Paulus and Modernity
What does it mean to live with faith in a world where faith is so often misunderstood, seen as extraneous, outdated, or irrelevant? What is the purpose in all this? Let’s ask a question which lingers in the back of so many of our minds: What is the purpose of being brought up in a world that tries so hard to kill your faith and your connection to God? If we have faith, we must understand that this all exists to serve the greater glory of God, and beyond our own understandings, we must be humble in this reality first and understand that we will not see to the end, and we won’t see all the next best turns or even their premises, for we are limited.
In an era dominated by a reason which places man above all other things yet no different from all other things, our Apostle Paulus’s message is both a radical yet necessary departure. He did not offer a system of beliefs to be mastered, but a way of winning through service to all in life as truly lived in reflection of Christ. His letters alone built discipleship, his words moved whole foundations in a call to follow Christ not in simple deed but in a deep faithful relationship, a trust beyond any other.
Consider the passage in Philippians 2:3-4: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” This is no passive instruction, fellow God-beloved, it is an active command to reorient all priorities into alignment with God’s propriety. In a world that worships egoism, celebrity gossip, personality cults, and self-promotion, Paulus’s message is the one and only simple yet perfectly cohesive alternative: to live for others, to serve others, and to win them to God.
How does this apply to the modernity and this current fraudulent system which tries to disarm His beloved? For those who have spent years drowning in all things against faith, Paulus’s letters are not simple, but an extremely arduous uphill battle to be fought. They do not promise easy answers, and he preaches the difficult path yet nobody does anything difficult without tremendous amounts of motivation. Paulus offers us a framework for grappling with life’s mysteries in a way which had never been known to many, for which results are incredible, overwhelming, and everything wealthy materialists should wish to destroy in their ignorance. The apostle’s own struggles, his doubts, his failures, and his moments of despair tinge every single word of his teachings, colouring them in experience which was purely human yet also perfectly dedicated completely.
Paulus’s emphasis on “living by faith” (Romans 1:17) challenges the modern obsession with certainty. His theology is about not knowing everything, and trusting in the goodness of the greatest. The human mind seeks meaning, but often gets lost in the noise of daily life. Paulus suggests constant prayer to find purpose in the mundane, transforming all routines, no matter how small, into devotion. Doubt is something to be used for us, not against our connection to our living origin and source of our ‘energetic’ beings as creation in creation. The point of all that happens around us is due in part to our loss of this basic underlying experientially structural knowledge.
How does someone who has spent years doubting suddenly ‘believe’? How can a Christian help accelerate such processes? This is something of the whole point in everything going wrong today.