Hanukkah.

The Hebrew lunisolar calendar doesn’t sync with the western solar calendar. That’s why its holidays tend to “move around”: They don’t really. Passover is always on the same day, 15 Nisan. But in the western calendar it wobbles back and forth between March and April. Likewise Hanukkah is always on the same days, 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet. But in the western calendar, in 2025, this’d be sundown 14 December to sundown 22 December.

Christians sometimes ask me where Hanukkah is in the bible, so I point ’em to this verse:

John 10.22 KJV

And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.

The “feast of the dedication” is Hanukkah. The word חֲנֻכָּה/khanukká (which gets transliterated all sorts of ways, and not just because of its extra-phlegmy kh sound) means “dedication.” Other bible translations make it more obvious—

John 10.22 NLT

It was now winter, and Jesus was in Jerusalem at the time of Hanukkah, the Festival of Dedication.

—because their translators didn’t want you to miss it, whereas other translators figure that’s on you.

Hanukkah is an eight-day holiday which celebrates the Hasmoneans’ rededication of the temple in 165BC.

The church is not the building. But it’s the building.

If you’ve been Christian for any length of time, at some point someone’s gonna preach a sermon in which they state the church isn’t a building; it’s the people. It’s not an institution, not a corporation, not a campus; it’s people. It’s made of people. The plural of the word Christian isn’t only the word Christians; it’s also church.

But let’s be honest: It’s also the building. And the organization. In fact these very same preachers will tell various church attendees, “Meet you at church!” or “These are the things our church believes,” and in neither case do they mean the people of their church. They mean the campus. They mean the 401(c)3 nonprofit corporation which facilitates everything your people do. They mean the organization—or as pagans call it, the organized religion. They mean those things way more often than they do people.

No, they’re not trying to deceive anyone! Church first and foremost does mean the people of a Christian group which gathers to collectively worship, follow, and promote Christ Jesus, and support one another in these practices. But popular culture—including Christian popular culture—constantly uses “church” to mean the building or the institution. We use it that way too. It’s an old habit which not only dies hard; loads of Christians aren’t making any effort whatsoever to kill it. It doesn’t appear to hurt anything to use the word that way, so they don’t feel any pressing need to change their behavior.

Though I have known some folks who try to reserve the word “church” only for people. I’ve tried it myself. They’ll greet the people of their worship services with, “Hello church!” and end prayers with, “And all the church says Amen.” They regularly address the people as “church.” In everything else, “church” is an adjective: The building is the church building, the organization is the church organization, and so forth. Takes longer to say, but it makes the point, and reminds everyone, the church is people.

Like I said, I’ve tried it myself. I lapse a ton. Old habits do die hard. But I don’t stress out about it; no one should.

Job, the resurrection, and his redeemer.

Job 19.25-27.

Same as my article “Dem bones,” you might be thinking, “What does the book of Job have to do with advent?” And again: Resurrection is part of Jesus’s second coming, and in this passage Job speaks of the resurrection.

Job was written in the fourth century before Christ. A lot of Evangelicals think it’s a way older book; even that it predates Abraham and the writing of Genesis! This, despite the fact every scholar can tell you it can’t have been written back then. It’s written in late biblical Hebrew, as we can tell from the sentence structure and all the Babylonian loan-words. Uz, Job’s homeland, was in Edom, and all the people’s names are Edomite. Edom—another name for Esau—is Abraham’s grandson. So why do Evangelicals insist it’s a much older book? Because young earth creationists have told them so. For various crazy reasons, YEC proponents have decided the words בְ֭הֵמוֹת/vehemót (KJV “behemoth”), likely meaning “hippopotamus,” and לִוְיָתָ֣ן/livyatán (KJV “leviathan”), likely “crocodile,” aren’t really west Asian and north African animals like you would reasonably think. They’re dinosaurs. Which makes Job proof humans and dinosaurs coexisted on earth, just like in The Flintstones. So every other bit of historical and linguistic evidence for when Job was written, is tossed aside in favor of their harebrained theory. Job must be really, really old. Gotta be.

Of course an old date for Job would mean resurrection is likewise a very old idea, for the Edomite prophet Job talks with his useless comforters about his own resurrection in chapter 19.

Job 19.25-27 KWL

25“I’ve known my redeemer is living.

At the end, he will stand on the dust left over

26after this flesh of mine was destroyed,

yet from my body

I will see God.

27Whom I will look upon for myself!

My eyes get to see him.

Not another’s—

though my kidneys fail within me.”

When Job fell ill, his so-called friends assumed—as those who believe in karma will—that he must’ve brought his disasters and illness upon himself, thanks to some secret sin, or from hubris which made him imagine he was greater than he was. The fact Job kept protesting, “But I didn’t sin,” simply proved to them he was too proud to acknowledge he had to have sinned. But Job clearly believed in a future divine judgment—that at the end, God will sort out right from wrong, once and for all. And believed he’d be alive to see it. After he’d died and his body decayed into dust.

Job would physically see this. He’d have eyes. And, he admits, he’d probably have to pee really bad. God-appearances have made braver men than Job wet themselves. Although having one’s kidneys fail is also a middle eastern metaphor for an emotional breakdown; it doesn’t have to literally mean a lapse in bladder control, or even organ failure.

Job’s statement is evidence of how, by the fourth century before Christ, the LORD’s followers had adopted (however loosely) the idea of bodily resurrection. After we die, we’re not merely gonna become ghosts and live in the afterlife forever, nor take on some quintessential physical form in the underworld. God means for us to live. When he created humanity, we became living souls; Ge 2.7 he intended his first humans to eat of the tree of life and live forever. Sin got in the way of that plan, but God never ditched the plan. He meant to redeem us; he meant to become human and atone for our sins and extinguish the sin problem. And once Jesus returns—once it’s the time of his second advent—we get to live again.

Yep, Job foresaw that. Not all of it; he doesn’t go into any detail, likely because the Holy Spirit hadn’t given him all the details. But he knew this much. He knew what he said in his book.

St. Nicholas’s Day. (Yep, it’s this early in the month.)

Whenever kids ask me whether Santa Claus is real, I’ll point out he is based on an actual guy. That’d be Nikólaos of Myra, whose feast day is today, 6 December, in honor of his death on this date in the year 343.

Here’s the problem: There are a whole lot of myths mixed up with Nicholas’s life. And I’m not just talking about the Santa Claus stories, whether they come from Clement Moore’s poem, L. Frank Baum’s children’s books, the Rankin-Bass animated specials, or the various movies which play with the Santa story. Christians have been making up stories about Nicholas forever.

