Weeding in a jurisdiction that has outlawed herbicides can be a monumental chore, and dandelions can become monuments to weed supremacy in a lawn or garden, if not vigilantly and persistently dug out root by root. For anyone unfamiliar with this weed, here is a description from Scotts Lawn Library.

“Dandelions are a broadleaf perennial that can grow in any soil and are most numerous in full sunlight. In the early spring, new sprouts will emerge from the taproot, which can be 2 to 3 feet deep in the soil. They grow yellow flowers that mature and turn into white puffballs that contain seeds that spread with the wind to other lawns. Even though they disappear in the fall, the taproot survives deep in the soil to start the cycle again in the spring. To keep dandelions out of your yard, this root has to be killed.”

One morning, even while I pitted brain and brawn against dandelions threatening the grass, my spirit was praying for various persons and situations. As I prayed and weeded, the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh) interjected, “Dandelions are like sin. Sin is like dandelions.” In a few minutes I had received an object lesson on the similarities between dandelions and sin.

Both can have deep roots that hide ‘underground’, escaping detection for a long time. Hebrews 15:15 says of certain sins, “Be careful that no one falls short of the grace of God, so that no root of bitterness will spring up to cause trouble and defile many.”

Both grow wild at the expense of the cultivated plants, which they eventually kill and displace if not weeded out. Matthew 13:7 describes the enmity of thorny weeds against good seed like this: “Other seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew and choked them out.”

Both produce blooms that may for a season appear bright and appealing, until they spawn the wind-blown nuisance that spreads their contamination far and wide. Hebrews 11:25 mentions the short-sighted appeal of enjoying “the pleasures of sin for a season.”

Both are antagonistic to the gardener’s efforts to produce a good crop – whatever the gardener’s crop might be – grass, vegetables, ornamentals, or righteousness. Hosea 10:12 encourages, “Plant a crop of righteousness for yourselves.” Then Matthew 13 (Yeshua’s Parables chapter) relates at verses 24-26: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while the men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. Now when the stalk sprouted and produced grain, then the weeds also appeared.”

When the gardener’s crop is watered and fertilized, the dandelions steal the nutrients from the cultivated plants, growing faster, overshadowing and eventually destroying them. As in Yeshua’s parable, they ‘choke out’ the cultivated plants. Then, having stunted or eliminated the desired crop, the dandelions – like sin – can bear no good fruit to replace what they destroy.

Like sin, dandelions must be dug out from the roots and thrown away; otherwise they will simply grow back. As Matthew 5:29 warns in very graphic terms, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”

Finally, like sin, the dug-up roots can be put to good use. In the natural, their extract has been found to have medicinal qualities (look up ‘dandelion root benefits’). Spiritually, the digging out of sin (for example, roots of bitterness) and the extraction of lessons from examining those roots can also bring healing, wholeness and resistance to further sin (weed-resistance).

Recently, my neighbour’s young son seemed inclined to try his hand at weeding since it seemed to be taking me such a long time. In a short while he moved across a portion of our shared lawn, picking off all the yellow dandelion blooms that he could see. Not wanting to disregard his efforts, I waited till he was off to school the next day before completing the job. The pile of dandelions that I dug out from his weeded portion that morning, complete with their roots, is pictured at right above. Now they will not grow back!

When a new movie is promoted as being based on Biblical history, many of us are happy because it signals the possibility of increased Bible awareness for the general public, which is one step in the right direction. However, I’ve seen enough of Hollywood’s output to caution against expecting their depictions to mirror what is actually expressed in the Bible, so I do accept a fair amount of artistic license in their ‘reading between the lines’ and filling in the ‘blanks’ of a Biblical account. Unfortunately, the artistic license often goes beyond what is acceptable, filling in the blanks with unnecessarily sinister characters and scenarios that inject unwholesomeness, soiling the Godly messages of the original script.

