What Paul and I have in Common

One of the reasons I went home this summer was to rediscover who Paul is and to forgive him. I didn’t know this until after I started reading through the book of Acts and started to really see Paul for who he really was. Since I’ve heard my calling to ministry I’ve had some major problems with some of Paul’s letters. I think this resulted in the misinterpretation of his letters to the extreme. One example of this is 1 Timothy chapter 2. This particular passage has led to needless legalism and a lot of heartbreak. Many women have denied their calling to the pulpit in fear of this passage. Not reverence of the Bible, but because they were afraid. I was almost a victim to this kind of hurtful and wrongful theology.

However, no matter how controversial my comments may be in what I think about 1 Timothy 2, please read on. Paul and I have a lot more in common than I ever thought. For starters, Paul came from a very legalistic religion and was on the top. He was educated by the very best and he was one of the most Jewish of all the Jews. He fought to protect the legalistic, controlling Jewish religion of his time. Then Jesus came into his life and he suddenly had to abandon all of this. This probably did not happen overnight and was not an easy process. It isn’t written in the Bible, but I can only imagine what Paul had to go through when he turned his back on his religion that he had been a part of since childhood. He had to let go of all that he believed about God and rebuild his faith from the ground up. He had to say good bye to life long friends and probably some relatives. He was suddenly forced to give into Jesus’ teaching and take on a new approach of a more free thought and theology. No more legalism for Paul, he had found freedom in Christ. Only at a high price. Yes Paul sat in prison, was shipwrecked, and almost stoned to death, but I think the greatest moment in his life was when he abandoned all of his preconceived notions about God. It takes a lot of guts to let God completely redo a person’s faith. It is a long a painful process, and when I realized Paul had undergone this process I suddenly found a whole new respect for him. I could relate.

It’s not easy to give in and tell God to remake your faith. That’s what Paul and I both had to do. When I first admitted to myself that I was called to preach, my entire world was shaken and turned upside down. All the basics about my faith had to change: how I approach God, how I consider the purpose of the Bible in my life, to exercise the true freedom that Jesus gives, and even how to trust God more. Rebuilding your faith and even denying some elements of it that I had known since childhood is very hard and painful. I wouldn’t recommend it for the faint of heart. I do however, think that it was one of the greatest things that God has done in my life. Somehow Paul wasn’t the bad guy in my book anymore. After considering all of this, he seemed like an old friend.