Chapter 15 - Paul the Persecutor

Maybe it's just me - but the way Drane starts this chapter off feels like an action flick to me. I can hear the husky, male voice of a voice over announcer now:

"In a day when Christians began to spread like a bad itch - one man was willing and able to do whatever it took to stop this vermin! With the weight of the Sanhedrin behind him, and the authority of the proconsul giving him a ticket to do whatever it took - he's the bounty hunter that can't be stopped. Christians have seen what happens when this one's out to get you - run to Damascus, but you can't hide. It's Paul - the Persecutor! In theatres everywhere January 25. Rated PG for some violence."

Alright, I did say that maybe it was just me - but I had to get that out. Seriously though, I think of aul, and his conversion in the same way that I began to articulate about the last chapter. All that Paul had been through, all that he had learned, all that he had done - all that he was made him the perfect person to be the "Apostle Paul." Drane looks at Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus and calls it one of the most important moments "in the entire history of the early church." (p. 282) And how! Paul was known for being the determined, and religiously determined man who would do anything it took to bring down Christians and their faith. We don't have to stretch our minds to hard to think about what that looks like in our own time. I think of young men today, whose own convictions drive then to violently suicidal lengths to destroy those who bring a voice against their beliefs. In some ways, Saul of Tarsus was similar to these type of fellows.

He had stood by, at the very least, the day that Stephen was martyred. I don't recall having heard the perspective that Drane shared before - that Paul may have betrayed his sympathies to the Christian movement, by standing back during Stephen's death. And, it just might be true. Perhaps Paul was one of the most conflicted individuals going at that time. Maybe it was the whirlwind going on within him that drove him to bring such storm into the lives of those he chased. Paul couldn't have been surprised when the Jerusalem church was afraid of him, and suspicious of his motives - he had earned that "respect." But who else, but one who was such an enemy, could after having seen and knwon the truth become such an advocate. As pain drove him to deliver pain in others, freedom would now do the same.