Freewill, Traditions of Men, and Cannibalism

August 24, 2009, 7:20 am by dc-agape.

John Chapter 6:25 - 71

This is a long section to post on, but the end of the chapter is directly related to this section and should not be broken into two posts.  If I did this I would be continually referring to the previous post, making it difficult for both you and myself.  This section talks about living forever and the difference between eating earthy food and spiritual food.  Jesus starts of simply enough, but then moves rapidly into a difficult teaching that drives some of his disciples away.  It seems that the end only the “Twelve” remain.  (Notice that John did not use the word Apostle in the NIV translator’s research). 

The beginning of this lesson is about the “Bread of Life” which Jesus claims will allow the one who eats to live forever.  So far we have no proof that this has occurred.  They certainly do not live forever here on earth, we can all agree on that.  Yet no one has proven that those that believe in Jesus are “spiritually living eternally” either.  Since the beginning of recorded history every human being has died, and only a handful have become “demi-gods” living forever (spiritually).  So this claim, of Jesus’, has yet to be proven.

But Jesus goes further and this is where freewill is involved.  Twice Jesus makes it clear that faith is not enough.  Additional he describes faith as work.

John 6:29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

Believe is not enough.  One must work at belief.  Jesus would not have used the word “work” if there was not a difficulty in “just believing”.  The act of believing takes a great amount of work, especially when YHWH gives so little to work with.  But Jesus goes on to describe twice, that YHWH is responsible for the ability to believe.

John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

John 6:65 He went on to say, “this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”

Twice Jesus tells his disciples that it is YHWH that initiates the ability to have faith and believe.  The act of faith is not, even by Biblical standards, something that humans have control over.  Only those people that YHWH has give the ability to believe will believe!  That means that the rest of us are SOL.  I certainly hope that if this YHWH exists that he treats us as he treated the Israelites in Moses’ time.  Jesus admits that these people are dead, physically and spiritually…since they did not eat of the “Bread of Life”.

Interestingly the Gospel of John brings up the “betrayal” that Judas commits.  Yet interestingly, one of the Twelve had to do this or the entire purpose of Jesus’ life would not have taken place.  So exactly is doing what must be done a betrayal?  And if one of them had to “betray” Jesus to initiate the salvation of humanity, why is this act considered a bad thing?  Is it not just a Tradition of Man that makes this the case?

I will end with the cannibalism that Jesus describes.  He and YHWH require that Christians feast on the body and blood of Jesus to be saved.  Most Christians take this as a spiritual act, but recently the Catholic Church as made “head-lines” in the blogosphere about how this is, to them, the act of physically eating Jesus’ body and drinking Jesus’ blood.  Many Atheist blogs have noted that this is indeed cannibalism in the earthly sense.  So this then brings up the question: why do different denominations of Christianity differ so greatly.  If there is only one “Word of God” should there not be only one interpretation?  Since this is obviously a sign that the Tradition of Men has corrupted the Word of God, which Traditions are human and which are not?  And how do we poor mortals differentiate? 

Posted in Gospel of John, Traditions of Men, Freewill, Readings | Print | 2 Comments »