Indeed. How strange it is that Paul places love above the law while also excoriating sexual license in general and homosexuality in particular. I can't help but feel sorry for Paul, and then I see so much of myself in Paul that I wonder what use it is to raise my voice against him. I had a similar experience when I first learned about the androgyne Akhenaten and his new religion. I though to myself, "I would do that". As a believer in metempsychosis, sometimes I feel that I am struggling with my past selves as much as anything else, addressing the errors of millennia. Or perhaps I am just making new errors for some future avatar to lay bare.
It's like Paul recognizes the significance of the sexual problem. Of all the ways in which the human exists in the physical world, sex is the only biological function that requires the participation of another human. It therefore takes on a moral component, i.e., enters the realm of religion. To the extent religion has anything to say about sex, it is through the rational expression of love as a motive force. And love between two humans is a wholly religious phenomenon. The physical act itself remains outside the religious realm, that is, remains in the scientific realm.
It's easy to see how Religion and Science get themselves mixed up concerning sex. Eternity in Hell for masturbation and God hates fags are one side of the same perversity as, on the other side, Don Giovanni, prostitution, sexual objectification, sexual slavery, and, maybe, rape.
This is another good example of how destructive it is for humanity to have this idea of magic God books. Paul failed to distinguish between these two completely different aspects of the same event, and 2000 years later we are still trying to pound the square peg of God's Word into the round hole of Reality.
You *are* correcting the errors of millennia. And so am I. And it is a new religion.
Interesting sleuthing and analysis! I grew up in the church and I don't ever recall Paul's physical deformity (or whatever) being highlighted. The notion of "flesh" was always equated to human "effort" and the "carnal" mind, as opposed to being "lead by the Spirit" (whatever that means). Whether or not Paul ever existed (doubtful), another thing that occurs to me just now is that his "conversion" from "Saul the tax collector" to "Paul" might have been insincere... a CONversion, the platform from which he could misdirect and he could con his readers into giving away their power, etc.
Paul's "thorn in the flesh" could have been his homosexuality, which he sought mightily to suppress.
Indeed. How strange it is that Paul places love above the law while also excoriating sexual license in general and homosexuality in particular. I can't help but feel sorry for Paul, and then I see so much of myself in Paul that I wonder what use it is to raise my voice against him. I had a similar experience when I first learned about the androgyne Akhenaten and his new religion. I though to myself, "I would do that". As a believer in metempsychosis, sometimes I feel that I am struggling with my past selves as much as anything else, addressing the errors of millennia. Or perhaps I am just making new errors for some future avatar to lay bare.
It's like Paul recognizes the significance of the sexual problem. Of all the ways in which the human exists in the physical world, sex is the only biological function that requires the participation of another human. It therefore takes on a moral component, i.e., enters the realm of religion. To the extent religion has anything to say about sex, it is through the rational expression of love as a motive force. And love between two humans is a wholly religious phenomenon. The physical act itself remains outside the religious realm, that is, remains in the scientific realm.
It's easy to see how Religion and Science get themselves mixed up concerning sex. Eternity in Hell for masturbation and God hates fags are one side of the same perversity as, on the other side, Don Giovanni, prostitution, sexual objectification, sexual slavery, and, maybe, rape.
This is another good example of how destructive it is for humanity to have this idea of magic God books. Paul failed to distinguish between these two completely different aspects of the same event, and 2000 years later we are still trying to pound the square peg of God's Word into the round hole of Reality.
You *are* correcting the errors of millennia. And so am I. And it is a new religion.
Hail brother, onward and upward.
Interesting sleuthing and analysis! I grew up in the church and I don't ever recall Paul's physical deformity (or whatever) being highlighted. The notion of "flesh" was always equated to human "effort" and the "carnal" mind, as opposed to being "lead by the Spirit" (whatever that means). Whether or not Paul ever existed (doubtful), another thing that occurs to me just now is that his "conversion" from "Saul the tax collector" to "Paul" might have been insincere... a CONversion, the platform from which he could misdirect and he could con his readers into giving away their power, etc.