Without Works

Episode 44: Paul versus His Past

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Episode Notes

Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works.

Amity: This week we continue an exploration to investigate influential and problematic saint  Paul of Tarsus in The More You Know. First we are going to Texas to discuss why we don’t live there - and it has nothing to do with our exes - in Not Necessarily the Good News.

Not Necessarily the Good News

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. - Genesis 2.7

On September 1, 2021, 666 new laws went into effect in Texas. Just this number should be a warning to anyone with a modicum of popular culture and/or religious understanding. Included in these laws are such things as an open carry law for firearms requiring no training or license, the banning of the teaching of critical race theory, and several modes of voter suppression. I will come back to some of those in the future probably, but in addition, an abortion law was entered into the books and that’s what I want to speak about today.

Texas' new abortion law, which went into effect after the Supreme Court did not weigh in, could prevent the vast majority of abortions in the state. It prohibits abortions once cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. That can happen as early as about six weeks, before many people even know they are pregnant. Unlike other similar bills across the country, Texas' law doesn't set criminal penalties for violating the ban. Instead, the law allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps someone get an abortion.

  1. This timeline doesn’t make any sense in terms of the reality of menstruating individuals. The timing would line up with an 8-12 day late period - which could happen for all manner of reasons outside of pregnancy, thus basically disallowing anyone from seeing an abortion at any time. 
  2. It’s a bounty - Texas has put a bounty of $10,000 per individual - be it the pregnant party, their partner, the driver, hotel or motel employees, doctors, nursed, instacart workers - anyone who “helps someone get an abortion” 
  3. I read a bible passage at the beginning of this segment. Largely, the abortion debate in this county is fueled by so-called Christians who have pushed the idea that life begins at conception, which is starkly contrasted by Genesis, which refers to the breath of life, presumably indicating that the first breath is the indication of life. This follows most scientific thought which balks at late term abortion of fetuses that would be viable outside of the womb - and the reason that late term abortions are extrordinarily rare and are usually in cases of inviability or grave danger the the carrier.
  4. In this country, a living woman carrying a fertilized egg has less bodily autonomy than a corpse. 

    5. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1032894148/in-texas-666-laws-take-effect-sept-1-including-many-conservative-priorities

    https://jezebel.com/the-texas-abortion-provider-who-defied-s-b-8-has-been-1847711763?utm_campaign=Jezebel&utm_content=1632177335&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1xN2osrdpMRtaTJQXFgVb3vUge95ZOkTuf6C884DE5wm5-l0fTzYYlikI
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/us/texas-abortion-lawsuit-alan-braid.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR1haJw-T7NRmOlbEBoPj4whPC9udS5lyEr6-Tyls3xIhFAHHQQ8OuNEY6k

    The More You Know

    I remember having a lunch with a friend, a practicing Jew, who discussed Jesus with me. He talked about reclaiming Jesus as a jewish man, from a jewish rabbinical tradition.  He said that Christianity was really the fault of Saint Paul, who he considered a lunatic. 

    A few years later I was discussing this idea with another jewish friend, who agreed that Jesus taught within the traditions of Judaism, but Saint Paul twisted and changed things to make a new, anti-semetic  religion.

    It’s a very common criticism. As we have seen Paul was a man eager to assert his Jewishness, and constantly remind his readers of his religious education and credentials. He would never want to be seen as the man who separated Christianity from Judaism, but with some of his statements, he severed the connections.

    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/who-was-paul

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apostle-paul-lived-and-died-as-a-dedicated-jew_b_3376350
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    Without WorksBy Amity Armstrong and Lemuel Gonzalez