Is Communion a cannibalistic ritual?

[OnceConvinced]

According to Wikipedia: A ritual "is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence."

Christians practice a religious ritual called “Communion�. This is considered very important by most Christians and is usually conducted every Sunday at church. Some even think you can’t possibly be considered a true Christian if you refuse to participate in Communion. It involves eating some bread and drinking some wine (or in many cases fruit juice) and acknowledging Christ’s death on the cross.

Jesus himself ordained this religious ritual:

Luke 22:19-20
And he took bread, and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave unto them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me�. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.�

In the standard Protestant Christian church these emblems are considered metaphorical, but still represent the flesh and the blood of Christ and you are expected to consume these. The Catholic church goes one step further and tries to make out that the bread really is Christ’s body and that it is somehow magically transformed.

So the question:
Is Communion a cannibalistic ritual? Please justify your answer.

[Divine Insight]

Fair enough. The sacrificial nature of life:

The examples you give here have nothing to do with penal substitution.

- A parent/guardian/society raises a child sacrificing many things for the child.

I don't see that as being a sacrifice. Clearly they wanted to have children or they wouldn't have had them (unless of course they are just blinding going through life with no clue what they are doing)

You could just as easily say that someone who chooses to not have children in favor of living a life deeply involved in a career has "sacrificed" the joy of raising children for a career instead. Those are sacrifices. All that amounts to is the fact that we can't do everything so we need to make choices in what we decide to do.

So I don't buy into your equating a sacrifice of penal substitution to pay for other people's sin as being the same concept as simply not being able to do everything.

- A person trains or studies hard, sacrificing other choices they would prefer to make to gain a skill. Another person sacrifices their time and effort to coach them.

I disagree. Everyone who does these things are not necessarily sacrificing anything. Many of them actually like what they do. They chose to do it because they like it.

- Every time we eat, something else dies for us.

And who's to blame for that?

Did you create a world where you must eat living organisms in order to survive?

I've heard many atheists say that this is a big reason they don't believe in an omniscient omnipotent God. Why aren't we just operated by solar energy? Instead of eating all we need to do is lay on the beach and soak up sunlight.

I mean seriously. You take things for granted. But why did a God created a dog-eat-dog world in the first place?

This is one of my biggest complaints as well. I have always said that a God should have at least made a very clear distinction between plants and animals and that all animals should be vegetarians without exception. The mere fact we live in a dog-eat-dog world doesn't support the idea that we were created by an intelligent omnipotent God.

and how that would relate to God who has his own son crucified by humans as a sacrifice unto HIM so that he can refrain from unleashing HIS wrath on humans.

It has no relation to your straw man of God. God is Jesus.

It relates to God's sacrifice because if you in some way can note the sacrificial nature of life then you must admit that using sacrifice isn't as absurd as you make it sound.

But I don't accept your superficial comparison with making choices simply because we can't do everything with penal substitution to pay for supposed sins.

There is no comparison between the term "sacrifice" as you us it to relate to life, and the idea of a God sacrificing himself to save mankind from his own stupid wrath.

Also, why would this God have been such a jerk to make a single "LAW" that the wages of sin (i.e disobedience to his every whim) should only be death with no possibility of personal restitution?

That already makes no sense.

What kind of a God would create humans and not even provide for them to make amends for their own actions? That would have been a dirty rotten trick already. That would be a God that we cannot trust at all. Especially in terms of being fair.

You should be able to make your own restitution for anything you may have done that wasn't perfect. You also shouldn't be expected to be perfect when you were tossed into an imperfect dog-eat-dog world. That's unreasonable as well.

So the whole religion is based upon fundamental absurdities to begin with.

I personally don't feel that I need to sacrifice anything to no be "bad".

I was saying the opposite, we can detect bad people by how they treat others, are they sacrificing for them or sacrificing them. I think it can ring true enough for you.

The point I wish to make here is that there is an observed sacrificial nature in life.

So even if there is a sacrificial nature to life who would be responsible for that? Clearly the only entity that can be responsible for that is the Creator himself. For him to hold us responsible for what he created would be ludicrous. Why should we be held responsible for what our creator created?

