Understanding Paul: The Man Behind the Difficult Passages
There are two things about Paul that can cause people to struggle with him. One is what he wrote concerning women, especially the passages that seem to place restrictions on what women can do in the assembly. The other is the way Paul sometimes speaks about his apostleship and about having seen Yeshua. When those passages are read by themselves, it can be easy to come away with an opinion about Paul without taking the time to look at the whole man, his background, his former life, the circumstances he was dealing with, and everything else he wrote. That does not mean we should explain away difficult Scriptures. It means we should read them carefully. There is also something else that is important when we read Scripture. Sometimes a thought naturally comes into our minds while we are reading. That thought may not be wrong simply because we had it. The problem comes when we quietly take that thought and turn it into something Scripture actually said. We need to be willing to ask ourselv...