In Reply to: preachings of paul posted by porceleindoll on July 06, 2003 at 19:16:37:
About Paul, Berg thought Paul was often the absolute pits! And a lot of exers who still haven't worked all the Berg out of their brains think the same thing. But I agree with you that Paul was a radical. It was he who almost singlehandedly made sure that the gospel preached all over the world was grace and not old Jewish works and rituals. If James and the church in Jerusalem had been allowed to export the circumcision-based Christianity they'd been practicing amongst Jewish believers. So Paul was a great liberator.
He was following not only Jewish traditions about women in a lower place, but the established beliefs of the Greco-Roman society as well. I don't know if you'd say that some of what he said was "outdated," but I do beleive that some of it, especially his comments about women, have to be understood in the cultural context of his day, and were probably necessary in that day. For eg. I've heard that the thing about women "covering their heads" was a necessary social thing. Why? Beats me. I haven't studied that in depth.
About following every jot and tittle of the entire Bible, or even every jot and tittle just of the New Testament, I think the inherent danger of that is that it breeds stiff, legalistic intolerance. People can get so heated on the absolute importance of following tiny unimportant details that it causes division and intolerance even of other sincere Christians. So I think the basics and clear things are important, but that loving God and our fellow man have to be the biggies.
Another Mark Twain quote: "It's not the things that I DON'T understand in the Bible that bother me. It's the things I DO understand that bother me." My take on that quote is that I don't need to sweat over the small stuff I don't understand, but the big stuff about truly loving my neighbor can be hard to live.