Paul
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 1:36 pm
Okay,i could use some help understanding Paul, for the most part i can get everything else ive read in the Bible to make sense, then when i come to things that Paul says, most of it doesnt make any sense to me, and often times it seems to go against the rest of the Bible to me.... here are some of the issues that confuse me....
in Genesis it clearly talks about Adam and Eve eating fruit/food, in Revelations it talks about the water of life, as well as the tree(s) of life which have different fruit for each moneth of the year i believe, i believe that this hints at the fact taht we would eat this fruit and stuff, the point is that to me th Bible says that in the beginning and in the end we will eat food, yet in i think its Corinthians, Paul says that food is for the stomach, the stomach for food, but he then says that God has no permanent purpose for either, which i dont think that goes along with the rest of the Bible, Heaven, is basically God newly restoring his perfect creation, aka the Garden of Eden, except this time of course no sin will occur, but its God making new his creation and restoring it to the perfection he created it to have and desires for it to have, and sin will be gone forever, eating food is a part of God's design, Adam and Eve at food before sin, Jesus ate food after being ressurected, and i believe Revelations points to us eating food in Heaven, even if it didnt, i believe that it is a part of God's creation, and is of course not sinful, so that we will still eat, so why then does Paul say that it has no permanent purpose? or does this mean more that like in Heaven we wont eat because if we dont we die? does it just mean we eat more just cuz we like to? i dunno, with my thoughts on how everything is, i do not htink God messed anything up when he created everything, plus i dont think he does anything without a purpose, plus i fully bleieve that we had the choice in the Garden of wether to sin or not, and that if we had not sinned, i fully believe we would have lived in the Garden of Eden/on this earth, forever with God in perfection, but the point is we did choose to sin and brought up this earth as it is now, that God will have to remake, so God created us to eat food, and the way the Bible even talks about it, it sounds like there is acutal food adn drink that helps enable us to live forever, the Garden of Eden
and Revelations both refer to there being specific food and drink of life that we will use to live forever in paradise with God so i dont understand why Paul then says that there is no permanent purpose for it
i do not believe God created anything wihtout a purpose, or that he created anything simply to destroy it
all things that God created were in the Garden of Eden, and will be in Heaven, except for maybe the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which really is just the ability to sin... and as we have already eaten from that tree we wouldnt need to eat from it again if thats how it was
so i ujust dont get what Paul means, because according to the rest of the Bible, God has a purpose for eating
so why does Paul decide that he doesnt, even though the rest of the Bible tells us that he does
atleast thats how i see it
1st Corinthians 6:12 is where the part with Paul saying food has no purpose starts, my Bible doesnt actually label each and every verse, so i cant tel you exactly which verse it ends at, but that is where it starts
i mean honestly the more and more i read of Paul's stuff the less i think he really knows about God's actual plan
because most of what he says doesnt seem to go along with like waht Jesus said and alot of other things in the Bible
i like that at some points Paul says straight out this is my opinion and not from God and says his views about marriage and stuff, but he also says that he thinks what he is saying is correct in the views of the Spirit, and being in the Bible i think most people tend to think that the things he says are true, but all i see is that for the most part the things he says contradict alot of other things in the Bible, maybe i just dont understand how he means them, which is why im asking for help, because at this point it seems im headed toward deciding that Paul clearly knows nothing of God's plan, that he didnt even read the rest of the scriptures, and that all he is doing is trying to confuse people, and of course that doesnt seem like a good thing for me to think... but i cant make sense out of Paul
another thing is that Jesus says to do things for God and not just for recognition of others, Jesus says that we should pray silently when we are with oursleves, or soemthign similiar to that, as opposed tow alking around teh streets praying very loudly just so that others can see that we pray, yet Paul decides to go into a lot of detail in first corintihians about how Paul is so deserving of a reward, and that we are supposed to give him tons of material things, he says that he would never take this reward, yet he still makes sure that we know that he deserves a huge reward from us... shouldnt his reward be doing God's will and helping his fellow man to grow closer to God? why then at all should he be telling us that he deserves this reward, to me that doesnt seem to be a Christian thing to do, and seems to go against Jesus' teachings of not doing things just for others to acknowledge that we do it, Paul clearly just wants us to acknowledge that he deserves a huge reward from us, but that he is so kool that he wont take this reward... to me going by Jesus' teachings, even if he does deserve this reward, it is something he should keep to himself and he should just be glad to be doing God's will, rather then being stuck on the fact that he deserves a huge reward and material things from us...
another thing is this : Paul says that you shouldnt change anything about yourself or how you are when God calls you to his work, if your uncircumcized he says dont go circumsize urself and such... but no body was circumisized until God told them to do taht... so God clearly didnt want them to stay how they were, he wanted them to go and make themselves circumsized...
