A loose, personalized, interpretive paraphrase
“If anyone has a right to put their confidence in their own identity, goodness, love for people and justice, abilities, intelligence, physical prowess, attractiveness, cleverness, earning capabilities, effort, gender, ethnicity, spirituality, character, potential, or accomplishments…
I had you all beat – by an immeasurable distance…. [see original text for the apostle’s personal-cultural evidences]…
But whatever things were ever gain or advantage for me — ever — those things I have ejected or let them blow away for the sake of… [see original text for the apostle’s radical change]…
In fact, I’ve gone even further than that, I now recognize the sobering reality that all those attributes were basically…” [vulgar word used by the apostle that refers to cow excreta, which I would like to use here to offend the same kind of people the original author of this quote wanted to offend. And for similar reasons. But there are sound reasons for me now to hold back].
Do I care about justice? Fairness? The mistreatment of the unfortunate? Jesus Christ was the very best person who ever lived, and was murdered by a mob running through the streets celebrating its own virtue. Christ Jesus, however seriously I have taken You in the past, keep me pressing on in the same direction — now and forever.
