EXPLAIN THIS: Here’s a fact about Paul the Apostle that is not often discussed. For decades during his four missionary trips around the ancient world, he was in constant danger, often impoverished, whipped several times, run out of town at least twice, sick, trapped and nearly killed by rioters, scorned by the intellectual and political elite of his day, and often hungry.

Despite it all, he never stopped claiming that he had seen and talked to the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, or that the encounter changed him from determined persecutor of Christians into their greatest missionary.

If he was a liar, he was one of the most determined in history. To dismiss him as deluded is speculative. What we cannot do is ignore him or his message because without him, it’s difficult to see the development of western civilization generally and the American constitutional perspective on government and individual liberty specifically.