On the recommendation of several friends, Mike and I recently saw the new Affirm Films movie Paul, Apostle of Christ. I found it quite a praise-worthy addition to Affirm Films’ productions. There was no immorality or offensive spook, it had a fair sprinkling of Biblical quotes, and the acting and production were good. However, the introduction of imaginary ‘ghosts’ haunting Paul’s memories was misleading. None of Paul’s writings indicate that he was “haunted by the shadows of his past misdeeds” – to quote the official synopsis. Where Hebrews 12:1ff says, “We have such a great cloud of (departed faithful) witnesses surrounding us,” it does not suggest their presence is either perceptible or accusatory. Rather, it cites the historical knowledge of their faith (described in the previous chapter of Hebrews) as an encouragement to “get rid of every weight and entangling sin … focusing on Yeshua (‘Jesus’) the initiator and perfecter of faith (who) for the joy set before Him, endured the cross.”

Wherever Paul speaks about his former role of violently persecuting those of The Way, he gives a purely historical account of being misguided by Pharisaic fanaticism, and of God’s grace in converting and forgiving him. If Paul felt ‘haunted’ by ghostly memories of individuals he had persecuted, he left us no indication of that. On the contrary, he wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:11, “Such (sinners) were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” This completely agrees with the statement of his fellow apostle in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

That being said, the greater disappointment for me was that the many glorious events of Paul’s life received little or no attention. Instead, the focus was on his last days, interpreted in the movie as being dark and sorrowful. Determined to glean benefit from even this disappointment, I returned to the book of Acts to list for this article those highlights of Paul’s life that I would have expected to see in a biopic entitled Paul, Apostle of Christ. Here are some exciting scenes and interesting aspects I think should have been included or highlighted to a greater extent … or which could perhaps be woven into an action-packed mini-series.

First of all, Luke is the narrator – that Gentile or Hellenic physician who became Paul’s companion, and who first begins at Acts 13:9 to refer to the Jewish convert Sha’ul (Saul) by his Roman name, Paul. Just before that, in Acts 13:2 Luke records the Holy Spirit saying to the apostles in Antioch, “Set aside for Me Bar-Nabba and Sha’ul (rendered Barnabas and Saul in Greek-derived translations) for the work to which I have called them.” Up to that point, God Himself is recorded as using Sha’ul’s given Hebrew name. However, having been born of Jewish parentage in Tarsus, a city in the Roman province of Cilicia, this Jew was also a Roman by birth (Acts 21:39, 22:27-29) and had both the Hebrew name Sha’ul and the Roman (Gentile) name Paul. I believe one scene of the movie should have focused on Luke’s very important switch to using Sha’ul’s Gentile name. It was in fact a great strategy of rebranding, by which this radically zealous, formerly legalistic Pharisee became Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles.

Sha’ul’s conversion (Acts 9:3-8, 22:6-11) was a huge special effects opportunity – a flashing, blinding light from the sky that was not lightning but ‘flashed around him’; a voice from the sky that all his companions also heard; the experience of, and reactions to, a man suddenly struck blind. Then came his desperate 3-day fast without even drinking water, during which he had a vision. That coincided with a Divine visitation to the devout, prophetic disciple Ananias, who obediently followed the Spirit’s road-map directions to find and minister to Sha’ul – with healing, baptism and initial commissioning (Acts 9:9-18, 22:12-16).

Then the rounds of preaching and persecution that would mark Sha’ul’s ministry of the Gospel began with the unsaved Jews of Damascus plotting to kill him. In the movie, much is made of the persecution against believers in the last period of Sha’ul’s life, but do we see the apostle himself being lowered in a basket over the Damascus city wall at night? Do we see him, some time later, being stoned in Lystra until he appeared dead, his body being dragged and left outside of the city, and then being encircled by the disciples, who prayed him back to consciousness and watched him get up and deliberately return to the hostile city?

