Paul the Apostle is one of the most influential holy men in world history.
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that he founded Christianity. And unlike other men who formed their own religion (Mohammed, Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, even Siddhartha), Paul didn’t make it all about himself.
Paul was a man of ideas, not ego. He didn’t even think he was starting a new religion. He thought he was just the right kind of Jew, preparing people for the coming apocalypse.
Paul’s letters are a great read and offer a coherent worldview and moral code. Paul wasn’t inspired by the Gospels; it is the other way around. Paul’s letters were written first. And I think that the guys who wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were careful to make sure that Jesus stuck to Paul’s unique vision of personal morality.
Those who are eager to criticize Paul have fair reasons to do so. His ideas about the hierarchical relationship between husband and wife are childish and laughable. Paul clearly was not married and was spouting off about a subject that he knew nothing about.
But the cornerstones of his moral advice are as convincing and relevant as ever.
His vision of radical equality of all people – Gentile and Jew, freeman and slave – sounds more 19th Century than 1st Century.
Paul implored his readers to respect the government and avoid causing trouble. However, he urged us not to participate in worldly affairs or even pay attention to them. This is fantastic advice, especially in the age of pointless protests and nutty news cycles.
“Three things will last forever: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.” That sounds like common sense. And yet I can’t think of any other religion that explicitly cites love as man’s primary goal and virtue.
I think Paul was amazing. I would like to see a movie that explores his explosive brilliance and originality. “Saul: The Journey to Damascus” is definitely not it.
The story takes place approximately two years after Jesus’s execution. Paul (Kyle Schmid) is a fiery young man with a passion for hunting down the heretics who worship Jesus.
You will not be shocked when Paul has a sudden dramatic change of heart. Unfortunately, this happens with just a few minutes to go in the film. “Saul” doesn’t show us anything about Paul’s intrepid missionary work in Greece and Asia Minor and doesn’t give us any insight into what inspired his extraordinary writings.
That is a fundamental failure. Telling the story of Paul without the evangelizing and the letters is like making a movie about pilot Sully Sullenberger that ends just before he heroically landed that plane in the Hudson River.
Another problem is that this version of Paul doesn’t in any way jive with the man we meet in the bible.
Paul in the movie is a hunky charismatic tough guy. In scripture, Paul readily admits that he is unassuming in person but confident and forceful in his writing (he was Jewish, after all). And far from a tough guy, Paul actually boasts about his weakness and how he readily submitted to whippings, beatings, and arrests.
Maybe I’m being too hard on “Saul: The Journey to Damascus.” Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe when it comes to Paul, the book is always going to be better than the movie.