The IOU

I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand, I will repay it (not to mention to you that you owe to me even your own self as well). Philemon 1:19  NASB

You owe to me – “I really don’t want to bring this up.  It’s not something that needs to be mentioned among friends.  But—just in case you might have forgotten—not that I’m making a point about it—you really owe me, you know.  And so this thing that I ask, well, you should do it out of the goodness of your heart.  But—just in case you can’t find a way to do that, then you should do it anyway because, in the end, you know, you owe me.”

What kind of manipulation is this?  Well, sometimes appeals to the heart just don’t work.  And since the cause is just, then other incentives and obligations come into play.  Sort of “the ends justify the means.”

Does this bother you?  Was your image of Paul elevated above ordinary human tactics?  After all, he’s Saint Paul, right?  He’s a bit more like an angel than we are, don’t you think?  There are statues of him scattered all over the world.  There are churches named after him.  There aren’t any statues of me.  No church is named “Basilica Saint Skip.”  Paul is special.  Actually, his portrait in Scripture is even more glorious than Abraham or David.  They made big mistakes.  After the Damascus road, Paul seems to have lived an almost perfect life.  Right?  Oh, there was that small squabble with Barnabas, but Paul was right.

Here’s the problem (I am sure you see it).  The Church has elevated Paul to a place just short of the Messiah (and a little below Mary, of course).  As a result, we don’t actually read human motives and human emotions into Pauline material.  We treat his letters as if they were holy theological missives.  In fact, you might even say that Paul is the real founder of what became Christian theology.  He usurps Moses, for sure, and, at times it seems, even Yeshua.  So crass manipulation isn’t allowed.  We read him always in a positive light.  We forget that he is just as human as we are.

Maybe our pristine picture has been altered a bit by this look at the letter to Philemon.  We can admit that there are a few very human elements here.  But that has far-reaching implications.  We might have to look for the human elements in Galatians and Ephesians, and even, heaven forbid, in Romans.  We might wonder how these letters became so auspicious; how they were canonized.  The letter to Philemon sounds a lot more like something we would write, with its tongue in cheek claims and demands.  Not like that holy piece sent to the Romans.  All those chapters.  All that doctrine.  But then again, that was a letter too; written to a particular group of people about things they were debating.  Maybe Philemon should be our template for the rest of Pauline material instead of a sort of afterthought in the great theological tomes of the Church.

Topical Index:  owe, debt, motive, Philemon 1:19