Is columnist more astute than Bible’s great apostle?

I can’t recall anyone, even the loudest of those who hate the Bible, saying that the Apostle Paul, whose letters comprise a large portion of the New Testament, “didn’t see clearly.” I am referring to Leslie Belden’s July 11 column, “Christians must seek equality.”

Belden says that although Paul regained his physical sight after his encounter (“according to him”) with Christ on the Damascus Road, his “worldview wasn’t completely changed because the world around him remained the same.” Paul “didn’t see clearly” because he ignored the “basic issues of injustice in his culture pertaining to slavery and women,” Belden says.

In the 1st century AD in which Paul lived and served, slavery was virtually omnipresent. Slaves of every ethnicity were everywhere to be seen. Most of them were “whites.” The historian Edward Gibbon said the population of Rome at that time was as high as two-thirds slaves. Some indeed were cultured, well-educated and valued as teachers of the children of wealthy Romans; others were mistreated, starved, worked to death. Paul was well aware of this, and often referred to them in his letters, advising them, encouraging them to use every means available to gain their freedom. A runaway slave, Onesimos, had come to Rome and providentially had spoken with Paul, who was in prison. Paul led the young man to faith in Christ, and sent him back with a letter to his master. He asked the slave’s owner to receive him back, not as a slave but as a brother, adding that “if he wronged you, or owes you anything, I will repay.” This small letter, Philemon, is preserved in your New Testament. I hope someone reading this will look it up.

It is true that Paul encouraged male leadership in the home and in the church. We all know that great numbers of children in our cities grow up with no father in the home, which contributes much to the problems facing us today. Paul had a godly love for women as for men. He prayed for and encouraged them, as shown in his letters. In the last part of his magnificent letter to the church in Rome (Chapter 16), he greets about 30 people in the church there by name, about a dozen of them being women. He was not the sexist, male, dominating women hater as he is sometimes presented.

But Paul was not called to revise society as such. God called him to preach Christ as Savior and Lord, not to get mixed up with political causes. And it is God’s word that changes people. Example: The man who gave us the song “Amazing Grace” was a man with a sinful past, a slave trader.

If Paul “didn’t see clearly,” does that not suggest Rev. Belden does? That she is more astute, more caring, a better person, if you will, than Paul? Thank you, Rev. Belden. I never expected to hear of someone more qualified than the great apostle to hear the words from our Lord: ”Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” HAROLD B. CHILTON

Fayetteville