Paul was my hero! I was touched by his joy in Christ, his energy in spreading the gospel, his nurturing of the churches struggling into being.
As I moved along in studying the Bible with students from many religious backgrounds, my appreciation of Paul was challenged. The most perplexing challenge was aligning Paul's views on how women should behave in the churches and society with his theology. I was aware of those texts telling women to cover their heads and not to speak in churches, and so on. Since they didn't impact either my religious or social life, I ignored them. In my new setting I couldn't ignore them because I was witnessing firsthand how women who longed for a ministering role in their church had been denied access on the basis of Paul's letters to his churches.
The more extreme interpretation of Paul's letters dictated this submissive role for women in the family and society as well. Inwardly, I said, "Absurd" and moved on to other Biblical considerations. Eventually, I realized that as I had ignored the women's issues in Paul's writings, now I was ignoring all his writings. There were just too many complications the women's issue being only one of them.
