Cheryl Schatz

to continue, Kristen asked:

Another question is, why did God allow such a personal letter from Paul to Timothy, including “inside” references to people only they would understand about, to become canon? I’m reading a book on the history of women in the church, and apparently this passage has been misunderstood almost since Paul wrote it, as a prohibition on all women teaching all men. It’s puzzling to me.

I believe that God allowed this because there is so much that we can learn through this situation. I praise God that He has kept the names of people who were deceived from being recorded for all of church history. We also learn that deceived people are still capable of being saved and that Jesus died for even them. In fact there are so many things in this letter that I hardly know where to start. Another very important thing is that Paul showed us in 1 Timothy 1 that God gives mercy to those who have been deceived and that Paul himself had received mercy having been in the same position.

Paul was a person who has often been misunderstood, but he is an extremely deep person so that when we come to understand him, there is an amazing amount of things that we can learn from him if we work hard in the Scriptures. I am glad that there are Scriptures that are not just “milk” but real meat.

I also think that our prejudices have kept us from understanding Paul but God has picked this time to bring us to the point that we can understand Paul with the amount of Biblical tools that are available to the common person that were not readily available years ago. I believe it is in God’s timing for Paul to be understood.