Paul has been considered the architect of the Christian church. Of course, Jesus was and is the foundation of it and who gave it substance, but Paul was the first to give it shape. There are many arguments about whether or not the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) came first or whether Paul’s epistles preceded them, but most scholars acknowledge that the earliest of the epistles came first.
Paul never spoke of the birth narratives or the parables and miracles of the ministry portion of Jesus’s life, but he was aware of them, having heard of them from the disciples and other followers. We can probably attribute this to the nature of Paul’s epistles, which were letters and responses to new and existing groups of Christians, sometimes Gentile. Most of these letters were responses to questions or problems. Since we don’t have copies of the letters he responded to, we are somewhat in the dark at times as to what he was answering. Still, much of the content has been used as a basis for Christian theology for millennia.
Paul often drives me nuts. There are many times I wish he had an editor who had taken the letters in hand and simplified them; however, Paul didn’t have an editor as good and with as generous an understanding of what I am trying to say as mine is. I assume Paul wrote in the style of the time, attempting to cover all possible permutations of his statements so that nobody could misunderstand.
There are times when he is crystal clear, though. He is pretty solid on the belief that we are all brothers and sisters and that none of us should pass judgment on each other. The first scream we usually hear when this statement comes up is that of course, we have to judge; we can’t let criminals, terrorists, and thugs get away with their crimes! Those TEAPOT (terrible, evil, awful people over there) are out to steal what we have, and that can’t be allowed!
Many often neglect to remember that much of what certain groups of us have passed judgment on others simply because we are somehow different than they are. Even if our skins are different in tint, all our blood is red, and our organs function in the same way as theirs. We are all children of God, even if we worship in different ways, call God by different names, and have different customs and languages. The fight during Paul’s time was that the Jews wanted to exclude the Gentiles because they had other traditions, beliefs, and diets. Paul argued that stumbling blocks such as the Jews put up were contrary to Jesus’s teaching about loving one another, doing kindness towards others, and helping those who needed aid of any kind.
Paul takes many verses to spell it out, but in short, “Love God and your neighbor as yourself” covers a large block of what Jesus taught. “…(F)or we will all stand before the judgment of God…”, “So then, each of us will be accountable to God (Rom. 14:10d, 12).”
Paul may drive me nuts periodically, but there are times he seems to have hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head. It’s simple. And it is probably why so many flocked to become members of the group that practiced this radical form of life. Not everybody did, and many today don’t do it, but it is a reminder of the fundamental teaching of Jesus for those of us who do follow Jesus. Don’t put blocks in front of those who can’t step on or over them. It wouldn’t be good to do that to an older person or a small child. It wouldn’t even be suitable for anyone to have a block put in their way when all they are trying to do is live life from day to day, safely, securely, and happily.
I’ll be considering this section of the epistle for some days yet. I’ll try to write more clearly and concisely than Paul, but with the same sort of answer to an unknown question. It’s the Christian thing to do.
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