I’ll be honest: I have a hard time warming to Paul.
That isn’t to say I don’t like his letters. In fact, the Pauline epistles contain some of my favorite verses in Scripture. But I have always struggled with Paul himself. I find his tone and his style and his approach at times to be, frankly, challenging. Wise, yes. Exhorting, yes. Thoughtful and crafted with deliberate attention to audience, yes. Spirit-moved? Absolutely.
And yet he’s always just hit me cold.
I’d rather read Daniel, in all his honest eagerness. Or John, aflame with love for Christ. I am drawn to Peter’s zeal. I love the naked vulnerability of the Psalmist. But Paul is…Paul. I’ve always read him, in spite of my best efforts to the contrary, as staid and slightly smug. A little cold, in spite of his clearly evident love for Christ and the church.
And then, as a part of the progression of my career, I moved into leadership.
Mostly, to get me through the work day, I read through Proverbs. Talk about your practical, hit-the-ground-running advice. And it has served me well, the reminders about when to speak and when to be silent, how to be behave in difficult situations, how to handle your daily affairs.
But recently, as a part of my daily Scripture reading, I was working my way through the Pauline letters and it just hit me: Paul is having to manage people. And I’ve always known this, except now I understand it in a new way, and it has entirely reshaped my understanding of Paul.
Most people think of leadership as making decisions on things, executing vision and direction. There’s some of that. But it is also about making appropriate use of resources, dealing with the egos and desires of different individuals and groups, understanding and managing cultural contexts, and executing decisions and dreams not in the boardroom but in the everyday, messy lives of actual human beings.
And of course I know it’s work to run a church. Anyone who has served in or grown up around a church knows that. But the early church was its own distinct animal, still forming shape and growing, and had its own set of distinct demands. The early believers not only had to contend with external threats—martyrdom, persecution—but internal ones as well.
In particular, the church was figuring out—well, how to be a church. Paul and the apostles were figuring out, on the Spirit-inspired fly, how to get what was necessary to who needed it most; how to deal with false disciples and backbiters popping up and making false accusations or tempting believers into various heresies; how to run the day-to-day administration of faith communities that were growing larger and more diverse by the hour; how to handle believers trying to police other believers.
This is difficult, difficult work even in the best of circumstances.
And knowing this, I start to see Paul’s humanity in surprising places. In 2 Corinthians 11, frustrated by counterfeit apostles influencing the church, he issues a scathing commentary:
“For [you seem willing to allow it] if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted. You tolerate all this beautifully” (verse 4, AMP).
He points out, irate, that he has “robbed other churches” of their financial support to minister to those in Corinth apparently free of charge; he reiterates the Christlike behaviors and approach that differentiate him from the false prophets the church has apparently accepted. And then, in a delightful fit about the same prophets:
“Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they [self-proclaimed] servants of Christ?—I am speaking as if I were out of my mind—I am more so [for I exceed them]; with far more labors, with far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, and often in danger of death” (verse 22-23, AMP).
Recently, I watched a leader I know and admire enter a meeting and spend two hours of his life that he will never get back advocating for the people who work beneath him. In this meeting, full of other leaders, he fought for scraps and spent every last scrap of his capital on doing it. He gave up pet projects, initiatives he cared about, everything—all to get as much for his people as he could.
And then he returned to his department, where the people who work for him immediately fell into discontented grumbling that he hadn’t been able to procure more for them.
I’m sure they had reason to be disappointed. But it’s incredible to watch a leader fight and care so spectacularly about people, only for their response to be ingratitude or indifference. And we’re watching it play out in this chapter: Paul’s care and affection and desperate efforts on behalf of the church (including his suffering for it) being dismissed as somehow not enough in favor of apparently more palatable false disciples and false teachings.
You can feel the tension in that letter: his frustration and weariness, his at-the-end-of-his-rope-ness, and yet the affection and hope still there, his hope that those reading will listen and respond. There’s love here. Love amidst the practical realities of people being people. Struggling through my own experiences in the early days of leadership, I’ve never felt more seen.
And so what has humanized Paul for me is, curiously, his zeal. It’s the same zeal I used to find off-putting, wanting a few more warm and fuzzies rather than endless exhortations. When I read that zeal as the desperate writings of a man on fire for God and desperate to build up the church to the utmost in his short lifespan, I can see vulnerability and tenderness there.
My very favorite Paul story is from Acts 20. Paul is gathered with the believers on Sunday and starts talking…and keeps talking. He “kept on talking longer and longer,” the Scripture notes—Paul is getting his chops busted in the middle of the word of God!—and then a young guy named Eutychus falls asleep right in the middle and falls out a window and dies.
Paul goes down himself, comforts everyone, resurrects Eutychus, and then comes back up to keep talking.
I love this story. I love it because it’s so human and silly and weird—and full of godly love. I love that the writer is clearly poking at Paul for being long-winded. I love how the story shows that Paul’s long-windedness comes from love and community, from the joy of sharing in fellowship with believers. I love that Paul seems not to “count time,” seems willing to drain the last of his own mental and emotional resources for others. I love how gentle Paul is with someone who suffered from, apparently, not being able to draw from the same well of energy. I love that in this passage, as in all his letters, Paul is getting in as much as he possible can out of love for God and love for the church.
And all of this just serves as a reminder to me that Scripture meets us where we are. That in our different phases of life, different parts of the Word emerge to shape us and grow us. For my entire life, I kept as my favorite Bible verse Romans 8:31: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” So much has happened since then, and so much has changed—but here am I, meeting Paul anew, thinking ah, I get it now.
May it always remain so.
Samaritan's Song 