The Epistle of St. Paul to the Protestants

Sometimes I almost wish we didn't have the epistles, especially the Pauline epistles. I mean, not really, there's a lot of great stuff in there, but here's the problem. Western Protestantism leans sooooo heavily on the Pauline epistles you could almost scrap the rest of the book (besides the Fundamentalist obsession with the historicity of Genesis, of course). And because those epistles are written with very clear targets, with what at least seems like straightforward "do this, don't do that" commands, I think it is natural for people to just stop there. It's a lot easier to plum for absolutes from an epistle than a poem, and hey, that's what we're after, right? Absolutes? God forbid we should leave any room for difference of opinion. Also, the topics covered in those epistles provide most of the material to support the centuries-long pissing match between denominations. More and more I think, where theology is concerned, we should have "ideas", not "beliefs." When we start believing that how you explain atonement or predestination is as important as love and grace, as faith and obedience, we have a recipe for trouble. To quote Paul himself, "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." I'm just saying, let's ease up a little, and appreciate the beauty of the Bible a little more rather than demanding eternal exegesis from every verse.

Side note: on "grace" and "love," I think we have bankrupted the word "grace". Either we confuse it with mercy, or somehow (in my mind, anyway), when we talk about God's grace, it feels like an arbitrary gift, in the sense of God would be largely unaffected whether or not He gave it to us. In the sense of "underserved", grace is arbitrary, but it is intimately connected with His love for us. His grace is loving us though we are unlovable. The specific actions that pour out of that are almost inconsequential compared to the enormity of that fact. Consider it this way: God's love compelled Him to send his Son for us. Sometimes we try to define God almost as though His emotions are not operative on Him. When we say God didn't need to save us, I think that's true in that justice would not necessarily demand it, but that does not mean He is above actually caring about our fates. Far from it. If He has no emotional pull to save us, how could He really be said to love us? Why describe the relationship of Christ to church like groom and bride?