Paul of Tarsus wrote a lot about faith and redemption. His passionate writing never fails to move the faithful. I use to quote from his epistles when I preached to uncomprehending non-believers and I could not understand their lack of enthusiasm for Paul’s grand writing.
There is something ironic about Christians quoting Paul about belief and faith and how both are all you need to come to Jesus.
Paul was a proud Pharisaic student of Gamaliel, the famous rabbi who invoking his usual measure of compassion and common sense, saved Peter and the other ‘real’ apostles and the future of their ‘brand new’ Jewish heresy from execution and possible total oblivion (Acts 5). Paul no doubt was indoctrinated in the sacred worth of human life, but none the less, despite his association with Gamaliel set off on a bloody campaign against the heretics of Jesus.
Paul became a murderer. He makes a passing Nuremberg defence about his part in the deaths of perhaps hundreds of early followers of Jesus. His guilt must have been a heavy burden, and it might be, that in a state of denial, attempting to smother his guilt, he doubled down and sought out even more heretics to condemn, as proof of his devotion and the righteousness of his actions, to himself as much as to others. Then he went to Damascus.
Paul’s conversion wasn’t a result of his belief or faith. It was an physical mind-shattering event, in broad daylight, on the hard road to Damascus. He believed he experienced the presence, and heard the voice of Jesus Christ himself.
I suspect he suffered a severe temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), induced by his intense mental anguish brought on by guilt and fear of divine punishment. The TLE would account for his temporary blindness. The noonday Gallilean sun might also have contributed. Yet he came away from Damascus neatly forgiven and charged with yet another religious obsession to prove his passionate devotion to his god, which was now Jesus, rather than YHWH.
This was no ethereal spiritual revelation or blessing. For Paul it was a brutally perceived reality. From the evidence of his own deranged senses he had no choice but to believe, if only for the sake of his own sanity. Its ironic that Christians now quote him in the defence of the lofty merits of blind faith and supposedly logical belief. All of that is for the choir. I realise now my audience of 40 years ago with no sense of guilt or fear or need of redemptions, would have needed a Damascene event, in reality, of their own, to establish a faith and belief in a god. Just like Paul. Why is it they dont get one and are doomed to eternal punishment? Right, logical.
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