You take the words of Saul who changed his name to Paul, even though roughly half of his epistles, the “books” alleged to have been written by Paul were not written by him. I prefer to follow the words attributed to Jesus.
As I believe I pointed out, I have read the Bible since age 12, several translations of it several times and the NT many more times and majored in Religious Studies (not theology which seems to be where you draw your beliefs from) in college so you have no need to tell me to “read or study” anything. I learn something new every time I reread any portion of the NRSV.
“Paul”, whose motives I’ve always doubted since he didn’t write his first epistle, letter, ‘Book’ until more than 30 years after Jesus died and he never met Jesus while he lived. And roughly half of the letters/books attributed to Paul weren’t written by him because it was common literary practice at the time to place the name of a well-known individual on what a person wrote and believes to be important but would never be known without a big-time “name” on it.
And I’m sure that you believe the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John (and before you jump on it, yes I listed those out of order because Mark is the oldest of the four) were written by those four Apostles although they were written between between the early 70s AD and early 100s AD so unless the original Apostles managed to live extremely long lives, and we know that Peter, among others, didn’t, and it’s highly unlikely, miraculous even that those four Apostles were so old but still of sound enough mind to write those stories, then they didn’t write them. I certainly don’t want to shake your faith but it should be placed in what Jesus taught, not in writings by a man who founded what became the “Christian” Church. And I mean no insult to Paul, despite the fact that he worked for the Elders, Jews in Jerusalem, avidly tracking down and persecuting in people who honestly tried to live the Way that Jesus taught to live. And enjoyed doing it. What is it that Jesus said about good fruit from a bad tree, that it can’t happen?
Once again, the single Commandment Jesus said must be followed it to love God and love your neighbor. He told no one to go out and judge their neighbor, but to love them. It’s Paul’s writings that encourage people to judge their neighbors. Jesus would simply turn his back on the Church, then and more so today’s. He did not want to be worshipped and definitely not considered the equal of God and I believe, based on my long and deep reading and studies and formal studies, that he would be appalled to know a religion was built upon lies about his teachings. And I suppose there is only one honest way to close this out:
The single Commandment Jesus said must be followed it to love God and love your neighbor. It’s just that simple. Love God, love your neighbor or you don’t love God.
