You wrote:
"I need the church, how, exactly? I have the Body of Christ and my individual relationship with God everywhere I go." Ah! That's just the point, brother. St. Paul addresses you directly when he says: "The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" (1 Corinth 12:21)
As members of the Body, we are members of a heirarchically organized physiological system. (Heiros = holy, sacred arche = order, rule) Just as St. Paul says, all the members of the body do not have the same role or function. The foot, the eye, the heart, the head, the lungs, do not all do the same thing.
St. Paul also says, "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." (Eph. 4)
Excuse me, but you seem to be operating as if eveybody's a "head." You suggest a fellowship where everybody has his own isolated, individual connection and has his own take on the truth depending on what he individually understands. It looks to me like a hydra-headed thing-- all heads. And, looking at the 10,000 denominations of Christians, all heads talking at once and all saying different things.
I have to shake my head. The Holy Spirit is not the author of confusion.
In 1 Corinthians, a passage very similar to Ephesians, St. Paul explains again about the Body having different organs with different functions, all of them needing each other. Then he says, "And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues."
That's verse 28. In verse 29 he immediately asks, "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?"
Obviously he's talking about a "Heiros arche", a divinely ordered body set up with different parts playing different roles, all of them joined to Christ by being joined to each other.
Think of the difference between 200 tons of plankton (a mass of tiny single-cell plants and animals floating in the sea) and ONE 200-ton blue whale. The 200-ton whale is a true unity of different tissues, ogans and systems. It's not just a fellowship of independent cells.
A Christian needs to be part of a true Body, not just a fellowship of independent plankton.
An analogy that swims. OK, I'm through.
God bless you.
I'll say it again. The connection to God is within each individual. This is true, without question. The gifts of the spirit, including free will, are given to the individual, not a group. This is true, without question.
To be saved, do God's work, spread His word and law does not require a group. Never has, never will. The prior being true, this must be true as well, arrived at by using God's gift of a brain with intelligence.
That said, it is good to belong to a club of like minded people. Some works are best done in a group. Many like to draw strength from a group. A group is good for PAC.
All of this is the God connected individual's choice. None of this is required to go to Heaven. If it is advertised as required to be saved, that is fraud and and against God's law.
May God light your way through Christ Jesus.