That’s why it gets a little frustrating when people ask about the facts behind St. Nicholas: We’re not sure we have any facts behind St. Nicholas. There are way too many myths! We honestly have no idea which stories are true, partly true, or full-on fabrications. It could all be fiction.

But I’ll share what little we’ve got, and you can take it from there.

Round the year 270, Nikólaos was born in Patara, in the Roman province of Lykia. That’s just outside present-day Gelemis, Türkiye. No, he wasn’t Turkish; the Turks didn’t move in till the middle ages. He was Anatolean Greek. Hence the Greek name, which means “people’s victory,” same as Nicodemus.

Nicholas’s parents were Christian. When they died, he was raised by his uncle, the town bishop, who had the same name as he, Nikólaos. Seems his uncle expected him to go into the family business, so Nicholas was trained to be a reader, the person who reads the bible during worship services. Later he became a presbyter—or, as they were considered in the Orthodox tradition, a priest.

Tradition has it Nicholas’s parents were wealthy, and he was very generous with his inheritance, regularly giving to the needy. Probably the most popular St. Nicholas story tells of a man who couldn’t afford to marry off his daughters. Apparently they needed a large dowry in order to attract decent husbands. (Though you gotta wonder just how decent such husbands would be… but I digress.) Mysteriously, three bags of gold appeared just in time to pay for each daughter’s dowry. Of course their anonymous benefactor was Nicholas.

Depending on who’s telling the story, these weren’t bags of gold, but gold balls—and here’s where the three-ball symbol on pawnshops supposedly comes from. Or the gold appeared in the daughter’s stockings as they dried over the fireplace (even though stockings weren’t invented yet) and here’s where the custom of gifts in Christmas stockings supposedly comes from. Or Nicholas threw the gold down the chimney, and here’s where that story comes from.

Of course, people are gonna try their darnedest to link Nicholas myths to Santa Claus myths, so as to explain how on earth a magical fat Dutch-American is the same person as an ancient devout Anatolean Greek. There’s the strong likelihood none of these stories are true. Nicholas had a reputation as a gift-giver… and maybe he was. We don’t know! Hope so. But the rest is probably rubbish.

Saved by grace, not goodness. [Ep 2.8-9]

Ephesians 2.8-9 KJV

88 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9not of works, lest any man should boast.

There’s a common belief humanity has, that we save ourselves: We go to heaven because we’re good people.

Sometimes because we’re inherently good people; we might act like dirty rotten sinners, but at our core we’re naturally good, and all you gotta do with the worst people is figure out the psychological key to unlocking that good person inside ’em. In Charles DIckens’s A Christmas Carol it was to show Ebenezer Scrooge his happier youth, how everyone else this year would be having fun without him, then threaten him with death. Other people are harder nuts to crack; you might have to give ’em happy pills.

And sometimes because we’re not inherently good; it’s a choice we make. We can choose good—or evil. We can accumulate good karma, or through inaction or wrongdoing, rack up lots of bad.

Christianity doesn’t teach this. Yes, there are plenty of Pelagian Christians who definitely do teach this, but that’s because they’re taking their cues from humanity, not the scriptures. Or they’re cherry-picking the scriptures which say God created humanity and called us good, Ge 1.31 and skip the whole bit where the first humans sinned, and the result is their descendants—us—are corrupt. And need saving. Need a savior. Need Jesus. Need him; he’s not just a fun option.

We’re not saved because we’re good people; we’re saved because Jesus is a good person. When we trust him (i.e. the “through faith” part of Ephesians 2.8) he graciously saves us (i.e. the “by grace” part). You’ll find Christians who mix this up and claim we’re saved by faith, but we’re not. Nobody believes their way into God’s kingdom—we believe in Jesus, and he gets us in. So if you memorize today’s verse—and I recommend it—make sure you remember which thing is “through” and which thing is “by.” We’re saved by grace.

Grace is a difficult idea for a lot of people. Including Christians. Mostly ’cause we’re way too comfortable with the pagan point of view. It’s embedded in our culture, embedded in our minds, and hard to shake! God’s kingdom runs on grace, but our culture—even church culture!—absolutely doesn’t.

Does God listen to pagans’ prayers?

I’ll answer the question in the title right away: Yes. God listens to pagans when they pray.

And, well, duh. Of course he listens to them! He listens to everyone. He knows what everyone’s saying, what everyone’s thinking, and whether what we’re saying and what we’re thinking line up. (And when they aren’t, he knows we’re being hypocrites.)

He knows what our needs are; he hears us express ’em to him; he knows whether we’re sincere. True of everybody. Not just Christians.

Why’s this even a question? Because of course there are Christians who claim he doesn’t. Only we get access to the Almighty; only the true believers; only the elect.

And maybe Jews, depending on whether these Christians like Jews. If they do, they always manage to find an exception to the “no non-Christians, no unbelievers” rule. They’re God’s chosen people, so they’re kinda believers, so he has to listen to them, doesn’t he? Now, if these Christians are antisemites, either Jews are simply another type of pagan whom God refuses to hear, or (as claim these antisemites) God’s rejected and cursed them for not accepting Jesus, so of course he won’t hear them; he can’t abide them. Neither of these views are based on biblical, reasoned-out theology.

Really anyone who claims God rejects a people-group based on race or creed, is basing it on personal bias. It’s always bigotry and chauvanism. And you’ll notice how often antisemites likewise figure God rejects the prayers of Muslims, Mormons, Roman Catholics, anybody in the opposition party… basically anyone they hate. They claim it’s based on bible—

Isaiah 1.15 KJV

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Micah 3.4 KJV

Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings.

—and of course they’re not reading these verses in their proper context. Both Isaiah and Micah referred to unrepentant sinners. These were the prophets’ fellow Israelis—people whose ancestors were in covenant with God, who should therefore already be in conversation with God. But they didn’t care to follow his commands, didn’t believe he’d follow through on his warnings about willful sinners, and frankly weren’t gonna turn down some hot pagan sex. They chose sin. God warned ’em, and had his prophets warn ’em, there’d be consequences, and when those consequences came, he wasn’t gonna respond, in the very same way they weren’t responding to him.

No, this doesn’t sound very gracious of God. Which is why a number of Christians who like to preach grace, often like to skip these verses, pretend they don’t exist, or pretend they can’t mean what they clearly do. In the case of liberal theologians, they’ll even claim the prophets were wrong, and Jesus came to earth to rebuke and correct them. I won’t go there; I can’t, because there are plenty of New Testament verses which indicate Jesus agrees this is how his Father treats unrepentant sinners.

