Yes, I get the reference.
The admonition at the Last Supper was for all the apostles to participate in the sacrifice that would free mankind from sin.
FWIW, I don’t subscribe to that particular attribute of that particular sect. The wafer is just that, a wafer of unleavened bread.
In my practice we do take communion, but its in the spirit of fellowship with Christ, the Apostles and each other.
Communion with Christ is what is most important.
Thank you for a reasonable conversation.
My father-in-law (who is a C-of-E priest) has used ‘glory hole’ to refer to a room packed full of junk (as per the dictionary definition) for many, many years. He’s also aware of the glass-blowing connotation, but I assume, from his regular use of the phrase, that no-one has informed him of any other meaning.
One thing to remember is that churches consider the services as part of the help they are providing. They require people to go so they have a chance to get back on the right path and in touch with God. So while you and I might see it as an annoying waste of time, they are hoping that you’ll hear something that will change your life. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be better in my eyes to just offer the food and bed and nothing else, but it is certainly a well-meant requirement if you are a believer.
I’d certainly choose to go to the shelter that did NOT require the sermon, but quite literally “beggars can’t be choosers”…if it’s a meal and a safe bed, I’ll daydream through the sermon.
I find some of the best stuff on BB is derailed threads.
I once spent a few hours tearing apart a jews for jesus pastor who called himself a rabbi.
Other than the disingenuousness of that whole cult… (self control) I dont have time to go on about that.
Communion/Eucharist is according to the protestant-J4J, viewpoint(I believe Catholic too) that Jesus became the korban pesach or passover sacrifice.
For now ignore that the passover sacrifice was a mandatory attendance national celibratory BBQ over freedom from Egypt rather than any form of sin or guilt offering(which are only good for some accidental and ritual sins never for any crime against people).
Communion is per J4J/protestants to be a redo of passover seder; wine/grape juice is or symbolizes Jesus’s blood, wafer is or is a symbol of flesh of Jesus, and the murder of Jesus by the Roman occupation force was supposed to be a sacrifice for sin, but also for some reason a passover sacrifice. The analogy falls apart to anyone who knows what is being discussed and exposes the pagan fusion origins. What this guy said matched my recollections from both protestant and catholic private schools I attended which both believed that the wine/matzah(or wafer?) was really 100% Jesus being consumed.
I am curious which pre-christian cult the communion is derived from; I understand that apollo, mithras, adonis, and others are included into official Roman imperial Christianity. .
I’ve never understood why some groups believe that they’re literally eating Jesus crackers. The analogy works without taking ‘this is my body’ as a literal statement; the church is also ‘Christ’s body’, and this doesn’t seem to be taken literally. As far as who believes in transubstantiation, most protestant groups explicitly reject it, although there is a spectrum of teaching on the subject. Catholic and Orthodox teaching do accept transubstantiation, but Orthodox Christians see it as a mystery that shouldn’t be explored too deeply.
The original passover lamb was killed in order to escape death though, which seems to be more the analogy that they’re getting at. There’s the repeated idea of the firstborn (God’s firstborn son Israel, Pharaoh’s firstborn son, the passover lamb as a replacement for Jewish firstborn sons). Jesus is supposed to fulfil a lot of different elements of Jewish belief (God’s son, Adam, David, Israel, the sacrifice, the temple, the priest, the Law, the circumcised foreskin - basically everything), including the idea that he was the passover lamb and his death brought life to God’s people. Through the Eucharist his people share in his sacrifice and covenant, remember their deliverance, receive real food and share with God’s people.
One thing I find a little odd is that in both Jewish and Christian belief, animal sacrifices are not done only for specific reasons - for Jews the Messiah needs to come, restore the temple and reinstate sacrifices; for Christians this has already happened and the Messiah was the sacrifice.
Syncretism seems to be the rule in any religion, and Judaism is far from pure in that aspect.
Why do they literally believe, etc.? Because it seems sometimes that some religions have an entry test that consists of “how much will you believe of this crazy stuff?” and the crazier the stuff they can believe, the more holy they are. If you can manage virgin birth but not literal transubstantiation, you fall here, and so on.
