Once upon a time, in a far-away land, a Christian missionary chanced upon an uncivilized, paganistic, barbarian ruffian–a cannibal, no less. And just as the savage was getting ready to devour the flesh of his fellow man, the appalled missionary vehemently protested.<\/p>\n
“What the heck are you doing?” exclaimed the horrified Christian missionary. “Don\u2019t you understand that man must never consume his fellow man. It is immoral and a sin. I forbid you from eating the flesh of that dead man. God forbids it. Bury it and repent, you sinning scoundrel.”<\/p>\n
“You sniveling hypocrite,” retorted the savage. “Did I not see you consuming the flesh and blood of your Lord the previous night? Did you not receive his \u2018body and blood\u2019 in sacred holy communion?”<\/p>\n
“Ah, but that\u2019s different,” replied the missionary. “I did not actually eat the carcass of a dead man. Instead, I symbolically consumed the body and blood–a host of bread, actually–of a being born half-man and half-God, so that, technically speaking, my practices do not actually amount to vicious and unconscionable cannibalism.”<\/p>\n
The cannibal was actually confused by the missionary\u2019s answer, and so he asked him: “So do you mean it is OK to symbolically eat a man as long as he is half-God, but eating an ordinary, everyday, regular man is sick, degrading and immoral? I fail to see the logic in all of this.”<\/p>\n
“Yes, but that is because you are nothing but a mere savage,” said the self-righteous missionary. “And that is precisely why I have come here to civilize you for your own good–and for the good of your future generations.”<\/p>\n
“I am getting tired of all this idle chatter,” said the young cannibal. “I think I will go kill a man and make a human sacrifice for the gods.”<\/p>\n
“You can\u2019t do that!” screamed the missionary. “Life is given to us by God. It is very precious and must never be sacrificed.”<\/p>\n
“Yes, but didn\u2019t your God sacrifice his only son for your sins?” rejoined the savage. “Don\u2019t you find your moral position rather untenable in light for your avowed religious beliefs?<\/p>\n
“Actually,” began the savage cannibal, “given the parallels in our own beliefs–that is, human consumption and human sacrifices (I have many while you have only one)–is it not possible that your \u2018advanced\u2019 religious beliefs may have evolved from my primitive conclusions? Is it not possible that your current beliefs really stem
\nfrom my beliefs? After all, hundreds or thousands of years ago, were not your people savages too?”<\/p>\n
“Impossible,” said the missionary. “My case is different from yours.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once upon a time, in a far-away land, a Christian missionary chanced upon an uncivilized, paganistic, barbarian ruffian–a cannibal, no less. And just as the savage was getting ready to devour the flesh of his fellow man, the appalled missionary vehemently protested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}