Matthew 18.34-35 KWL

34And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. 35So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

I believe the prophets were accurately relaying what God told ’em. God has infinite grace, and offers us infinite chances. But he also sets deadlines, and if we resist his grace all the way up to the deadline and beyond, he’s gotta follow through with his entirely fair judgments. When these people beg him to not follow through… what’s he gonna do, cave in like the parents of a spoiled child, let people go right back to doing evil, and allow evildoers to inherit his kingdom? They’d turn heaven into hell. Nope. He’s gotta ignore their shrieks of indignation, and stop the evil.

That’s what the verses mean when they state God sometimes won’t hear people. The rest of the time, of course he will.

Psalm 145.18-19 KJV

18The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. 19He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.

Romans 10.12-13 KJV

12For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. 13For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Jl 2.32

If God didn’t heed the prayers of pagans, it’d be impossible for pagans to call upon him to save them! Even the most hardcore cases of people who claim “God doesn’t hear pagans” have to admit this is true. It’s just they claim every other prayer these pagans make, every other thing they request, God ignores… ’cause he’s waiting for the sinner’s prayer, and only after he hears that will he move his hand.

But nope, God hears pagans when they pray. Even if their prayers are weird, ridiculous, warped, selfish, or evil. Same as our prayers, ’cause we can get just as weird, ridiculous, warped, selfish, and evil. God hears everyone.

Dem bones.

Ezekiel 37.1-10.

You’re likely thinking, “How is an Ezekiel passage a scripture for advent? Well, the passage is about resurrection, and resurrection takes place at the second coming of Christ Jesus. Ezekiel is the first time the LORD explicitly shows a resurrection to someone—in the Valley of Dry Bones Story.

The title of this article comes from the gospel song, “Dem Bones.” Most people have no idea it’s a spiritual, ’cause all they know is, “Ankle bone connected to the shin bone, shin bone connected to the knee bone…” They think it’s about anatomy. Or skeletons. Well anyway.

The point of this passage actually isn’t the literal resurrection of the dead. It’s the LORD trying to bring hope to ancient Israel. At this point in history, Israel had been conquered by Nabú-kudúrri-usúr 2 of the neo-Babylonian Empire (KJV “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon”), and deported to Tel Aviv, Iraq. (Tel Aviv, Israel is named after Ezekiel’s village.) Ezekiel and his family had been part of the first deportation, a decade before that destruction, so he wasn’t around to witness the temple get destroyed. He heard about it after the fact, from survivors.

Nabú had installed Mattaniah ben Joash—whom Nabú renamed Zedekiah—to rule Jerusalem as his puppet king. Zedekiah proved insubordinate, and after 12 years Nabú had enough, and personally overthrew him. He invaded, besieged, and destroyed Jerusalem. His soldiers burnt the temple down. (The first temple was made of gold-plated cedar, which made it far easier to destroy than the stone temple the Romans knocked over.)

Word got back to Tel Aviv. Up to that point, the refugees had hoped some day they’d go home. Didn’t know when; just knew Jerusalem was waiting for them. Now it wasn’t. No more homeland. No more city. No more daily worship for the LORD, so for priests like Ezekiel, no job to return to. They were gonna die in Iraq.

If you’re an American who’s old enough to remember when the World Trade Center was destroyed in 2001, the destruction of the temple felt way worse. For Israelis it was a blow to both their patriotism and their religion. It didn’t only feel like their country was destroyed, but like they were now utterly cut off from the LORD. It felt like being damned.

So, through Ezekiel, God sent ’em a message of hope.

Ezekiel 37.1-10 KWL

1The LORD’s hand took me,

and by the LORD’s Spirit he brought me out:

2God put me in a valley full of bones.

He made me walk round and round them.

“Look how very many, all over the surface of the valley!

Look, how very dry!”

3God told me, “Son of Adam.

Can these bones live?”

I said, “Master LORD, only you know.”

4God told me, “Prophesy over these bones.

Tell these dry bones, ‘Listen to the LORD’s word.’ ”

5My Master LORD tells these bones, “Look!

I put a spirit in you. Live.

6I put sinews on you. I grow muscle on you.

I encase you in skin. I give you the Spirit.

Live. Know I’m the LORD.”

7I prophesied as instructed.

At the sound of my prophecy, look:

Shaking, and bone came together with bone.

8I saw—look!—sinews and flesh grew on them.

Skin encased them.

But there was no Spirit in them.

9God told me, “Prophesy to the Spirit.

Prophesy, son of Adam!

Tell the Spirit this: ‘My Master LORD says this.

Spirit, come from the four winds!

Blow into these who were killed.

They will live.”

10I prophesied as instructed.

The Spirit came into them. They live!

They stand on their feet—a very, very great army.

Advent Sunday.

Four Sundays before Christmas, the advent season begins with Advent Sunday. That’d be today, 30 November 2025. (Next year it’ll be 29 November. It moves.)

Our word advent comes from the Latin advenire, “come to [someplace].” Who’s coming to where? That’d be Jesus, formally coming to earth. We’re not talking about the frequent appearances he makes here and there to various Christians and pre-Christians. It refers to the two formal appearances:

1. His first coming, when he was born in the year 7BC, which is what we celebrate with Christmas.
2. His second coming, when he takes possession of his kingdom. Hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it’ll happen within our lifetimes. Maybe not.

Many American Evangelicals have lost sight of the advent tradition, figuring it’s only a Roman Catholic thing—as if American Catholics haven’t likewise lost sight of this tradition. In the United States we’ve permitted popular culture to define the Christmas season for us. And of course popular culture much prefers Mammonism. Gotta buy stuff for Christmas! Gotta boost the retail economy. How much did people spend on Black Friday weekend? How early did you put up your Christmas lights and inflatables? Gotta buy seasonal Christmas food and drinks, and go to Christmas parties and give Christmas gifts, and fly home for Christmas to be with family, or at least send them expensive gift cards so they can go shopping.

Popular culture reduces the advent season to advent calendars: Those 25-day calendars which count down from 1 December (regardless of when Advent Sunday actually starts). Every day you get a little piece of chocolate-flavored shortening, unless you bought the calendars made with the good chocolate, with the cacao beans hand-picked by slave labor. Or bought one of those advent calendars with different treats—like Lego minifigures, or a different-flavored coffee pod each day (admittedly I really like this one), or a daily bottle of wine—

It actually turns out these bottles are table markers, but this photo’s been making the rounds of the internet described as an advent calendar. Still, you can easily find wine advent calendars on almost every wine-seller’s website. Pinterest

—which, if you drink it all by yourself, means you’re an alcoholic. These 25-day calendars are pretty much the only “advent” most American Christians know about. And on the years where Advent Sunday falls in November, they’ve no idea they’ve been shortchanged.