I answered phones for a while, including one for a well-known bell-ringing charity. We’d get calls from transients passing through, and the process was that we’d make arrangements for them to have a night in a local hotel (at the time, between its glory days and its subsequent gentrification) and a meal at the sub shop across the street, and set them up for a talk with the Captain (or Lieutenant—it was over 30 years ago). The talk was the “price” they paid for the food and crib, and they didn’t seem to mind it. They seemed to make a regular circuit, and they knew the Captain, and he knew them. It was a dance both sides were comfortable with.
Huh-huh. Glory hole. Somebody tell me you didn’t look at this article in the first place because of that.
Not an expert here, but I don’t think any normal Protestant sect believes in transubstantiation. Maybe disowned lunatic Prots like 7DAs or JWs or snake-handlers and tongue-speakers, but not any church you’d actually be surprised to see in a Rob Zombie movie.
There is a thing called Wisconsin Lutherans, not a small group AFAIK, so far out in right field that Michelle Bachman had to switch affiliation to run as a freaking Republican! I attended a day school which included a catechism class, interesting things like literal blood and flesh transubstantiation were taught as directly understood and written by Martin Luther who is pretty much an apostle to them. I think they track as protestant version of pre-Vatican II Catholicism.
Having Michelle Bachmann as a parishoner is not an indicator of being a normal Protestant sect. Quite the opposite.
Glory hole is still a mining term and I would guess that there are still a fair number of miners in Alaska who see this and don’t think twice.
I appreciate that people on street corners trying to tell me about Christ or Islam are trying to do me a favour, but it stops feeling like the right thing to do when it’s a condition on getting food.
I’m sure that for many of these groups they see giving food as treating the symptom and giving spiritual advice as treating the underlying cause, but even if you accept that perspective I don’t think they are taking the right approach. It’s just that it makes me think a bit of Screwtape’s advice about turning someone from God by getting them to pray for their relative’s soul rather than for their relative as a person.
I’m going to cut in on this semi-private discussion to agree with you. I’m not Christian, but whenever I go to visit a particular friend in LA I always join him during his usual shift at Catholic Workers because they are an excellent example of how to do it right. There is no proselytizing at all. It is all about serving others. Period.
The Salvation Army, on the other hand, is just one example of the many organizations which do require the sermon in exchange for food and/or shelter.
So depending on one’s experience, one has either seen how it can be done well or how it can be coercive. Both are true.
That’s where the “credit where it’s due” part comes in. You don’t have to appreciate everything an organization does or stands for to recognize when they do good. Examples:
Catholic Church
GOOD: Feeding and sheltering the homeless
BAD: Enabling and covering up decades of systemic child molestation
Richard Dawkins Foundation
GOOD: Promoting science education and critical thinking
BAD: Public mouthpiece of a guy who insists on acting like a sexist, unsympathetic asshat
At any rate it’s unlikely that the volunteers you’ll find at most Catholic charities are just in it because they want to make sure the Vatican gets a bunch of tax-free swag.
Why would you refuse to believe something so utterly delightful? Here I was thinking “man, sometimes the world is awesome”.
Thanks for the UU plug!
Habitat for Humanity also does good work in this area.
Even though you joined in '13, you haven’t participated a whole lot until yesterday. Thus, you’ve missed out on the rich history of dick jokes in the comments section of this website. If it’s not your thing, then feel free to keep on participating hardly at all.
Where’s that list of “people disappointed in BB”?
So wearing a ball cap would qualify?
My first statement “Shame on you…” was an attempt to paraphrase what the original post was saying. Indeed, the petty, sneering POV of the post is plenty intolerant. A well-placed tasteless joke might make a point. The only point made by this post is that a cynical, adolescent, “Beavis and Butthead” view of life is not only acceptable, it actually is preferable to the good that this homeless shelter might be trying to do.
ErosBlog has decided to comment on Xeni’s post:
