my problem with St. Paul

[anti_nietzsche]

Ok, first off, I do trust in the bible and I consider Paul's writings to be inspired. Yet I do have trouble with Paul because of two things. I mean his actions towards those who opposed him, when he delivered his enemies into the hands of the devil to be destroyed. I really consider that something really awful and bad. How can a christian do such a thing? Aren't we supposed to love and pray for our enemies? I do have some personal experience with the devil and demons and know how much it hurts to be under their influence. It can be really terrible.

How do you handle these passages? Is there something I'm missing?

[jabcat]

As I understand it, the delivery to satan he talked about was perhaps the only way those folks were going to be saved.  They were apparently entrenched in sin, rebellious, etc., to the point that destruction was their only salvation.  In essence, that whole discussion about destruction meaning trials, testing, the burning of unrighteousness preparing the way for God's complete infilling of us and us totally existing within Him.  And I believe satan is God's tool for testing, trying, bringing us to our knees...and that's often where we finally confess Jesus as Lord.  My  :2c:.  James.

[martincisneros]

The only way I've ever known to "deliver someone to Satan" in a way that wasn't outright witchcraft was to simply stop praying for them.  Because few Christians pray for each other with any real consistently Biblical faith and faithfulness in the "prayer without ceasing" department, very few Christians know the difference these days regarding Satan being in their lives more than he should be.  Few Christians know what it's like to genuinely be under a prayer cover, though I realize that's not a Biblical term.  But when a Christian won't get it together in a Biblical way that you've sincerely been praying for, just quit praying peace and every other good thing with, over, to them, and through them.  I think that 1John 5 has a reference along these lines as well.  When they're no longer comfortable in their sin because Christians aren't praying the comforts of the Holy Spirit into their lives, most Christians that have been "backslidden" for a while will usually start to move back in the right direction.  Their misery will wind up exceeding their fleshly sense of need for the exotic fruits of sin from the serpent's most recommended tree!

[anti_nietzsche]

Thanks, Martin, this makes a lot of sense. I've never thought of that possibility. I was very scared of Paul being utterly cold and strict.

[reFORMer]

VALUE ADDED PERSONS


That people are committed to prevent enough mischief and mayhem so commerce continues unhindered is something called "marketplace morality."  Behave just good enough to keep things running smoothly.  As an illustration advocating right behavior it has some value.  But it is only a convenience for us to achieve self fulfillment, not at all the deep inner quality of character God would cultivate in those attentive to His will.  Sacrificial love, not only of your enemies, but love even as Christ has loved us is what fulfills God's purpose of reproducing His image and likeness in us.  Most think it's so hard to do it's just best to not think about it or it only applies to certain special very religious people.  Actually it is what is required of all of us.  God's goodness and lovingkindness even to the unthankful and antagonistic is the example He holds up to us as He commands us, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Mat 5:48)  No need to strap on the guilt generating machine.  God is love and you're not God.  The manifesting presence of the Holy Spirit is what produces this Divine quality in our lives.  But in the process of bringing it about there are some "dealings" along the way.

Consider a man who takes pens and paper from work.  This is not love for those who work with him nor for the owner of the company.  As time goes by he hardens his conscience and escalates the value of the items he steals.  Now God could have him discovered at this point, but he'd only become more devious, more careful to not be found out.  Rejecting the testimony to the saving grace of God from a co-worker and over-riding his own misgivings, eventually he finds himself in a position to occasionally embezzle several hundreds of dollars at a time.  He gets caught and suffers the consequences of some time in prison so he'll learn not to even start down that path again.  He learns to put up a barrier against stealing anything which is really a love standard, something he should have known to start with, but had to learn the hard way.

God doesn't leave mankind on its own.  Larger things are at stake.  We might not get too bad left on our own; but, we wouldn't do anything very good either.  We are not allowed to be insipid wimps.  God is bringing forth a family of heirs, born of Him, like Him.  God unleashes angels and demons to "stir up the pot."

For instance, He speaks of one, "...whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.  And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:  that they all might be damned (lit., "judged") who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thess 2:11-12)  Because of God's great patience and lenience, these going their own way, disliking the truth, might not go off far enough to be judged so God adds power to what they have chosen so their wickedness would be revealed.

I know a brother who has a knowledge of Scripture and taught small gatherings in various cities where he traveled.  To support a facility he'd bought in a certain city and maintain himself, according to his own admission, he took up with a group and used a text of theirs of occult, possibly demonic origin.  Now his interest in good and Godly aspects of thought in "new age" circles made it a somewhat easy transition.  But the motive was money.  I know some feel they must innovate or entertain to attract the people.  Of course, God wants a body of people for His own, not ruled over by preachers.  But many are in this realm and susceptible to what operates there.  All things must be revealed.