As for the rest of the Christmas season: Nobody’s actually getting ready for Jesus. We’re getting ready for Christmas. We’re getting ready for pageants and parties and gift-giving. Wrong focus and attitude—meaning more humbug and hypocrisy, more Santa Claus and reindeer and snowmen somehow brought to life without the aid of evil spirits.

And less Jesus and good fruit and hope.

You see the problem. It’s why so many Christians dislike Christmas. Too much fake sentiment. Too much “magic.” Too many feigned happy smiles when really they don’t like what so much of the “season” is about.

So lemme recommend an alternative: Let’s skip the Christmas season, and focus on the advent season. Let’s look to Jesus. He’s coming back, y’know. Could return at any time.

Preaching to the spirits in prison.

1 Peter 3.19-22.

Today’s passage confuses Christians because it refers to Jewish mythology, and most Christians know nothing about Jewish mythology. (Nor Jewish history, nor the Old Testament, but that’s a whole other—and far more important—issue.) Simon Peter grew up hearing about Jewish mythology, and the people who read his letter likely heard of it too, so they knew what he was talking about. Us, not so much.

Problem is, not all the ancient Christians knew of it. Gentiles hadn’t. Gentiles knew pagan mythology; they grew up in pagan culture, so they knew the stories of Zeus, Hermes, Apollo, Hades, and Zeus’s half-human, half-divine offspring like Perseus and Herakles. They also knew how to make up mythology… and that’s what they did with this passage. This is where several popular Christian myths come from.

One of the most popular is “the harrowing of hell,” as some Christians call it. It’s a story about how Jesus, after he died but before he was resurrected, went into the “prison” of the afterlife, and preached the gospel to “the spirits in prison.” Apparently the Old Testament saints were there, like Jesus’s ancestors Abraham and David; apparently, because Jesus hadn’t yet died for the sins of humanity, they had to be there, to suffer for their sins. But now Jesus had died for them. And once these saints eagerly accepted Jesus as Lord (’cause of course they would; everybody the ancient Christians considered a hero of the faith would) he freed them from prison, and took ’em with him to heaven. So they’re in heaven now. It’s why Orthodox Christians now call them saints (i.e. St. Abraham, St. David) although for some odd reason, even though they do believe these guys are in heaven now, Roman Catholics don’t.

Yeah, you’ve probably heard the “harrowing of hell” story, in one form or another. Doesn’t come from bible. Doesn’t come from this passage either, although many a Christian has pointed to it and claimed our myth is based on it. Nope; this passage isn’t about our myth; it’s about the Jews’ myth.

I’ll quote the passage first, then get to the myth.

1 Peter 3.19-22 KWL

19The One going to the spirits in prison

also preaches by the Spirit

20to those who’d been disobedient

when, in Noah’s days,

God’s patience was eagerly awaiting

the box’s preparation,

in which few—eight lives, that is—

escaped through water.

21Which now corresponds to you² also—

how baptism saves.

Not by removing dirt from flesh,

but a response to God,

in good conscience;

through Christ Jesus’s resurrection,

22who is at God’s right hand,

gone to heaven,

angels, authorities, and powers

submitted to him.

Thanksgiving Day.

In the United States, we have a national day of thanksgiving on November’s fourth Thursday.

Whom are we giving thanks to? Well, the act which establishes Thanksgiving Day as one of our national holidays, provides no instructions whatsoever on how we’re to observe it. Or even whom we’re to thank.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the last Thursday in November in each year after the year 1941 be known as Thanksgiving Day, and is hereby made a legal public holiday to all intents and purposes and in the same manner as the 1st day of January, the 22d day of February, the 30th day of May, the 4th day of July, the first Monday of September, the 11th day of November, and Christmas Day are now made by law public holidays.

—77th Congress, 6 October 1941
House Joint Resolution 41

The Senate amended it to read “fourth Thursday in November,” and President Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law. So it’s a holiday. But left undefined, ’cause our Constitution won’t permit Congress to pick a national religion, nor define religious practice. Article 6; Amendment 1 Not that Congress doesn’t bend that rule on occasion. Making “In God We Trust” our national motto, fr’instance.

Though our government is secular, the country sure isn’t. Three out of five U.S. citizens call ourselves Christian. (I know; we sure don’t act it. Look at our crime rate. Look at the people we elect.) Regardless, a majority of us claim allegiance to Jesus, which is why we bend the Constitution so often and get away with it. Our presidents do as well; our first president was the guy who first implemented a national Thanksgiving Day.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.

—President George Washington, 3 October 1789

Yeah, Americans point to other functions as our “first Thanksgiving.” Usually a harvest celebration by the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. Although technically the first Christian thanksgiving day on the continent was held by the Spanish in Florida in 1565—followed by another in Texas in 1598, and another by the Virginia colonists as early as 1607.

Over time, colonial custom created a regular Thanksgiving Day, held in the fall. Sometimes governments declared a Thanksgiving Day, like the Continental Congress declaring one for 18 December 1777 after the Battle of Saratoga. But Washington’s declaration in 1789 didn’t fix the day nationally—and he didn’t declare another till 1795. States set their own days: In 1816, New Hampshire picked 14 November, and Massachusetts picked 28 November.

It wasn’t till 1863 when it did become a regular national holiday:

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

—President Abraham Lincoln, 3 October 1863

Lincoln and his successors declared Thanksgiving every year thereafter.

Thus far these declarations weren’t law; they were presidential proclamations. Unlike executive orders nowadays, they weren’t legally binding. Note Washington only recommended, and Lincoln only invited, all Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving. They didn’t enforce it. ’Cause no government official, no matter how devout, has any business ordering people to worship.

So how’d it become a law? Mammon.

In 1939, during the Great Depression, November’s last Thursday was the 30th. Most Americans insist on only dealing with one major holiday at a time, so they don’t bother to shop for Christmas till the Friday after Thanksgiving. (Black Friday, as it became known in the 1950s because of shopper congestion, not because merchants finally found their budgets in the black.) With only 25 shopping days till Christmas, merchants wanted an extra week. So they begged the president, who complied and declared Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday: 23 November.

