Paul Biggest Mistake?

Paul is one of the most significant people in the New Testament. His work, writings, and influence shaped the church. Yet he isn’t without faults. Not just, like all of us, he sinned but even in the decisions he made, sometimes he chose poorly.

For example, in Acts 15 Paul and Barnabas are considering a follow-up visit to the places where they previously established churches. Yet when it comes to who will go, they can’t agree. Barnabas wants to take John Mark. Paul doesn’t. Since John Mark quit on them the first time, Paul thinks he will again. Paul’s so adamant he and Barnabas end up going their separate ways.

It seems, however, that Paul was wrong about John Mark. Mark goes on to be an important worker in the cause of Christ. Paul himself will later say Mark was “useful to me for service” (2^nd Timothy 4:11). Mark made something of himself.

However, let’s consider how Paul might have been ‘wrong’, it might not have been wrong in what he did. We are not sure how this disagreement affected Mark. It might have been the catalyst for his improved responsibility. It might have forced him into a different role in the work that was more suited to his personality and talents. Paul’s dismissal of John Mark may have helped to prove Paul wrong.

You see sometimes we make choices that don’t seem to be in hindsight the right ones. Yet they may help us get to the right places. We make mistakes but we can learn from them. We can misjudge a situation but we can grow and change our minds. What we thought at one point wasn’t right may not be later. Mark may grow up. Paul may mellow out. Barnabas may have had time to instruct and shape. Things change and they may change the way we think about them.

Mistakes are only permeant if we don’t learn and grow from them.

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog