Protestant “my own interpretation believing Christians” is completely incoherent!
The Protestant explanation completely crumbles under the weight of historical and textual consistency.
To claim that Jesus "corrected" them in verse 63, but then watched them walk away because they rejected the correction, creates a completely absurd image of Christ's teaching.
If Jesus' "explanation" failed so miserably that His followers still left under a false impression, then Jesus would be a thoroughly incompetent teacher.
Furthermore, comparing John 6 to commands like cutting off a hand completely ignores the narrative reality: the disciples never permanently abandoned Jesus or stopped following Him over those moral hyperboles. They only abandoned Him in John 6 because they correctly understood that He was demanding a literal, objective participation in His real flesh and blood.
Most people still thought He was speaking literally.
Even after He said “the flesh profits nothing, the words I speak to you are spirit,” they didn’t believe Him. They thought He was still telling them to physically eat His body, and they found the idea disgusting and impossible.
So they walked away.
Jesus didn’t chase after them or say, “Wait, come back, you misunderstood me!” He simply turned to the twelve and asked if they were going to leave too. That tells you He was willing to let people walk away over this teaching, even though He wasn’t telling them to literally eat Him.
Jesus often used very strong, graphic language when teaching spiritual truths. He told people they must hate their father and mother to follow Him. He said if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. He said if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.
He’s doing the same thing in John 6. He used the strongest possible word for eating to make a powerful spiritual point: you must take Him into yourself completely. It wasn’t meant to be taken literally. He was using shocking language to drive home a spiritual truth, just like He did many other times.