Republicans made a stink. How dare the President monkey with a sacred day for the sake of materialism? (Yeah, Republicans have changed their tune quite a lot since.) Ignoring Roosevelt, 22 states set the date of Thanksgiving as the last Thursday. But in 1940 and ’41, Roosevelt went even further and declared the third Thursday as Thanksgiving.

Finally the Congress stepped in: Thanksgiving was made an official federal holiday, and set on the fourth Thursday. That’s what it’s been since. There will always be at least 27 shopping days till Christmas.

The Jesus Seminar.

Every once in a while someone informs me a particular Jesus-saying in the gospels wasn’t actually said by Jesus. It’s extremely rare; it’s only happened to me thrice.

“No it was said by Jesus,” I’ll tell them. “Best we can tell, it’s been part of Christian tradition since the first century. it’s not a textual variant.”

“No it’s not,” they’ll respond, “because the Jesus Seminar says it’s not.”

First time I heard this, I laughed. A lot. “Who put them in charge of deciding what’s bible and what’s not?” As far as I knew, the Jesus Seminar people were just a bunch of crackpots.

Eventually I looked into this Jesus Seminar stuff and discovered… well crackpot isn’t the kindest way of putting it, but there’s an awful lot of cracked pottery involved in their setup. Lemme back up a bunch and explain what I mean.

The Jesus Seminar was the brainchild of liberal theologian Dr. Robert W. Funk (1926–2005), who created it to publicize his recently-founded Westar Institute, a nonprofit which promoted biblical studies from a liberal theological viewpoint. And before I keep flinging that term around, I’d better define it: Liberal theology presumes the theologian—not the Holy Spirit, scripture, and orthodox Christian tradition—is the authority when it comes to forming one’s beliefs about God. They decide what’s true and what’s not.

Based on what? Well, the conservative theologian will point to other authorities, like the Spirit, scripture, and tradition. Depending on the integrity of the theologian, they might not quote or interpret these authorities properly… but they do recognize it’s important to point to other authorities, and say, “They say so; it’s not just me.” Whereas liberal theologians don’t care if they’re the only ones saying so. They might point to the Spirit, scripture, and tradition, but they figure what ultimately decides whether something’s true or false about God, is them. And their commonsense, assuming they have any.

Hence liberal theologians don't do orthodoxy, don't recognize bible as authoritative, and frequently don't believe God intervenes in human history anyway. You might notice many of ’em go out of their way to reject orthodox and biblical ideas, just to show off how independent, novel, and radical they are. Plus it's great publicity. You’re not gonna gain notoriety for saying, “By golly, it looks like Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a virgin!”—unless you’re already well-known for denying every other creedal belief.

Funk was one of those guys. In 1985, he invited 50 academics and 100 laymen to join him at the new Westar campus in Santa Rosa, California, and participate in a seminar in which they’d vote on the legitimacy of 1,500 individual Jesus sayings, found in the gospels, the rest of the New Testament, and the Gospel of Thomas. Are they authentic Jesus, or hokum? Each participant voted by dropping a bead in a box:

• RED (3 points) meant it’s definitely Jesus.
• PINK (2 points) meant it’s likely Jesus—they were pretty sure he said something just like that.
• GRAY (1 point) meant Jesus didn’t say those exact words, but it’s consistent with his thinking.
• BLACK (0 points) meant it’s not Jesus at all.

The academics were largely legitimate biblical scholars, regardless of their liberal views. The laymen were… well, laymen. Not scholars. Churchgoers, and not. Filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, who’d just directed his first American movie—hadn’t even made RoboCop and Total Recall yet—was one of ’em. He’s a Historical Jesus fan; he published a book about Jesus in 2008, and has wanted to make a Jesus movie in which he’s a radical political activist. Again, not a scholar. And y’notice the laymen outnumbered—and could easily outvote—the scholars.

What criteria did these people use for determining whether something truly came from Jesus or not? Well, having it in all the gospels certainly helped. They were also looking for certain traits: It had to be memorable; they figured Jesus would say catchy stuff, like “Don’t throw pearls to pigs.” They liked irony, so if Jesus’s teachings sounded ironic to them (“The last will be first, and the first last”) they figured he’d say that. They liked the idea of trusting God, so if Jesus talked about that (“Have faith in God”) they figured that was legit.

What they didn’t consider legit, were End Times stuff, miracle stories, stuff about the church (’cause they didn’t believe Jesus intended to start any church), anything where Jesus talks about himself (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”). Plus if something is found in one gospel but not the others, they presumed the author of that gospel was pushing his agenda, not Jesus’s.

The end result? They published a new translation of the gospels, color-coded to how they voted. Black meant most voted black; red meant most voted red. Thus you wind up with a Lord’s Prayer which looks like so:

Matthew 6.9-13 Jesus Seminar version

9“Instead, you should pray like this: Our Father in the heavens, your name be revered. 10Impose your imperial rule, enact your will on earth as you have in heaven. 11Provide us with the bread we need for today. 12Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us. 13And please don't subject us to test after test, but rescue us from the evil one.”

So the only thing they deem Jesus definitely said was “Our Father,” and he definitely didn’t say “in heaven,” nor “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” nor “Deliver us from evil.” And only mighta said the rest.

In this way, with this criteria, 82 percent of Jesus’s teachings got nullified. Don’t have to follow them anymore! Of course if he’s not really divine, and doesn’t wholly speak for God, you never had to follow him anyway. So this isn’t really about growing closer to Jesus, nor learning to follow him better; this is just a fun intellectual exercise.

Thanksgiving. The prayer, not the day.

In the United States, on November’s fourth Thursday, we celebrate a national day of thanksgiving. Today I’m not talking about the day itself though. I’m talking about the act.

Americans don’t always remember there’s such a thing as an act of thanksgiving. Our fixation is usually on the food, football, maybe the parade, maybe the dog show. If you’re pagan, you seldom even think to thank God… or anyone. Instead you conjure up some feeling of gratitude. You have a nice life, a decent job, good health, some loved ones, and got some stuff you’ve always wanted. Or you don’t have these things, but you’re grateful for the few things you do have. Or you’re not grateful at all, and bitter… and in a few minutes, drunk.

But this feeling of gratitude isn’t directed anywhere. Shouldn’t you be grateful to someone or something? Shouldn’t there be some being to thank?

And that’s a question many a pagan never asks themselves. I know of one family who thanks one other. Civic idolaters might be grateful to America or the president, as if they consciously gave ’em anythng. Those who love their jobs might be grateful to their bosses and customers. But pagans generally suppress the question by drowning it with food and drink. Maybe thanking the person who prepared the food—but just as often, not.

