See, the things with the difficulties that Jesus presents in His writings? Those are all on my moral failings as a human. I don't... like, what Jesus is getting at with lusting after a woman being the same as committing adultery with her in your heart is pretty sensical. The structure of the Sermon and those passages makes it pretty clear that Jesus' broader lesson is that the impulse that leads to the sin is itself as bad as the sin. The anger that leads to the murder is as bad as the murder. The lust that leads to the adultery is as bad as the adultery. The oath that leads to the oathbreaking is as bad as the oathbreaking. And so on and so on. That makes sense to me. It also squares up with Jesus' later exhortations in the sermon not to judge and to remove the plank in your own eye. It's difficult for me to live up to that ideal, but it's not difficult for me to accept that ideal, if that makes any sense. The nature of striving for perfection makes sense. The challenge of loving your enemies and blessing those who curse you and doing good to those who spitefully use you and persecute you is not appreciably less difficult than that level of self-control. And the problem with righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees is that Jesus' doctrine is built not just on legalism but explicitly on forgiveness. What that level of perfection truly implies, therefore, is more difficult to come to grips with, especially in the face of the Acts and Council of Jerusalem. When you get to something like divorce, it's true, I get a little bit more antsy-- but at the same time, I see the logic that Jesus lays out, especially with regards to legalistic writings in Second Temple era Judaism. In that time divorce was extremely common among the priestly and scribe classes, which had knock-on effects for the women in those relationships. Compare Christ's censure of divorce to His behavior towards the Samaritan woman at the well. Sure, I'm not certain my view of divorce squares up 100% with the Lord's, and that's a failing on my part, not His-- but on that I feel like the right thing to do is hope for forgiveness and mercy, you know?
Whereas my issues with Paul are much more concrete-- his discussion about the role of women in the church and how he won't let them speak. Him putting women as subordinate to their husbands. Him insisting that bondservants serve their masters diligently and then telling the masters to not tempt their slaves. Things of that nature are jarring though they make sense within the context of the Great Commission at the time.
Then there's the whole discussion to be had about what parts of the Bible were edited later on, and that becomes an absolute MESS. Because a few of the passages from Paul that are difficult reads for me are suggested to have been edited or added later, and that's... well, you know, talking about the mere idea of the Bible having been edited ex post facto can get messy for believers.
Put another way-- I feel bad when I don't manage to forgive my enemies. I feel like I did something wrong when I get angry at my brethren. I have concerns about being lustful, and I worry about matters of divorce when it comes to my own family. I frame these things within the context of Christ's forgiveness but try not to dismiss them outright because for me that's a personal failing. When it comes to Paul I'm at odds with the idea that my future partner, if they're a woman, would have to be subordinate to me. I'm at odds with the idea that you can ask for slaves to obey their masters first. I'm at odds with exhorting children to obey their parents as a rule. I'm a little bit at odds with the idea of obeying the laws that are placed before you by ruling powers but that was clearly as situational for Paul as it is for me what with the martyrdom. And the feeling of being at odds with those things is not the feeling I get from failing to live up to Christ's teachings. I fully accept that could be my problem, but it's something that comes back to me time and again.
That's not to say I think the Pauline epistles are useless. That'd be a bridge too far. I do find them to be genuinely helpful primers, especially when they focus on the concept of edification.They themselves say that everything is pure to one who is pure and drill down on this concept again and again. I wonder if my difficulties aren't fundamentally resolved by this conceit. I believe that Paul's ideas on, for example, the armor of God, make a lot of sense. I don't see Paul's epistles as a perversion of the Gospel-- far from it. They clearly were very important to the spread of the faith, and demonstrate a level of care within the early Christian community that I think is important to preserve as an example for future generations, which is why keeping their format as letters makes sense. But there's particular declarative statements that I have a difficult time reconciling myself to, and that difficulty is distinct from the difficulty I face living up to Christ's teachings as presented in the Gospels themselves.
More to the point, however-- speaking to the excesses and failures of the modern church, it is difficult to trace their origins back to perversions of Gospel teaching. If you see the excesses and failures of the modern church as stemming from perversions of the Epistles, there's a bit more there to work with. The sexism and authoritarianism exhibited by many churches can often find their justification in the Epistles, even if I freely admit that's not what Paul meant. Consequently, it does seem to me that the way to avoid this particular misinterpretation comes by subordinating the Epistles to Gospel teaching, where the significant emphasis on self-correction over the correction of others provides proper illumination towards Paul's focus on rebuke of your brethren. This, then, shows how churches that espouse hate are neither living up to Gospel teaching nor Epistle teaching. Christ's emphasis on service and forsaking the material acts as the primary theme, where then Paul's discussion of donation to the church and contribution takes on the appropriate cast of community building, as was more likely intended. This, then, removes the support that corrupt churches try to hide behind for their wealth-hoarding practices.
Ultimately, beyond my difficulties with the text, I recognize that the Epistles are a worthwhile text and that those churches and institutions that hide behind them to justify corrupt behavior are WRONG. Full-stop. The solution I see to this problem is the primacy of Gospel teaching-- and frequently, my reason for this is because Christ's criticism of almost all power structures He encountered serves as the necessary context for Paul's writing in the epistles which frequently supports and reinforces traditional power structures. My difficulties with the text are my own-- that doesn't mean the texts themselves support the behavior which churches attempt to justify through the epistles.
(Also, as a personal aside, I always tend to think of the plucking your eye out passage in Matthew 5 as being about the "I couldn't help it" defense. If you really couldn't help it, if you can't control your hand or eye... cut 'em off. There are very few self-mutilated saints or holy people if any, so the meaning seems clear to me. It's a statement of radical commitment to purity and self-control.)
