Sometimes I'm afraid that Christians follow Paul more than they follow Jesus.
I'd rather follow the Son of God than a great missionary.
I'd rather follow someone who is still alive than someone who's dead.
I'd rather follow the person whom I can still have a relationship with than someone who wrote letters in a context that isn't mine.
Sure, we have access to a lot more material from Paul than Jesus, but I think Jesus gave us plenty to keep us busy. That sermon on the Mount was no easy teaching!
Yeah, so I don't know about you, but I think I'll do my best to follow Jesus, not Paul.
I'm curious about what got you musing in this direction.
ReplyDeletePaul did write, somewhere (and I'm too lazy to look it up), "imitate me as I imitate Christ", so there's a sense in which following Paul is encouraged.
Granted that Paul's letters are written in a context that isn't yours, wouldn't you say that Jesus' sermons were also given in a context that wasn't yours? How do you deal with the context issues there?
I'm not really arguing with you. There is something in what you are saying here that resonates with me as well...
Did you know there's a quite a conversation going on in the broader Christian church about Jesus vs Paul? I love your passion that all who name Jesus as Lord should be, most of all, drawn to Jesus. Especially those of us who don't have a flat Bible. We can also point out that since Paul was inspired by the Spirit of Jesus, he can help us follow Jesus. Scot McKnight wrote a long article describing the shape of this conversation and trying to make a case that Paul's gospel is first and foremost about Jesus (1 Cor 15:3-8).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=90265
Love you!
Reading back over my entry I was harder on Paul than I thought. "not Paul" is pretty severe. I was a little nicer on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteI think there are tons of good things in Paul's writing. I would never suggest that we throw out his letters or that following him isn't worth while or that he wasn't directly inspired by Jesus, but I caution people who follow Paul and ignore Jesus' teachings. If I had to rank them I'd place Jesus above Paul.
This all came about while taking a course online from settingcaptivesfree.com. for the first 4 days all of the teaching came from the Paul and I was tired of it. The next day the focus was Jesus' teachings and I felt better about that.