love for paul. i personally find him annoying but i have an open mind and would love to hear ur thoughts!
ok so first of all sorry this took me literally forever to answer it’s midterms and i wanted to actually sit down and write something coherent for this!
so paul gets a bad rap in progressive christian circles largely because of the verses in the epistles that are about what we think of today as gay relationships and women in the church. however, i think it’s much easier to use paul as a scapegoat for everything you don’t like about christianity rather than grappling with passages that upset you or don’t fit with your view of god. i have a high view of scripture and i think it is all inspired by god so when there’s something in it that doesn’t sit right with me or i think falls outside of the character of god i think it’s my duty to unpack what’s actually going on there. it takes more work to investigate these things and determine what we are actually supposed to take from scripture but it is important work that needs doing and is a much better pathway than just ‘throwing paul out” as many people are wont to do.
so when we’re looking at things in paul’s writings that are at odds with our current values it’s important to remember both the original context and the limitations of the bible being written by a specific man in a specific time to a specific group of people. the prevalence of literalism in the public perception of christianity has really tainted everyone’s interactions with the bible, not just evangelicals, which i think is a tragedy. obviously when paul was writing correspondence with different congregations in the first century he had no idea that these specific letters that we still have would come to be held as vitally important to the christian faith. but the church has discerned that they are and for me that means that these are places that i can reliably come to to find god and religious truth. the meaning that we do find in them doesn’t have to be the most immediate and surface level interpretation. i would say that focusing on the specific minuscule commands given to these congregations, like women having to cover their heads, does them a disservice, because there is immense beauty that can be found in them outside of those examples which are not meant to be universal in the first place. no part of scripture is necessarily a universal truth that everyone has to follow to the end of times, but there are deeper spiritual truths within those scriptures that at the end of the day are more important than the specific social issues the ephesians were having that paul was responding to.
when we get past the idea that paul is some bigoted monster that has somehow corrupted the message of christ for the modern church we’re able to see that his writings contain some of the most affecting and distinct illustrations of the gospel and of christ himself. paul is the origin of much of the christian moral framework that we now use to dismiss him when we object to things like supposed homophobia in his writing. the epistles have so many instances of paul emphasizing the idea that all people are one in god, that no one is excluded from god, and that we must love one another as equals in the body of the church. they are full of ideas of unity and being freed from sin and death so we can live again in christ. some of my favorite parts are in first corinthians, where paul says “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters:not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” i think that this passage contains the essential message of christianity: god seeking out the weak and put down in order to do his work. it is among the foolish that we find god and it is where he works, and god is the source of our life and to whom we owe thanks. the themes you find across the epistles are all at the center of christian orthodoxy, and even if you’re unaware of it paul has most likely had a major influence on whatever parts of the christian tradition you find compelling and beautiful.
paul himself and his life are also a really poignant example of radical christian forgiveness. here we have a man who persecuted christians and the image of christ. he was a corrupted person and a murderer. and yet he is transformed in christ. he becomes so convicted in the gospel that we’re still quoting him two thousand years later. he’s another example of god choosing those that are the least likely to come to him, and demonstrating just how far his forgiveness will go. i would really recommend if you’re at all interested just reading through some of the epistles in the new testament because they’ve been very influential for me, particularly romans and first corinthians. i think looking at them with new eyes can be enlightening. imo paul really captures the self sacrificial love and the radical transformation that christ brings which are crucial to a christian faith.