Even among the Christians who remember, “Oh yeah—we’re thanking God,” a lot of the thanking is limited to saying grace before the meal: “Good bread, good meat, good God let’s eat.” Although every once in a while somebody in the family might say, “And now let’s go round the table, and everybody say one thing you’re thankful for.” A game nobody enjoys but them… although I myself have come up with a lot of outrageous answers to that question, which amuse me at least.

But enough about Thanksgiving Day and its not-so-religious customs and behavior. The practice of thanksgiving isn’t limited to just this one day. If you wanna practice more actual, authentic thanksgiving in your relationship with God, great! I’m all for that. So’s God. But it means way more than thanking God only once a year, on the government-approved day set aside for it.

Answering questions. Or not.

Years ago a friend—let’s call him Matty—led the college-age small group at his church. (Not my church; not my denomination either. They’re Christian though. I knew Matty from school.) They’d meet and chat, he’d give them some bible lesson, they’d pray, and at the end he liked to play Bible Answer Man for a bit—he took questions.

Most questions were easy, with nice short answers. But sometimes they needed a more detailed answer, so Matty would put a pin in it, and make it the subject of next week’s lesson, where he could spend a half hour or longer on it. Which, he admitted, he appreciated; sometimes he didn’t know what he was gonna talk about next week, but “God provided.” (Well, when his topics weren’t all that profitable, I’m not so sure it’s God who provided. But whatever.)

So… one week the question had to do with women in ministry. The scriptures have no problem with it, and therefore neither does Matty, so the next week he made a thorough biblical argument in favor of it. Thing is, his church is sexist, so you can already see where this was headed: Someone at the small group who disagreed with him, tattled on him. In their denomination the board, not the pastor, runs the church; and the board decided Matty ought not teach the college-agers any longer. So he didn’t.

Here’s the thing: The young’uns still had questions, and since Matty was the answer man, they’d bring them to him, class or no class. Pastor got wind of this, called Matty in for another meeting, and told him, “You gotta shut that down.” Shut what down? These kids and their questions. If they have questions, they’re to take it to one of the pastors. Not Matty. They didn’t trust Matty.

I’ll be honest: This’d be the point where I left this church. But Matty had a lot of years invested in this church, so, y’know, sunk cost fallacy. He felt he oughta be a team player, so he agreed. Whenever the college-agers had questions, he now said, “Oh, you should ask Pastor.” So they did. Then they started leaving the church.

Matty ran into one of those young people after she’d left their church, asked her what’s up, and got the whole story: Seems when Pastor got a question he didn’t like, his response was, “You ought not ask such questions.” The frustrated young people recognized a red flag when they saw one, and soon left that church. Some of ’em sought and found a church where pastors do answer questions. But more of ’em simply presumed Christianity didn’t have answers, and quit church altogether. (And I find if you grew up in one of those Fundamentalist churches which loudly declares or implies every other church is misled, too liberal, too heretic, or otherwise dangerously wrong, you’re likely to despair: “There are no other churches I can go to,” and likewise quit church altogether.)

There’s more to this story, but I wanna stop here to say this is the point of this article: When churches don’t or won’t answer questions, they’re gonna lose the people who have those questions. And rightly so. I’ll be blunt: If you aren’t allowed to ask questions in church, it’s a cult. You should leave.

Good behavior is part of our ready defense.

1 Peter 3.15-18.

As I said in my previous piece on 1 Peter 3.15, Christian apologists love this verse because they figure it justifies everything they do to “defend” Christianity by arguing in its favor. Nevermind the fact argumentativeness is a work of the flesh; they’re doing it for Jesus, so that makes it righteous.

But when we keep reading 1 Peter 3, you’ll notice it’s not to be done argumentatively. We’re to keep things civil. Respectful. Gentle—with our emotions in check, because it’s a proper fruit of the Spirit, and actually righteous.

We’re not to resort to the misbehavior of fleshly Christians and pagans, who care far more about winning than behaving themselves and being truthful. They’re gonna violate their consciences, ’cause they’re willing to do what they know is the wrong thing—manipulate and cherry-pick data, try to get one’s emotions to override facts, insist their opponents listen to them instead of listening to the Spirit. Roman rhetoricians did all that stuff when they debated, because they sought to win no matter what. But it does matter how we defend ourselves. Still gotta avoid fraud, untruth, anger, and sin.

And if we’ve done that, our opponents can’t point to our misbehavior and use it to justify dismissing us. See?—goodness has its advantages. As Simon Peter pointed out.

1 Peter 3.15-18 KWL

15Sanctify Christ the Lord in your² minds,

always ready with a defense

for everyone who asks you² for a word

about the hope in you.

16But do it with gentleness and respect,

having a good conscience,

so when you’re² spoken about,

those who verbally abuse your² good lifestyle

might be disgraced.

17For, God willing, doing good is better

than to suffer for evildoing,

18because Christ Jesus once also suffered for sins—

the just for the unjust—

so that he could bring us to God,

putting us to death in the flesh

and making us alive in the Spirit.

Finite amounts of faith.

Christians regularly talk about putting our faith in God. But we don’t always get the definition of “faith” correct. Sometimes we think of faith as a substance—same as we sometimes think of grace. We think of it as a supernatural object God has to grant us. Because Jesus’s apostles asked him about increasing their faith, Lk 17.5 they got the idea it’s a spiritual material we have in us… and there’s only a certain amount we can hold. Like the battery in your phone; like the gasoline tank in your car. Sometimes the “faith tank” is full; sometimes it’s low.

But precisely like grace, faith is not an object. It’s an attitude. It’s our trust in God. And either we have it or we don’t.

The supposed amount of faith we have, isn’t really an amount. It’s whether we have faith in God in a given situation. I’ve known Christians who absolutely believe God can cure illnesses; they’ve seen it happen! But when it comes to whether God will cure them personally, they’re not so sure.

I know how they feel. I knew, hypothetically, God can cure the sick, ’cause Jesus does it all over the gospels. Didn’t really trust him to cure me… until one day, when I was seriously nauseous and finally, finally prayed, “God, could you please just take this away?” and he immediately did. I was fine. Hadn’t happened before; haven’t been in a situation where it happened again; but at the time I think God wanted me to experience for myself how he can do that, so he did that.

It didn’t increase my faith level; it meant I didn’t really have faith before, but I definitely have it now. My attitude changed. Because again, faith is an attitude.

Christians who try to discourage you away from bible apps.

