The most loved word, and also the most hated.

[IsaacNewton]

So all humans who hadnothing to do with it are held resposible for one death forever.

Who redeems the redeemer?

 

[Pogo]

Oh b

There you go again, talking about interpreting the Bible. If one can read it in their native language, no interpretation is required. It's message is so simple a child can understand it. I just don't understand why you think God requires help to get His message across. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? I'm not trying to belittle your beliefs. I just don't understand them. I'm not sure I want to. Gods word will not return void. It is sufficient to the task at hand. It does not need to be "translated".

Dear Lutroo
When Jesus used farming parables to share the Kingdom of God
with ILLITERATE farmers, didn't Jesus EXPLAIN using mustard seeds
and how plants or weeds grow. Jesus EXPLAINED we should be
like the lilies in the field. So Jesus didn't cite the same scriptures
as used to argue with Pharisees in the temples who were under those laws.

Isn't that like taking CONCEPTS of God and the Kingdom of God
and the PROCESS of spiritual growth and Explaining the CONCEPTS
using real life examples or PARABLES from real life that people relate to?

Here's an example of modern parables I've used:

a. comparing Christianity with water
People often blame religions or Christianity for mass destruction they caused by religious wars and abuse.
People who can't forgive don't credit the good that Christian faith, belief or practice has done to save lives,
but only focus on the bad, and condemn it. Some even say to get rid of Christianity and religion as bad.

So I compare with water and with oceans.
Without water and oceans we cannot live.
But when oceans produce huge floods, hurricanes or tsunamis
the same Nature that gives us life brings great destruction and death.
The forces can produce catastrophic disasters without mercy or without "fault of the victims."

Do we blame the ocean. Do we curse Nature?
Or do we FORGIVE and accept the good with the bad.
So this is a parable that explains why it isn't fair
to blame Christianity but to look at the greater "force of good"
and lives saved by this faith, not just the death caused when things turn destructive.

b. comparing the killing and return of Jesus with an antivirus program
when people ask why would Jesus need to be sacrificed.
What loving God would do this and then punish people for not understanding or believing.

I have explained this using the parable of a computer system filled with viruses
so bad that it cannot be saved by anything already on the computer. The solution is to download an antivirus program that can clean out all the corruption. But in order for this to work, it has to be downloaded while the system is on or alive, shut it down and kill the system, then reboot the system back to life WITH the
program entered into it, so that the program can INFILTRATE every file and the entire operating system
to find and clean out every trace of the bugs and viruses.

Similarly Jesus represents perfect Justice sent down from heaven to earth.
And was sacrificed on this human level of worldly existence so that influence/spirit
could rejoin us all with the higher level of collective truth knowledge and laws that God represents as the source of all.

Since Jesus has no debts or sins to pay "back" then
all the good done for the sake of JUSTICE is paid FORWARD.
So that is how the cycle of injustice is broken, by paying forward instead of backwards.

If we don't forgive the past we stay stuck in the past.
If we forgive and work toward healing and corrections in the future,
we rebuild and restore, receive new life and insights/solutions to establish
Truth Justice and Peace that is lasting for all humanity.

So Lutroo when I explain that is the SPIRIT and meaning of the Bible
* to move from Retributive Justice or living by the letter of law in the OT
* to living by the Spirit of the law or Restorative Justice in the NT that Christ Jesus represents
then people can understand this is a POSITIVE CHANGE to unite in Christ Jesus.

They no longer fear the Bible means punishment and negative forces, like a tsunami,
but understand the love of God is more like the ocean that provides water and life for all humanity.

Oh boy! I can just see you, trying to use this approach with a tribe of cannibals and trying to explain the Lords Supper to them.

Yes Lutroo the cannibals live by their own laws. They are banned from eating relatives.
Whatever tribal laws they enforce for others are enforced for them.
That is the Golden Rule.

Another attempt at humor falls flat on it's face. Cannibals? Lords supper? Get it now?

Oh okay sorry missed that Lutroo

I never got why people took the communion ritual literally to mean eating the Lord's flesh?
I thought that was clearly symbolic.

I can understand the bread representing the body of laws
and the wine/water representing the spirit of the laws.

Sorry I missed your joke on this, it's quite charming now that I get it!
Cheers! I mean, drink this in remembrance not to take everything too seriously...

Yanno --- to Catholics, it IS literally eating the Lord's flesh and blood. They make that clear. That's what "transubstantiation" means. So if you accept that that's what it is, then yes it is cannibalism. It has to be.

Now clearly the idea is originally intended to be symbolic as you note. But the Church chose to express it through cannibalism, and chose to make it clear that that's what it's doing. Presumably for emotional impact.

That has nothing to do with why I left the Church but it is factual.

Now then -- if you're interpreting the ritual, the concept of "Christ Jesus" etc metaphorically rather than literally, as I queried yesterday though you never responded --- then it occurs to me the religion itself that presents these concepts has no point in doing so. Metaphor sadly seems to be over most people's heads.

The whole "redeemer" thing is of course a whole 'nother can o' worms. That makes no sense on any level and that has much more to do with why I rejected the whole song and dance.

I'd just like to add the only reason I'm here at the moment instead of doing my gardening I wanted to do, is because my wacko attention-whore neighbor is out on her porch yelling and screaming about "father god" and babbling in tongues, and I don't have a portable radio available to drown out the cacophony.