We have all met one.
A ‘know-it-all’. They are easy to spot. You can hear them and they know how to use social media.
In our journey with the Apostle Paul in this letter to the Galatian churches we see his confession that he was a know-it-all.
“For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” Galatians 1:13-14
Paul was not an atheist before he met Christ. Damascus was not a conversion experience towards faith in God. He already had faith.
Paul believed he was doing the work of God when he persecuted the church.
In his Jewish history there were examples of God’s leaders clamping down on individuals and groups who were endangering their faith. So Elijah kills 850 false prophets because he didn’t want his community to be impacted by false Baal worship. Paul is doing the same. He is working for God. This Jesus who apparently was resurrected is a danger. His followers are even more dangerous. They need to be stopped. “God wants me to do it”. He was convincingly right and absolutely wrong. He had Scripture verses to back him up and yet he was blind (God actually did temporarily blind him).
He says he was extremely zealous and had advanced in Judaism. This was not only theoretical. This would have been in a commitment to prayer and almost like a jihad to stamp out all forms of blasphemy. He became violent to the point of persecuting those within what he describes as this ‘church of God’. It is shocking and he words it like this on purpose. This was God’s people that he expressed violence towards. He was hell-bent on dealing ruthlessly with them, that would mean even killing people himself or at least presiding over their martyr deaths as he did with Stephen. He felt justified to break one of the commandments in order to do what he thought was God’s work and he was so blinded he never saw the hypocrisy of that. How did he feel justified?
Simple. He knew better than most.
Of course we will never be in such a situation. For we have come to Christ as he did (actually Christ came to him!). We are followers of Jesus so this is not going to happen for us. However, do we think we know better than others because of our experience and our activity? Social media is full of agents of God, the caretakers of the church, opinionated activists who are experts on many subjects and who are not afraid to tell people they are wrong.
Missions Paul 