Lon Clay Hill

A number of my friends have much more problems with the "message" they attribute to Paul of Tarsus than to the message of Jesus of Nazareth. A good example of this is found in Paul's "It is better to marry than to burn with passion." Well, as a short statement I would agree that while it is "true" at a certain level of generality — these words do not inspire me in the least. Furthermore such overly general language can be very, very harmful in many instances. For the record, however, lurking just below the surface [or, worse, so outrageous that we ignore it …] is the fact that men such as Socrates and Ovid engaged in sex with slaves — slaves who were young boys or young girls whose mouths and anal openings were penetrated by their "masters". Furthermore, some of the young girls were pre-pubic. So, yes — I think that Paul had some wonderful things to say. He did, however, miss the mark on some issues — a problem exacerbated by the fact that several of the "Epistles" supposedly written by Paul were partially or completely written by later commentators of much lesser spiritual insight. Lon Clay Hill, Jr. [3 Nov 2020 CE]