Your own soldier analogy points to it.

Do you see it or deny it? I want to be as fair as possible to you by saying that it is not scientifically provable that 'life is sacrificial' but it does seem observational but it might be like looking at a cloud and seeing a face, which is basically what atheists think religious types are doing. So do you see the 'face in the cloud' or not?

That's a totally different kind of "sacrifice". In fact, save for the Kamikaze pilots of Japan in WWII soldiers aren't even supposed to be intentionally sacrificing their lives. If they lose their life is was a tragedy not a purposeful "sacrifice". The rare exception is the solider who does something out of extreme desperation to save his fellow commands. But again look at the key concept there: desperation.

No sane solider is going to risk his life if there is no pressing threat.

Where is there any threat to God? Why would a God need to sacrifice anything? Who is this extremely threatening enemy that God cannot defeat without resorting to a act of such extreme desperation?

And apparently the only threat to humans is the threat of this God's wrath himself. He's threatening to cast us into a state of eternal damnation if we don't do precisely as he says perfectly. And he has not even provided us with a means of accepting personal responsibility or making amends on our own merit.

I don't see where any God like that would be trustworthy. You couldn't trust this God at all. Especially in terms of being reasonable or fair.

It's clearly nothing more than a hate cult created by a culture who wants to use their God as a means to hate anyone who doesn't climb on board with their religion and worship their doctrines and priests.

I don't see how you can support this kind of thing as having come from any God.

Why would a God who supposedly cares about moral responsibility not even make moral responsibility available to humans?

We aren't even given the option to accept responsibility for our own morality. On the contrary, this God will supposedly offer eternal life to the most despicable sinners and criminals if they simple accept that Jesus died to pay for their disgusting behavior. Heaven would be filled with undeserving criminals to be sure. In fact, every single person in Heaven would be a person who is willing to have Jesus crucified to pay for their sins. Not a single solitary person who objects to that could even be in heaven. People who refuse to condone penal substitution on their behalf would all be cast into hell by this God's method of salvation.

Decent folks who realize that this entire religious paradigm is itself highly immoral would all be cast into hell.

And that makes sense to you?

And let's also recognize something else. You clearly accept the Biblical cliche, "The wages of sin are death", like as if that makes some sort of sense. But it doesn't make any sense.

So apparently you accept certain premises of this mythology as being unquestionable true, and then try to rationalize the rest of the dogma based on these original absurdities.

But why should a sane loving intelligent compassionate God have ever make a rule that even the slightest deviation from perfect obedience of his commandments and directives should result in death.

That is already absurd. This whole religion is founded on absurdity.

And as you read thought this rest of the dogma does this really even make any sense?

According to the Old Testament God commands you to stone your unruly children to death and have no pity on them when you do this.

According to Jesus not one jot nor one tittle shall pass from law until heaven and earth pass.

Therefore if you happen to have an unruly child who doesn't do precisely as you command (being disobedient to you), then you are to stone that child to death. And if you don't then you are in disobedience of God's directives, and therefore you are a sinner who must die.

This religion is utterly absurd Wootah.

The whole thing is based on the totally unreasonable premise that any behavior that is not 100% in complete compliance with everything this God has supposedly commanded you do to, then you have earned death, and there is nothing you can do to make amends.

Slip up on just one commandment and your doomed with no hope that you can repent. Because repentance is futile. You have no right to repent until Christianity comes along. Then you can repent by only by accepting the penal substitution of Jesus. And this was done to guarantee that only Christianity can "save" you from this God's impossible wrath.

They create and impossible situation and then claim that the only way to get out of this impossible situation is to support the cult of Christianity. It really has absolutely nothing at all to do with Jesus or any God.

It's clearly just a manmade cult that is trying to muscle in on the patent rights to escaping the wrath of an imaginary unreasonable and untrustworthy God.

After all, how can you trust a God who won't even allow you to make amends or take personal responsibility for your own immoral acts?

Yet that's precisely the concept that Christianity is based upon. You are not permitted to be morally responsible. That is forbidden by this unruly religion cult.

