They think, “Jesus was cool. I like him, and I’m gonna try to be like him.” Kind of like their guiding light is what would Jesus do? But there isn’t a focus on identification, recruiting others, judging others based on their religion, fear of God, fear of punishment for sinning, respect for clergy as an authority, rituals, worship, etc. Basically, just the example of Jesus’ life.
inb4: Christian lol!! got em!
Knowing the context of communion and transubstantiation, I feel like Jesus was talking in metaphors but some people took it literally. Maybe it’s because my Christian teachings were from a Lutheran church where nearly everything is just taken as a metaphor. I also suspect that’s why I am an atheist, to begin with; none of it was ever claimed to be real. 🤷🏻♂️
Eh, ironically it’s the Lutherans who still believe in transubstantiation, which means communion is not a metaphor and the essence of the bread turns to Christ’s flesh and the essence of the wine turns to Christ’s blood, the cannibalism is more literal for Lutherans than some denominations.
Either way, Christ could have qualified his statements if he was speaking in metaphors, as he does in other passages, but he was strangely literal about eating his flesh and blood, and again that whole chapter reads like Christ was wanting to alienate his followers because he had amassed a crowd that he didn’t want to deal with.
And yes, lots of scripture is interpreted as not having a literal interpretation, that everything has hidden and layered meanings. This was used a lot by Christians to re-interpret the Hebrew bible as foretelling Christ as the Messiah, and before Christ the priests and interpreters wished to breathe life and meaning into scripture by finding meanings in there that weren’t supported by a more literal or direct reading. Still, this seems like addled religious thinking to me, strangely disrespectful of the scripture and motivated by a need to resolve cognitive dissonance when passages don’t make sense or contradict something the church wishes to change their minds on (such as the way the Roman Catholic Church re-interpreted Christ’s messages on poverty and wealth).