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OUR TURN ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD
Paul of Tarsus can be hard to love. He's a religious fanatic, the kind you cross the street to avoid engaging. He's also way too sure of himself: he's always right, and everyone else is drastically mistaken. He believes his own press clippings. He thinks he's perfect and you're not.
And this was before he ran into the Risen Lord. It only gets worse after that. Now Paul's convinced that he's an APOSTLE: sent by God, no less, to spread good news and offer salvation to the whole world. Paul's not just a gnawing problem for the Jewish community. Now he's a gnat on the rump of the Roman Empire!
Paul bothers us because he's a thinker in a society at sea in the crosscurrents of its own passions. Paul parses arcane legal ideas while the rest of us avoid the fine print on life altogether. We want to get home to our suppers, and he's still holding us by the collar and shouting to us about justification by faith and the new Adam and the dichotomy of spirit and flesh. Can't he just lighten up once in a while and give it a rest?
Frankly, no. Paul's experience on the Damascus Road transformed him into a man with a mission. He's trying to run to the ends of the earth with a message that's literally killing him. Is there anything in our lives as dear to us as Jesus is to Paul? If not, it's our loss.
—Alice Camille,
reprinted with permission from TrueQuest Communications
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