When I bought my first Macintosh, I also bought bible software. I’ve written a little about it elsewhere. I switched software a few times, finally settled on Accordance, spent a lot of money on modules, and now exclusively use it for bible study. I’ve got it on my phone too; I read it instead of my tiny bibles.

My print bibles? Getting dusty.

And I’ve met certain Christians whom this bugs to no end.

Most are bibliolaters, who worship the Holy Bible instead of the Holy Spirit. They may not be aware that somewhere, baked into the moldy filling of their over-elevation of the scriptures, they grew to also revere the printed word. To them, digital books aren’t real books… even though they absolutely are. They’re pretty snobbish about it.

It’s not the medium which makes a book. A book can exist in a stone tablet, a papyrus scroll, a parchment codex, an eight-ring binder, a strip of microfilm, a 30-pack of audio cassettes, a 12-pack of audio CDs, a floppy disk or CD-ROM or thumb drive, the solid-state hard drive of your iPhone or Kindle, or the solid-state hard drive of some internet-accessible server somewhere (which people like to call “the cloud,” but yeah, it’s physically somewhere).

Me, I prefer the hard drive. I don’t always have a wifi signal, so the cloud’s definitely my second choice.

So during Sunday morning services, when these bibliolaters wave their big black pleather-clad KJV study bibles at the listeners and say, “Got your bibles?” what they want to see is a room full of big black pleather-clad KJV print bibles waving back at them, like foam fingers at a baseball game. When they see phones instead… well, a little bit of them dies inside, and not the idolatrous part which needs to die.

Because to them, these aren’t bibles. They’re just phones. And they’re pretty sure you don’t read bible on ’em.

And they’re also pretty sure you don’t actually have a bible on them. In that, they’d usually be correct. I’ve met many a Christian who has no dedicated bible app; they go to Bible Gateway. And when they do have a bible app, most of those apps don’t actually install any text on your phone, which you can still read even when you’re offline. All their bible translations are on a server, not your phone. They’re entirely dependent on internet.

I don’t really see that as a problem, but bibliolaters certainly do: They worry that at some point in the future, probably during the End Times, the Beast’s government is gonna ban bibles, and if you don’t have a print copy you’re boned. Me, I suspect most Beast-like autocrats are gonna be just fine with bible. Will even pretend they love the bible, and hold it up for photo opportunities, and even claim their favorite verse is somewhere in “two Corinthians”—because they know perfectly well Christians don’t follow it, which is how they got elected in the first place. But that’s a whole other tangent. Back to bible apps!

Is it fair to say people don’t read bible on their phones? Well, kinda. Which is just as true for bibles in print.

Church shopping. ’Cause sometimes you need a new church.

CHURCH SHOP 'tʃərtʃ ʃɑp verb. Look for the best available church to attend or join.

[Church shopper 'tʃərtʃ 'ʃɑp.pər noun, church shopping 'tʃərtʃ 'ʃɑp.pɪŋ noun]

If you haven’t been going to church lately, or you never did go to church, and you seriously want your relationship with Christ Jesus to grow, it’s time to start. There are lots of other good reasons, which I spell out in my article, “Go to church!” but the main reason is because you need a Christian support system, and church—a good church, anyway—is that.

If most of the reason you don’t go, is because the church you think of as “yours” is not a good church, it’s time to start shopping for a new one. Yes, I use the word shopping. I didn’t come up with the American term “church shopping,” but I still use it, ’cause church shoppers kinda are shopping. When you shop for clothes, you wanna make sure they fit. You try them on. Churches likewise.

Other times, you have to shop for a new church. Happened to me when my last church shut down: I had to go to another. I didn’t shop long; I went to the same church almost everybody else in my old church moved to, realized it was a good fit, and stayed. Took me longer to find that previous church; I had moved to town and was looking at other churches for a few months.

Church shopping isn’t complicated. You visit a new church and try it on for size. If you like it, stick around. If not, try another.

It only gets complicated because certain Christians are extremely choosy about their churches. They insist it should have just the right faith statement. Just the right type of sermon and preacher. Just the right type of music and singers. Just the right type of people—friendly and loving and inclusive, to the right level; you don’t want ’em to be pushy. (Although there are some folks who don’t wanna be befriended, loved, and included; somebody hurt them, and they need therapy.)

Which leads me to talk about bad reasons people might be choosy about their churches. They don’t like the decor. Or there are certain misbehaviors they wanna get away with, and they’re hoping this church will give them a free pass. Or they wanna go to the “cool” church, however they define coolness… which means they look down on their current church, and likely not for the right reasons.

But for most Christians it’s fairly easy. There’s a church in town they’ve either visited, and wouldn’t mind visiting again. Or a church they’ve never tried, but they’re curious about it, and would like to visit. They go, they like it, they stay. Easy.

For others, church-shopping is an ordeal. They visit a church for a few months: They get involved, get to know the people. Even try to join, minister, or try to get into church leadership right away. And then… they discover the dealbreakers, the things they simply cannot abide in their church, and realize they can’t join this church, and leave. And they’re just heartbroken. They’ve been church-shopping for so long. Sometimes years! Just about every church in town—heck, the county—has met these folks: “Yeah, they went here for five months. So they’re at your church now? Well I’m glad they’re somewhere. I always wondered.”

I gotta tell you, though: If you’ve been through 25 different churches in the area and can’t stay in a single one, it’s not the churches which are the problem. It’s you.

The trilemma.

Years ago I made the mistake of trying to edit a Wikipedia article. It’s not always safe to do that, y’know. Some Wikipedia editors consider certain pages their territory, and will fight to the death any of your attempts to fix or update them.

The article in question was on C.S. Lewis, and you know how some Evangelicals are about Lewis. Christian apologists especially. He’s one of their patron saints. He’s a former atheist who turned Christian; an academic who taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, and apologists love when academics join their field. In 1941 and 1942, during World War 2, he wrote three radio talks for the British Broadcasting Corporation. The transcripts were initially published as Broadcast Talks, then renamed The Case for Christianity in 1943, then re-renamed Mere Christianity in 1952. It’s an introduction to Christian beliefs for anyone who might be on the fence about Jesus. Plus they’re usually fond of his Narnia books; especially the bit about Aslan not being a tame lion, and apologists often like to imagine they’re not tame lions either.

I’m a fan of Lewis too. I grew up on his Narnia books, and discovered his Space Trilogy and apologetics works in college. But unlike many a Lewis fan, I can’t agree with everything he taught. I take great issue with how the characters in his novels were willing, even thought it righteous, to kill their enemies. In the Narnian wars it’s somewhat justified; these are wars after all. But Elwin Ransom beating Weston to death in his 1943 book Perelandra—I don’t care that Weston was possessed by Satan. You could bind the guy, same as God’s angel is gonna do with Satan during the millennium, Rv 20.1-3 and get the very same result. I’d’ve much preferred Lewis got his ideas from the New Testament than the Crusades.

