My Sincerest Apologies to Paul

Some of you have heard me make the very Un-Christian remark that I do not think I would have liked the Apostle Paul.

Wow, that looks almost blasphemous in type.  Really, though.  He seems kind of arrogant and grating. He is harsh on certain subjects that Jesus gave no recorded time to. I have wondered if he had something personal against women.  If I were given an opportunity to meet someone in the Bible, Paul would be far down on my list. 

It seems like kind of a big thing to not like the guy who wrote half of the New Testament. In an effort to attempt to get over this, I decided I would start re-reading Paul's writings. I started with the happy ones like Philippians that I like.  Recently, I took a deep breath and started in on 1 Corinthians.

I generally stay away from Corinthians because it feels like that irritating Paul is standing over my shoulder reading me a list of rules.  While I might need this just as much as the Corinthians did, it is not the kind of thing that inspires one to read at 6:00 a.m. 

In an effort to avoid laundry and ironing, I picked up 1 Corinthians 7 to see the heading "Instructions on Marriage." Oh, fabulous.  But laundry is really unappealing, so I read, conjuring as many feminist articles from the recesses of my mind as I did, expecting a "wives obey" message.

Nope.  It is a really a balanced message to both husbands and wives, with Paul first of all admitting that most of what he is saying is not a direct word from God.  That's kind of stand-out, in my reading of the Bible.  Secondly, he urges agreement and mutual giving. Obligations are equal.  Standing for both parties, equal.  

Not surprisingly, there was the rhetoric about it being better not to marry (though he explicitly said it was fine to marry).  On closer examination of this, I was surprised to see it as revolutionary in the way I didn't think Paul could be where women were concerned.


A lot of the first wave feminists' complaints were that women were expected to marry.  A woman in many ancient (and even in some of today's) cultures, a woman was supposed to be either socially defined by her husband or father. First wave feminists spend a lot of time writing that a woman is capable of things beyond housekeeping and child-rearing.  Paul specifically tells women, just as he specifically told men, that if they can morally restrain themselves, they can do a lot more work for God.  I'm not a Bible scholar by any stretch of any imagination, but I think he was being pretty straightforward.


I'm not clearing all my beefs with Paul, but I feel as if I do owe him a public apology for not seeing this before. Apostle Paul, maybe you were not a misogynist after all.  I am sorry. 


I am, however, still not ready to re-read Romans yet.