The Music Changes but the Song is the Same

If you listen attentively to other denominations talk about what's important to them, you realize they talk a lot about the same things you do, they just say it differently.

I've heard Catholics on the radio talk about mass taking too long, and if it takes too long too often, they'll go to a different church. (For the uninitiated evangelicals reading this, that's communion.) How many times as a boy did I look at the clock at the back the sanctuary on the first Sunday of the month at Bethel Baptist Church in Erie, PA while Pastor Andrus was still going strong and I was thinking "C'mon c'mon I wanna get out of here, communion will take another 20 minutes at least."

Catholics believe communion is salvific and imparts grace through the real body and blood of Christ.[1] Baptists do not; they do it because they were told to do so "in remembrance," at least, after many years in a Baptist church (that I love and respect to this day), that's as close as I can get to the reason. Yes, Baptists acknowledge a presence of God in the service, but it's no different than God's presence at any other time; the moment is just more solemn and contrite.

The elements of "the Lord's Table" are otherwise the same.

It is this way in all human perception.

Freud, Jung or Piaget didn't change human behavior by defining different models for human behavior. Noam Chomsky, Sapir and Wharf, and Sydney Lamb didn't change language by describing language differently.

That doesn't mean these things don't matter - they assuredly do; a better model has greater predictive value - rather, it means that if we forget the model is not the thing itself, we risk losing ourselves in academic theater[2], just as millions of people pray or take communion or go to church every day and all they are doing is praying and taking communion and going to church.

[1]
Insofar as I understand it. We must deal with Christ's words in John 6 somehow, if we trust them to be his; his audience didn't think he was speaking metaphorically.

51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
53 Then Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
54 Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
56 He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him.
(AKVJ)

[2]
Sometimes dangerous, sometimes harmless. A poor model of germ theory would not kill germs; a poor model of flora classification might allow more weeds in your yard instead of grass. Examples and counterexamples abound.

Started: 2012-06-25