094 Strange Religion and the First Believers

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One of the strangest things Christians believed, and most Christians still do, is that Jesus is present in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. Its such a weird belief that it leads to the largest mass abandonment of followers in John 6. Nijay rejects this teaching, like many moderns, because it's honestly too "strange" for many of us. In addition to the good points Nijay makes, I wish he would be open to the wondrous divine mystery of Christ with us in the Eucharist. The Greeks offered meat to idols and partook. The Christians offered the bread and wine to God and partook. Its in 1 Corinthians 10. Its in John 6. Its in the Didcahe, Ignatius, Irenaeus. Its mystical, and it's different than the food for getting full on, since Paul says it's better to eat at home if the social food is causing divisions. I wish Bible scholars wouldn't presume to understand the original languages, cultures, and practices better than the contemporary figures who lived in the decades and centuries after the apostles. To call this central and early and universal practice of the church a "perversion" is at best uncharitable and at worst somewhat blasphemous.