By then, not only was his make-over as Paul complete, but the seafaring adventures that became a feature of his apostolic life had begun. His very first journey after the commissioning at Antioch involved sailing to Cyprus, and the missionary journeys of the rest of his life were eventful by both land and sea. When Paul later ‘boasted’ of his sufferings for the sake of the Gospel, he included being ‘shipwrecked’, not just for dramatic effect, but in vivid recollection of his experiences.

Before commenting on the events of Paul’s famous shipwreck, I should mention that it was in Salamis, a port city of Cyprus that Paul began his ministry of supernatural acts. With righteous indignation, Paul reacted to a sorcerer’s anti-Christ activism by decreeing temporary blindness on him with the words, “You son of the devil, full of every sort of deceit and fraud, and enemy of all that is good! Will you never stop perverting the true ways of the Lord? Watch now, for the Lord has laid his hand of punishment upon you, and you will be struck blind. You will not see the sunlight for some time.” The record continues, “Instantly mist and darkness came over the man’s eyes, and he began groping around, begging for someone to take his hand and lead him.”

Lest this sad tale should overshadow the redemptive outcomes of Paul’s supernatural ministry, the very next verse says, “When the governor saw what had happened, he became a believer, for he was astonished at the teaching about the Lord.” During his ministry Paul performed many miracles, summed up by Luke’s words at Acts 19:11-12: “God was doing extraordinary miracles by Paul’s hands, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that touched his skin were brought to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.” In addition, we do have a few accounts of individual miracles, at Acts 14:10 (healing a crippled man), Acts 20:10-12 (raising Eutychus from the dead), acts 16:18 (delivering a slave girl from a spirit of divination), and miracles on the island of Malta.

That reference brings me back to Paul’s famous shipwreck. Acts 27 relates his tedious journey to Rome as a prisoner aboard a ship with other prisoners under guard. After stopping at various ports and being switched to a different ship in Alexandria, they met predictably bad weather against which Paul had tried in vain to warn the centurion in charge. Finally, after much battering by a storm and having been without food for days, Paul tried to relieve everyone’s anxiety as related at Acts 27:22-26. “Men, you should have listened to me and not sailed from Crete, to avoid this disaster and loss. Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you—but only of the ship. For this very night, there came to me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve. He said, ‘Do not fear, Paul. You must stand before Caesar; and indeed, God has granted you (the lives of) all who are sailing with you.’ So take heart, men, for I trust God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we must run aground on some island.”

Such action-packed scenes could have been wrung out of the 44 verses of Acts 27! Finally, after 14 days of fasting in despair, and further encouragement from Paul (“Take some food for … not one of you will lose a hair from his head”) the 276 souls aboard were all brought safely to the ‘some island’ of Paul’s prophecy. Their ship totally destroyed, the centurion had persuaded his soldiers to let the prisoners escape to the island of Malta however they could – by swimming or on floating pieces of the ship.

Then God, according to His own story-line, proceeded to showcase Paul’s miraculous anointing to the kind but superstitious natives of the island. Chapter 28 relates how they were first shown Paul’s immunity to the venom of a poisonous snake, because of which they assumed he was a god. By then Paul had become expert at refuting such claims and redirecting adoration to the true God. So this incident only set the stage for his witnessing to the Maltese people on the power of The Almighty. In short order, Paul – the prisoner under Roman guard – was asked by Malta’s most prominent leader to minister to his father, who was suffering from fever and dysentery. After the healing of the old man, “the rest of the sick on the island started coming (to Paul) and getting healed.” (Acts 28:9)

Oh, and since scriptwriters love inter-personal conflict so much, they could definitely have made memorable scenes from Paul’s head-butting with other apostles, described in Acts 15:36ff and Galatians 2:11-14.

To be fair, it’s probably unreasonable to expect a biopic to do justice to Paul, Apostle of Christ in 108 minutes. As I mused above, it may definitely require a mini-series to tell the story of this man whom God tasked with being the ‘Apostle to the Gentiles’ and writing so much of the New Testament.  Still, I personally thank Affirm Films for assigning me to review Acts 9-28 and brush up on my own memories of the exciting life of Paul.