Tom Wright About Paul's conversions
Q. Talking about Paul the Apostle and I was thinking Tom about his remarkable, supernatural, dramatic conversion. Why doesn't the Lord do that more often?
A. It's a good question. But probably a third of the questions that people ask me are about :
why did God do this or why does God do that? And my usual response is you better ask him...
...I think here it's quite clear that something dramatic had to happen because here is, if you like, God's sense of humor that when God wants to reach out to the great, unwashed, idolatrous Gentile world, who does he call to do that? A hardline, zealous, pharisaic Jew. Because if it had been a kind of anything goes sort of Jew who had always been a bit soft on Torah, etc.
If such a person had gone off to say to Gentiles, by the way, "the God of Israel loves you too", then everyone would have said, "well, of course, you would say that because that was the way you were always going".
No, this is the Paul who knows his scriptures like the back of his hand. His whole heart and head are full of the law and the prophets and the writings.
And he is the one whose zealous credentials are completely unimpeachable. And so that God chooses him. But in order to do that, it's got to be pretty dramatic.
The light from heaven and all the rest of it.
...
( J. John and Tom Wright podcast)