You're only hope for "salvation" is penal substitution. Like it or not. There shall be no moral responsibility available to you. This religion rapes you of any and all moral responsibility. And you call that a "trustworthy" God?

I don't think so.

[bluethread]

I would say that the RCC ritual of communion could be seen that way. However, the Pesach Seder officiated by Yeshua prior to His death, from which it is derived, is not.

Why not? Jesus said the bread was his body and the wine was his blood. Even if you said this was metaphorical and not real cannibalism, is it not metaphorical cannibalism?

No, to refer to it as cannibalism simply because it refers to His body and blood is to impose either naturalism or anthropophagy upon the ritual. With regard to naturalism, referring to it as symbolic is an oxymoron, since naturalism sees no difference between the spiritual and the physical. Anthropophagy is primarily associated with morning or acquiring the characteristics of the one being eaten. Though one is encouraged to emulate one's rabbi, this is not what Yeshua is doing here. Rather He is injecting His teachings into the established Pesach Seder, which is distinctly not cannibalistic.

If He had wished to institute a cannibalistic ritual, he would have taken some of the Pesach and said that was His body. What He does is take the Matzah, the bread of affliction. This is a commemoration of the deliverance from Egypt. He is saying here, not that the matzah becomes His body, but that He embodies what it is to be delivered from evil(ra'), or the ways of the nations.

Regarding the cup, in order to understand what Yeshua is saying, it must be looked at in light of nature of the terms, "blood" and "wine" and the Pesach Seder. First the blood and wine are not interchangeable terms. They are however both representative of life. In the Seder, Yeshua uses both terms to invoke two images. Let's look at the three accounts, Yochannan does not record the statement.

Matthew 26:28 KJV
"This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."

Mark 14:24
"This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many," "

Luke 22:20 "In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.""

One can jump on the way it is phrased by the first two, but those appear to be summarizations, with understanding of the Seder presumed. Luke places it in the full context of the Seder. The cup after the meal, in the Seder, is the cup of redemption. It is designed not to symbolize the drinking of blood any more than the second cup, the cup of the plagues, symbolizes the drinking of the plagues. It is commemorative. Lives are lost in the cup of the plagues and lives are saved in the cup of redemption. The wine represents that life. What Yeshua does is to tie the symbolism of the salvation from the plagues with the salvation of the Covenant written on our hearts and His death. Thus, the cup does not represent blood, but represents life, which blood represents in the Covenant sacrifice. So we have two things that symbolize life in two different contexts. The focus is the importance of life in both cases, not the equating of the two symbols. Wine is not blood and the drinking of blood is not acceptable.

[OnceConvinced]

Christianity as a religious dogma is careful to try to word things in a favorable light.

This is why it's ok to eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, but it's not ok to cannibalize Jesus. Eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood is considered to be a highly reverent ritual. Cannibalizing Christ would be disgusting.

It's all in the interest of diplomatic and "politically correct" religious propaganda.

Exactly! This is the way I see it now. It's like the whole magic vs miracle argument. Christians don't want to think of God's power as magic, so they call it miracles instead. Christians don't like to think of communion as a cannibalistic ritual. So they do a lot of shucking and jiving to try to make it into something else, but who are they kidding apart from themselves?

As it happens, when I was a Christian I never thought anything of it. I thought of it as a lovely pure type of thing. I guess that's because I was brainwashed and indoctrinated. But now I see it so clearly. It really is a gruesome disturbing ritual.

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 13 by OnceConvinced]

Can you debate with less self reference please?

Everyone has a personal story and they generally count for nothing in a debate.

Also replying to you is dangerous because it becomes personal.

Your recollection of your experiences may be accurate for you or may be your creation stories but are they relevant to the debate topic?

For instance I think you demean the term brainwashed and indoctrinated but how can I be sure? So can you prove you were brainwashed or are you making repeated unsubstantiated claims.

Which is Bad Company to be in

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 11 by Divine Insight]

I'd go so far as to suggest the length and extraneous parts of your post indicate you got my point. But you may wish to simplify the matter.