Anyway, the part I tried to update was the article’s section about the “trilemma.” It’s still there. I tried to move it to another page, and someone has since successfully done so.

Trilemma isn’t Lewis’s word, by the way. It was probably coined by Philip Henry in 1672. Its meaning in Christian apologetics was defined by “Rabbi” John Duncan (1796–1870), professor of Hebrew and oriental languages at New College, Edinburgh, Scotland. His fellow Scottish Free Church pastor William Knight collected many of Duncan’s interviews and sayings into a book, Colloquia Peripatetica/Deep-sea Soundings: Being Notes of Conversations with the Late John Duncan. L.L.D., published 1907. And among his sayings is this one:

Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable. Knight 109

I don’t know whether Lewis read Duncan. He definitely read Catholic novelist and pundit G.K. Chesterton, whose 1912 novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill described one of the book’s characters, Adam Wayne, this way:

“He may be God. He may be the devil. But we think it, for practical purposes, more probable that he is off his head.” Chesterton 171

Or maybe he heard the trilemma concept from another fellow Christian. Either way, it got into Mere Christianity like so:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Lewis 1.8

Josh McDowell, in his 1979 book Evidence that Demands a Verdict, reduced it to Lunatic, Liar, or Lord. These are our three options; Jesus is one of the three. It’s not a di-lemma, with two options; it’s a tri-lemma, with three. Get it?

Are the communion elements literally Jesus?

TRANSUBSTANTIATE træn.(t)səb'stæn.(t)ʃi.eɪt verb. Substantially convert into the literal body and blood of Christ Jesus. Used to describe the elements of bread and wine during the Christian ritual of holy communion or Eucharist.

2. Change something’s form or substance into something wholly different.

[Transubstantiation træn.(t)səb.stæn.(t)ʃi'eɪ.ʃən noun.]

Since I’ve been writing about the living bread in John 6, passages Roman Catholics love to use to back up their doctrine of transubstantiation—particularly Jesus’s bit about eating and drinking him—I figured I’d write about that idea in a little bit more detail.

As you can tell from the vocabulary word I provided up top, transubstantiate, Catholics take John 6 literally and claim the elements of holy communion—the wafers and wine they use—literally become Jesus. They don’t merely represent Jesus, as many Protestants have come to believe. Jesus, Catholics insist, wasn’t being metaphorical, wasn’t using hyperbole, when he said,

John 6.53-58 NABRE

53B“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. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. 55For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. 57Just 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. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

When Jesus says, “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink,” he’s not mincing words: We’re literally meant to eat him.

The Galileans he spoke to when he said this, and his students, had no clue at the time exactly what Jesus meant by this. He hadn’t yet taught his followers about holy communion; wouldn’t for a few more years. So it was still a mystery—but one which freaked out the Galileans. In contrast Jesus’s kids had trusted him this far, so they stuck around long enough to watch him ultimately fulfill it, which he did at his last supper. (Nevermind that he didn’t do holy communion at all in the gospel of John. The author was aware of the other gospels, and didn’t feel the need to repeat them.)

So when Jesus did this at his last supper, it triggered the memory of when he talked about the living bread:

Mark 14.22-25 NABRE

22While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.” 23Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 24He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. 25Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

Again, Catholics insist, Jesus wasn’t using metaphor. That was his body. That was his blood.

If it’s not, why did Paul and Sosthenes have to warn the Corinthians against practicing holy communion without acknowledging it’s Jesus’s body?

1 Corinthians 11.27-32 NABRE

27Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. 28A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. 29For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying. 31If we discerned ourselves, we would not be under judgment; 32but since we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

This is why Catholics won’t let non-Catholics partake of Eucharist. Unlike other Christians, who figure if you’re Christian of course you can worship Jesus along with them, they don’t want people ignorantly eating and drinking judgment upon themselves. After all, those elements aren’t merely wafers and wine: They’re Jesus. It’s why Eucharist is the central part of the Catholic worship service—it’s when Jesus enters the building. It’s a big, big deal.

Losing students—and keeping the good ones.

John 6.66-71.

Growing up, I’ve heard many a Christian claim the worst verse in the bible was John 6.66. I suspect most of that is because of the address. Plenty of Christians are superstitious about the number 666, forgetting it’s only a hint of what the Beast’s name is; it’s not an inherently evil number. And there are much worse verses. But here’s how that verse goes:

John 6.66 KWL

Because of this,

many of Jesus’s students are going back,

and are no longer walking with him.

You remember a crowd came to Jesus hoping he’d give ’em free bread, and maybe overthrow the Romans, and instead he tells them he’s living bread who wants to save us, and expects our response to be a deep commitment—we gotta eat this living bread. And no, this isn’t actually about holy communion; Jesus is not making statements about how eating and drinking the communion elements literally work. He’s talking about abiding in him. Jn 15.4 About being one with him. About really following him.

He didn’t just weird out the crowd; this was too much for some of his own students. And if this freaks you out, Jesus pointed out, wait till you see Jesus get raptured.

Jesus had already pointed out the people didn’t trust him, Jn 6.36, 64 and the radical stuff he was saying—much of which affirms he’s actually God. It broke them. So they quit. They followed him no more.

Christian apologists love to point to this, and claim it’s part of the “trilemma,” John Duncan’s claim (which C.S. Lewis popularized; no, he didn’t invent it) that Jesus is either a fraud, self-deluded, or divine. Or, as Josh McDowell rephrased it, a liar, lunatic, or Lord. (Pagans typically choose a fourth option: Jesus never said any of these things, for overeager Christian fanboys made ’em up.) So the students who quit figured Jesus was either phony or crazy, and the students who stayed figured Jesus is Lord. In other words a good old-fashioned di-lemma: Jesus is either wrong, or right.

As for those who stayed:

John 6.67-71 KWL

67So Jesus tells the Twelve,

“You² don’t want to leave too?”

68Simon Peter answers Jesus,

“Master, to whom will we go?

You¹ have the sayings of life in the age to come,

69and we trusted you

and knew you¹ are God’s saint.”

70Jesus answers them, “Don’t I choose you² Twelve?

And among you is an accuser.”

71Jesus is saying this

of Judas bar Simon Iscariot,

for Judas is about to betray him,

despite being one of the Twelve.