Another example is some who were not harnessing the true meaning of words; but, by their misuse robbing some of their pursuit of God.  "...holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:  of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." (1 Tim 1:19-20)  There is more concerning Hymenaeus to help us understand what this was about.  It seems he may have been a false teacher who Paul dealt with as an example to other members of the body.  "...shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.  And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some." (2 Tim 2:16-18)  Certain doctrines go the wrong way but the teachers of those doctrines, if they controlled themselves, might not go to far into deception.  But we are meant to give away our control to God.  We are temples.  We are made to be possessed!


---James Rohde

[martincisneros]

I was very scared of Paul being utterly cold and strict.

Far from it.  Robert Eisenman, who's one of the top Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, if not the top Dead Sea Scrolls scholar said in his book "James, the brother of Jesus" that Paul can be viewed as the first modern man.  He tends to view Paul as a liberal.

St. Paul's simply been very misunderstood.  Not realizing the synogogue setting of the 1st century where women sat on one side of the aisle and men on the other side, and they had no public address systems back then, then it was obvious why women shouldn't be yelling out in Church after their husbands asking questions about what was being said in Church.  But, no, no, no.  Modern women think that they know better and Paul's been eternally branded a chauvinist.  Contextually, though, when you know the history, and particularly when you take into consideration the aspect of the traveling Apostle of that day, where the local Rabbi/Pastor had to be able to tune in to EVERYTHING that was being said for the future benefit of that Church community after Apostle so and so moved on to the next town, otherwise the spiritual growth of the religious community might have been imperiled with the constant attacks from Judaizers, Gnosticism, and other things that were trying to creep into the Church.  If St. Paul preached in your local synogogue for 3 sabbaths, you couldn't exactly buy the CD or DVD and hear it again a couple dozen times.  Whatever time you had with him or with one of the other Apostles, you were pretty much at the mercy of.  And God help you if you were the local pastor or Bishop and something jacked with your being able to really focus on everything that was being said.

St. Paul's likewise been branded in previous centuries as having been pro-slavery, although in 1Corinthians 7 he advised that if a slave could get their freedom through the appropriate channels, depending on their individual circumstances, then go for it!  The book of Philemon is the ordination letter of Onesimus, a former slave.  Paul was telling the Church at Colosse that Onesimus was as valuable to them as Paul was.  And some scholars even believe that Onesimus might have even written the book of Ephesians.  Can't remember which scholars, but I was watching Melissa Scott on her program one time and she cited a highly respected scholar with that opinion.  And within a couple of months of that, I heard on a radio program someone else citing a couple of other scholars with the same opinion.  We do know that during the latter half of the first century that there was a Bishop Onesimus over Ephesus.  But, most of the Bible commentaries continue to the present day saying that St. Paul was returning Onesimus to a slave's life, though the book of Philemon tells an entirely different story. 

I'm not shocked that Christians can't see UR when they can't even get the story of Onesimus straight.  Paul said things about Onesimus that he never even said about Timothy!  William Barclay's the only one that I've ever found that'll mention my interpretation of the book of Philemon, though he's citing some obscure theologian that I'd never heard of before or since having read that.  He cites what were the three theories in his day regarding the book of Philemon, and I'm surprised that he includes my interpretation 'cause it seemed for the longest time to me that I was the only one able to actually read the book of Philemon rather than read into it anything.

I'm really glad that Tommy Tenney hasn't stolen the book of Philemon from me yet.  He's stayed over in the book of Esther for a few years with all he's written and preached about it, which lead to Gener8xion Entertainment's big epic motion picture production "One Night With The King."  The book of Philemon's ten thousand times more interesting, as a story pregnant in details, as an example of the really low reading level of most Christians that can't even get that story straight in their heads, and in the light of the lying assumption that Paul was pro-slavery 'cause of out of context quotes from a couple of his other epistles.  Slavery back then is too much like animal rights right now, where if you don't use an enormous amount of tact and if you don't refrain from saying things in front of the wrong audience, then they're going to chase you out of town, stone you to death, and then tar and feather what they think is your corpse.  For him, certain aspects of the Universal Liberty had to be implied rather than shouted from the roof tops.  Or he'd of gotten every single Christian hunted down and exterminated in a religious genocide.  He might have spoken with more liberty when it wasn't a letter that could have been intercepted by the Roman authorities.  We'll never know either way for sure on that, until we actually meet the man someday.

Sometimes St. Paul takes some heat and is accused of being on the Roman payroll as an infiltrator of the faith because his tact and diplomacy's a little calculated.  That's more from the thoroughness of his education than the insincerity of his heart.  Plus, you couldn't tell everybody everything back then any more than you can tell everybody everything these days.  Sometimes not all at first, and sometimes never.