A Few Words Archives - Half Formed Thoughts 1/20/03

Eat Me!

It’s been a while since I graced this website with my words. There is a very good reason for the hiatus. I am no longer unemployed. Plus, I couldn’t think of any ideas for columns. Two reasons. Also, I’m not being paid for this. Three reasons. In addition, I was terribly busy writing the first sixty pages of a novel which I will never finish. Four reasons. But here I am, with a column which just might be the craziest thing I have ever written. But first, I would like to share the following scripture with you:

[John 6:53-66] Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever." These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Then many of his disciples who were listening said, "This saying is hard; who can accept it?" Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, "Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe." Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father." As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.

The Catholic Church uses this scripture to explain the rather bizarre concept of the Eucharist, whereby bread and wine is somehow transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ while still looking and tasting exactly like bread and wine. But it’s really human flesh and human blood. This is what Catholics believe. This may seem strange to you, but I will give you a clearer example. If you’re not sitting down, I want you to sit down. As soon as you finish reading this sentence, through the power of magic, I’m going to turn your chair into a shrubbery. Alakazam! You are now sitting on a shrubbery. Of course, it looks just like your chair did, but that’s what makes my magic so powerful. I transformed your chair into a shrubbery that looks and feels just like a chair! Isn’t that the most amazing thing you have ever witnessed? If you were amazed by my feat of magic, please send me $1.2 million so that God does not call me home.

We Catholics need to eat God at least once a week, for purposes of salvation from our sins. Unless, of course, we are in a state of mortal sin, meaning complete separation from God’s grace, in which case we’re not allowed eat God for forgiveness. Also, non-believers are not allowed to eat God, which seems strange because Jesus said that eating his flesh would cause someone to “remain in me and I in him.” Shouldn’t atheists and other non-Catholic heathens be encouraged to eat God since otherwise they’re pretty much fucked in the afterlife?

But what I have always found fascinating is that last little sentence in the story. Jesus told everyone that they had to eat his flesh, and they found that saying so hard, they walked away. Remember, this is the guy who they saw walking on water, raising people from the dead, and turning water into wine. If I were following a man who could do those things, I certainly wouldn’t leave him just because he told me I had to eat his body every once in a while. I’d consider it a small price to pay. I suppose I could probably even come to like it a little bit, eventually.

I suspect I might have just said too much.

But back to the subject. Why did these people leave because of what Jesus told them? They might have been grossed out by the idea of cannibalism, except that he wasn’t talking about eating real human flesh, just bread which has magically been turned into human flesh which still looks and tastes just like bread. And none of us Catholics are all that repulsed by the concept. Anyway, since Jesus can read people’s thoughts, if the disciples that left him left because they thought he literally wanted them to make him their snack, why wouldn’t he have corrected them? It never made sense to me as a kid, and it continued to confuse me into adulthood.

Then I stumbled upon an interesting piece of the puzzle which might, just might, explain it after all. I read somewhere that in the time of the gospels, the phrase “to eat someone’s flesh” was a figure of speech which meant to strongly criticize someone. We have a similar figure of speech, “to chew someone’s head off”.

Was Jesus using this figure of speech? Was he only using a metaphor to make a point? Sure, he goes on and on with the whole flesh-eating thing for several sentences, but maybe he’s repeating himself to be certain that everyone heard him properly. If he’s speaking metaphorically, what could it have meant? It reads to me as if Jesus is telling his disciples that he wants them to criticize him, and that if they don’t criticize him, they have no life within them. Of course, Jesus knows everything and is never wrong, but he is still encouraging his disciples to think for themselves. Some of Jesus’ other teachings are pretty radical, even today. But he doesn’t want his followers to just take his word for it. He wants us to question, reason, challenge and even disagree with him from time to time. He’s saying that it’s better be critical than to blindly accept what you’re taught, even if the teaching is from God himself.

I can see why THAT message would be difficult for most people to accept. Most people are perfectly happy being told what to believe. Most people are only comfortable when their opinions agree with everyone else’s. These are the people that check the Neilsens to see what TV shows to watch, and read Billboard magazine to decide what music to listen to. But those are not the kind of people Jesus wants to follow him. He wants disciples who can think for themselves. People who are individuals.

Wouldn’t it be the greatest thing ever if Monty Python’s interpretation of scripture was more correct than the Catholic Church’s?

In closing, let me say that I really don’t believe any of this. I happen to believe that the Bible is 99 and 44/100 fiction in the first place and so it doesn’t matter in the slightest what this fictional (or perhaps pseudo-fictional) person had to say about belief, or eating his body, or being critical of him. But since I have already eaten my share of God, I’d like to cover all my bases by metaphorically eating Jesus’ flesh, in the infinitesimal chance that I’m actually on to something here. So I would like to say that if Jesus really did appear to Paul on the road to Damascus, and if he really did instruct him to become one of the leaders of the early church, he could not have chosen a more vile, hate-mongering, homophobic misogynist unless he had waited two thousand years for Jerry Falwell to be born.

There. I fell much better for having gotten that off my chest.

Email Steve with any comments at aenor@aurora.mv.com