For This Reason
After years of hearing that eating the Lord's Supper unworthily was spiritual death, I spent some time reading Paul's instructions to the Assembly of Saints that we were read in church repeatedly. There was something inside me that just did not get speaking death over the church while they ate and drank the body and blood of Christ. It seemed intentional. Cruel and somehow completely backwards from what I percieved about God. Anyway, do your own reading from a version of scripture you can understand, and read to the end of the advice!!! Don't stop when your own sense of right and wrong are satisfied because Paul was actually speaking to a very virulent and damaging selfishness in the people of God that was being practiced and accepted at church gatherings where the Lord's Supper wasn't wafers and juice but a communal Grace celebration meal. Reading the scriptures shows us that the "Love Feast" of the Christians was popular and so was gossiped about