So was that a yes or a no?

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 11 by Divine Insight]

I'd go so far as to suggest the length and extraneous parts of your post indicate you got my point. But you may wish to simplify the matter.

So was that a yes or a no?

It was a definite NO.

Any concept of "sacrifice" that you imply about life is not the same concept of "sacrifice" that would apply to Jesus as the sacrificial lamb of God.

It's not even close.

All you are doing is attempting to play a superficial game of semantics using the word 'sacrifice' like as if that is somehow going to make Christianity make sense.

It doesn't help Wootah.

A God supposedly sending his only begotten son as a "sacrifice" for humans so they can be let off the hock from being damned by him on totally unrighteous charges of claiming that the slightest disobedience of his commands justifies killing them is an indefensible scenario.

Besides who would have been making this so-called "sacrifice"?

God or humans?

If God made the sacrifice then supposedly humans don't need to sacrifice anything. All they need to do is laugh at God and say, "Sure if it pleases you to kill an innocent person to let me off the hook from your outrageous demands more power to you, go ahead. I accept Jesus as my savior".

And those people will then be "saved".

But those of us who object to this whole scenario on the grounds that the whole charade is an immoral act on behalf of God, we get cast into eternal damnation.

Are you saying this makes sense to you?

Yes or no? I give you your own bottle of medicine right back.

[OnceConvinced]

Replying to post 10 by Wootah]

Are you attempting to justify human sacrifice here? Suggesting that a human sacrifice to a God is actually ok?

So we can go around sacrificing our children like Abraham attempted to do with Isaac by slitting his throat over an altar? This sort of human sacrifice is ok?

Does that not mean that any human sacrifice made to a God is ok? So human sacrifices to Molech and Baal are ok too because it's just part of the sacrificial nature of life?

[Divine Insight]

Does that not mean that any human sacrifice made to a God is ok? So human sacrifices to Molech and Baal are ok too because it's just part of the sacrificial nature of life?

Excellent point.

These apologists just continually shoot themselves in their own foot every time. They don't seem to realize that their lame excuses for Christianity would necessarily then support all manner of religious mythologies.

[OnceConvinced]

[Replying to post 13 by OnceConvinced]

Can you debate with less self reference please?

Everyone has a personal story and they generally count for nothing in a debate.

As I have over 30 years of experience of Christianity under my belt I will continue to use my own experience in debate as I feel they are relevant. If you do not wish to take seriously someone who was a committed Christian for over 30 years, then that's your prerogative.

Note, I am making it quite clear what is my experience here so I'm not breaking any rules. I am not preaching. I am an open person. Is that so bad?

Also replying to you is dangerous because it becomes personal.

Dangerous? In what way? I'm a nice guy. Despite my fearsome avatar, I'm not gonna become a psycho if you argue against me personally. If I state it here on this forum then anyone can say anything they want. I'll admit, I do get touchy when people say I was never a true Christian, but then that's due to the principle of the matter and the fact it is highly insulting.

Your recollection of your experiences may be accurate for you or may be your creation stories but are they relevant to the debate topic?

How are my experiences mentioned above not relevant to the topic?

For instance I think you demean the term brainwashed and indoctrinated but how can I be sure? So can you prove you were brainwashed or are you making repeated unsubstantiated claims.

I admit those are my opinions. I am happy to admit when something is my opinion. People can take it or leave it.

[ttruscott]

...

So the question:
Is Communion a cannibalistic ritual? Please justify your answer.

It is not cannibalism because it is fulfilled symbolically with bread and wine, not the real body. It symbolizes the communion of the heavenly state where in the telepathic bond of love and holiness between GOD and every person is perfect and full.

Eating is a symbol for taking in and digesting something, an idea, a doctrine, a concept.

The actual pagan cannibalism is a satanic copy-cat ritual by which the person steals his victim's substance to add to his own, that is, his strength, his heart, his wisdom, etc, which is the very opposite of Christian communion in which Christ offers to share His 'substance' for us to assimilate, His goodness, righteous holiness and love.

Peace, Ted