Do you know the difference between ceremony and ritual? These words are often used interchangeably, but ceremonies are positive affirmations of the status quo, like parades, and rituals include a dark element. Do you see this in the sacraments of baptism and communion? Baptism is a ritual of burial, albeit in water rather than earth, but the Bible makes this plain, and communion is an invitation to identify with my death by drinking my blood and eating my flesh. If properly understood these are not things to engage in lightly.

What do Christian parents tell their children? That they must complete their education and then start a career before marrying and having children, or finding a way to serve me? This may be good advice and it is respectable in your culture, but where do you find it in my teachings or elsewhere in the Bible? Where is it written that you must take care of your own needs and secure your own future before following me? I direct my followers on many paths, and each of these is right for that person.

Have you heard of anything that backfired? Weapons can be dangerous to the user as well as the intended target but now this term commonly refers to a plan or action. Have you seen this happen with sarcasm, ridicule and contempt? The one who speaks in this manner intends the blow to land on his victim, but it says nothing about the person it is directed against and everything about the one who speaks it. For the words you speak are a reflection of your own character, not of anyone else’s.

When Peter confessed that I was the Christ, I said that he was blessed because flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but my Father in heaven. Do you think this is a universal enduring principle? How do most people today become convinced that I am the Christ? Is it by instruction from other people, the record of history, and the Bible? Should this be considered more as flesh and blood revealing or my Father? Yet you know from the story and intuitively that the latter is better.