Background and experience are highly important to us.
For introductions dwell on personal history.
I grew up in this area, went to these schools, did these jobs, and enjoy this hobby. We linger on this context in an attempt to explain how we became the person that stands before them today, and furthermore presume this linear trajectory will continue.
Which seems to leave us with only two options: continue on our current path, or become someone else entirely. But there may yet be another option.
“But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”
Saul was an extreme character. He believed that the Christian Church was an abomination to his Jewish faith. And this wasn’t some abstract or ethereal belief to him, it was tangible. So as a bold personality he took bold action, traveling far and wide to seek out and imprison those who were a part of the movement. For he dedicated his life to defending his faith.
Then Saul was famously confronted on the road to Damascus. His mission was forever changed, however his essential nature remained intact.
God didn’t tone down Saul or take away his relentlessly driven nature. No God simply redirected his passion and energy in the correct direction. For God created Saul with precisely this outspoken conviction and courage, it just needed to be redeemed to set him on the proper path.
The relentless pursuit became a relentless mission. The unwavering conviction became unwavering faith. Saul (rebranded as Paul) started church movements across the Mediterranean and was responsible for authoring nearly half the books of the New Testament. His zeal remained, it was simply pivoted.
Our fear that God will somehow take away or tone down who we are if we submit to Him is misplaced. We forget that God was our principal architect and made us for a purpose. Perhaps He doesn’t need to replace who we are, but simply orient those qualities toward that purpose
Saul wasn’t redacted, he was redirected. And perhaps that’s exactly what God intends to do with us. For God rarely wastes that which He has explicitly wired into us.