A long time ago, after I graduated from college, I worked as a Rehabilitation Counselor for the New Jersey Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired. There was a counselor who mentored me there, a wise man named Bill Hines who was blind. One day Bill asked me a provocative question. “There’s a guy I know who’s a bastard, a real son of a bitch. One day he goes blind. What’s he now?” I fumbled for an answer, muttering something like, “Well, the experience probably made him into a kinder… better person.” Bill smirked, “Bullshit, he’s a blind bastard.” Bill believed that human nature is so deeply ingrained that it’s almost impossible for us to change. I thought about Bill recently, during a discussion in Bible study about the conversion of the Apostle Paul, when he briefly became, in Bill’s words, a “blind bastard.”
Before his conversion, Paul by all accounts was a real bastard. He mercilessly persecuted the followers of Jesus. Once, as recounted in Acts, he held the cloaks of the people stoning Stephen, the first Christian martyr. He didn’t cast any stones himself, but he was clearly complicit. Paul admitted how sinful he was in the Epistles on many occasions. In Timothy he wrote, “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man….” Deeply ashamed of his actions, Paul was only able to gain peace and forgiveness after his conversion by asking for God’s mercy.
Let’s turn to the account of the conversion of Paul in Acts 9: 1-19. Paul, still going by his given name Saul, is “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” He receives authorization from the High Priest in Jerusalem to persecute the followers of Christ in Damascus. On the road to Damascus a bright light flashes before him. He falls to the ground and hears a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He replies, “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus,” is the reply. When he gets up, Paul realizes he’s blind. He would remain so for three days.
The plot shifts to Damascus. Jesus instructs his follower Ananias in a vision to go to Saul and cure him of his blindness. However, Saul’s reputation proceeded him. Ananias is reluctant to heed Jesus’s request, replying, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem.” Reassured by Jesus, he goes to Saul and lays his hands on him, saying that the Lord has sent him “so that you can regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” The scales removed from his eyes, Paul rises to his feet and is subsequently baptized.
Neat and clean, or so it seems. An evil man impervious to redemption is converted by Jesus in a highly dramatic fashion. One miraculous event turns him into the man who would become the apostle of Jesus most responsible for the spread of Christianity and the creation of its theology. Paul’s conversion, therefore, appears to break what I like to call the Bill Hines’s law of the immutability of human nature. A quintessential “blind bastard” turns into good guy. God surely has the power to do whatever he pleases. Interfering with natural laws much more scientifically grounded than Bill’s common sensical one is easy pickings for God. If he really wanted to, Jesus could turn a profoundly evil person into a moral man of faith.
But why would Jesus do that? Would God unconditionally forgive a bloodthirsty tyrant, a serial killer, or a child abuser if they hadn’t confessed their sins, fallen on their knees, and begged for redemption? Is the Lord in the business of granting what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls “easy grace”? Even after a vision of Christ, would a truly evil person be able to sustain his conversion? I doubt it.
I believe that Paul was not a fundamentally evil man before his conversion. Instead, he was a seriously and dangerously misguided one. To understand this, we must understand that he was above all a Pharisee, or as he described himself in Acts, “A Pharisee descended from Pharisees.” The Pharisees get a bad rap in the Gospels. They are the straight men and Jesus plays off them. They try to trap Jesus in debate, but he makes them look foolish at best. More often they come across as pedantic nitpickers that hypocritically follow the letter rather than spirit of the law. I’m sure there were Pharisees like the ones portrayed in the Gospels, but to focus only on them misses the big picture.
The Pharisees came from all classes of society. What united them was the desire to be good Jews. That meant observing the laws spelled out in the Torah as faithfully as possible. But that wasn’t all. The Pharisees understood that as society changed, they needed to rethink and reinterpret the Law. This approach led them to a growing abhorrence of taking life. Over time they would greatly reduce the number of capital offenses punishable by death. Pharisees were often the ones who spoke the truth to authority, bravely standing up against the excesses of the Hasmonaean kings that ruled Judaea before the Roman conquest. Later, the tyrant Herod the Great would view the Pharisees as a major nuisance. In addition, they had a broader theological perspective than the Sadducees, the Jewish elite, who only believed what was specifically written in the Hebrew scriptures. One example is that they rejected the belief in resurrection. The Pharisees did not. In short, by the standards of the time, the Pharisees were one of the most socially and religiously progressive groups in Jewish society. They were the early exponents of the Rabbinic tradition.
Not only was Paul a Pharisee. He was also an exceptionally learned one. He studied in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, one of the leading scholars of the day. Paul’s great erudition is conspicuous throughout his Epistles. Both his deep-seated commitment to Judaism and the caliber of his intellect are the key to understanding his conversion. Paul was keenly perceptive. It must have been becoming more and more clear to him that the teachings of Jesus redefined the fundamental core of Judaism. They searched for the true meaning of the law and not its technicalities. Jesus also addressed theological issues outside the traditional boundaries of Judaism, which focused on the law and the temple. He explored good, evil and the power of redemption and grace. To a mind like Paul’s, these new ideas, or reshaping of old ones, must have been dangerously alluring. Note that even before his conversion he was a man of deep faith. When Paul was blinded by a flash of light on the Road to Damascus, he knew the voice he heard was the Lord’s, but in that instant he learned his name. Jesus.
But how do we explain the depth of Paul’s anger against the early followers of Christ? He not only opposed them like other Pharisees but actively persecuted them with a maniacal zeal. The High Priest didn’t order Paul to Damascus. Paul actively requested the assignment. To understand his disproportional reaction to Jesus’s teachings, we must delve into Paul’s psychology. If he had allowed himself to embrace Jesus, it would have literally turned his world upside down. He was an observant Jew, which he took very seriously, and as a Pharisee, he was part of a proud tradition. His whole being and prestige was embodied in his status as a defender of Judaism. Paul needed to fight this existential assault on his world with all his might. The more his subconscious sensed the truth in Jesus’s teachings the more he hated its messengers. Therefore, his persecution of them became a form of psychological projection. His anger was aimed at the followers of Jesus not because they were wrong, but because he knew they were right.
When Jesus spoke to Paul it was miraculous, but the miracle wasn’t that Christ instantaneously transformed him from a sinful unbeliever into a fervent follower. Rather, Jesus liberated Paul, allowing him to practice what he already knew in his heart of hearts to be true. Besides that, the miraculous event on the road to Damascus provided justification for his abrupt about face. My old friend Bill turned out to be right after all. Paul was not the unbelieving bastard he thought himself to be on the road to Damascus. He wasn’t a “blind bastard” after all when he briefly lost his sight. Paul was a good but troubled man subconsciously seeking salvation.