sorry for the probably confusing way in saying all of this, but hopefully you can see what im having trouble with and hopefully you can help me to better understand this.. its just that i can almost make the Bible make sense, adn tehn Paul starts talking and seems to throw away everything else that the rest of the Bible has taught me to believe... thank you for your help
in Genesis it clearly talks about Adam and Eve eating fruit/food, in Revelations it talks about the water of life, as well as the tree(s) of life which have different fruit for each moneth of the year i believe, i believe that this hints at the fact taht we would eat this fruit and stuff, the point is that to me th Bible says that in the beginning and in the end we will eat food, yet in i think its Corinthians, Paul says that food is for the stomach, the stomach for food, but he then says that God has no permanent purpose for either, which i dont think that goes along with the rest of the Bible, Heaven, is basically God newly restoring his perfect creation, aka the Garden of Eden, except this time of course no sin will occur, but its God making new his creation and restoring it to the perfection he created it to have and desires for it to have, and sin will be gone forever, eating food is a part of God's design, Adam and Eve at food before sin, Jesus ate food after being ressurected, and i believe Revelations points to us eating food in Heaven, even if it didnt, i believe that it is a part of God's creation, and is of course not sinful, so that we will still eat, so why then does Paul say that it has no permanent purpose? or does this mean more that like in Heaven we wont eat because if we dont we die? does it just mean we eat more just cuz we like to? i dunno, with my thoughts on how everything is, i do not htink God messed anything up when he created everything, plus i dont think he does anything without a purpose, plus i fully bleieve that we had the choice in the Garden of wether to sin or not, and that if we had not sinned, i fully believe we would have lived in the Garden of Eden/on this earth, forever with God in perfection, but the point is we did choose to sin and brought up this earth as it is now, that God will have to remake, so God created us to eat food, and the way the Bible even talks about it, it sounds like there is acutal food adn drink that helps enable us to live forever, the Garden of Eden
and Revelations both refer to there being specific food and drink of life that we will use to live forever in paradise with God so i dont understand why Paul then says that there is no permanent purpose for it
i do not believe God created anything wihtout a purpose, or that he created anything simply to destroy it
all things that God created were in the Garden of Eden, and will be in Heaven, except for maybe the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which really is just the ability to sin... and as we have already eaten from that tree we wouldnt need to eat from it again if thats how it was
so i ujust dont get what Paul means, because according to the rest of the Bible, God has a purpose for eating
so why does Paul decide that he doesnt, even though the rest of the Bible tells us that he does
atleast thats how i see it
1st Corinthians 6:12 is where the part with Paul saying food has no purpose starts, my Bible doesnt actually label each and every verse, so i cant tel you exactly which verse it ends at, but that is where it starts
i mean honestly the more and more i read of Paul's stuff the less i think he really knows about God's actual plan
because most of what he says doesnt seem to go along with like waht Jesus said and alot of other things in the Bible
i like that at some points Paul says straight out this is my opinion and not from God and says his views about marriage and stuff, but he also says that he thinks what he is saying is correct in the views of the Spirit, and being in the Bible i think most people tend to think that the things he says are true, but all i see is that for the most part the things he says contradict alot of other things in the Bible, maybe i just dont understand how he means them, which is why im asking for help, because at this point it seems im headed toward deciding that Paul clearly knows nothing of God's plan, that he didnt even read the rest of the scriptures, and that all he is doing is trying to confuse people, and of course that doesnt seem like a good thing for me to think... but i cant make sense out of Paul
another thing is that Jesus says to do things for God and not just for recognition of others, Jesus says that we should pray silently when we are with oursleves, or soemthign similiar to that, as opposed tow alking around teh streets praying very loudly just so that others can see that we pray, yet Paul decides to go into a lot of detail in first corintihians about how Paul is so deserving of a reward, and that we are supposed to give him tons of material things, he says that he would never take this reward, yet he still makes sure that we know that he deserves a huge reward from us... shouldnt his reward be doing God's will and helping his fellow man to grow closer to God? why then at all should he be telling us that he deserves this reward, to me that doesnt seem to be a Christian thing to do, and seems to go against Jesus' teachings of not doing things just for others to acknowledge that we do it, Paul clearly just wants us to acknowledge that he deserves a huge reward from us, but that he is so kool that he wont take this reward... to me going by Jesus' teachings, even if he does deserve this reward, it is something he should keep to himself and he should just be glad to be doing God's will, rather then being stuck on the fact that he deserves a huge reward and material things from us...
another thing is this : Paul says that you shouldnt change anything about yourself or how you are when God calls you to his work, if your uncircumcized he says dont go circumsize urself and such... but no body was circumisized until God told them to do taht... so God clearly didnt want them to stay how they were, he wanted them to go and make themselves circumsized...
sorry for the probably confusing way in saying all of this, but hopefully you can see what im having trouble with and hopefully you can help me to better understand this.. its just that i can almost make the Bible make sense, adn tehn Paul starts talking and seems to throw away everything else that the rest of the Bible has taught me to believe... thank you for your help
thank you 
) . Even Peter (who was an Apostle) wrote in 2 Peter 3:15-16 that in Paul's letters were "some things hard to understand". You might think that if Peter couldn't get it, then what hope is there for us? Paul answers this question himself when he wrote to the Ephesian brethren (Eph. 3:4) and said "when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ."