A bum rap?

Too bad that so many of us, when we think of Paul, think of stuff that sounds to us either like bigoted garbage or like just plain gibberish. It's easy for us to forget that sometimes he got the message exactly right, as in last Sunday's reading: "Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law."(Romans, 13:8)

It was a different Paul who never used to tire of telling us that it's all just as simple as that. As simple -- and as impossible, on our own -- as that.