I'm not sure that the Religion Forum "don't make it personal" rule implies concealing one's own ties to the Body of Christ (call it "church" or "denomination" or "reformed heritage" or "evangelical fellowship" or "my prayer group" or what-you-will.)
Let me use this as an example. Marine life forms called zooplankton live in the ocean by the bazillions, but all as single cells. They do not, like sponges and corals, form clumps or structures which include any degree of cell differentiation. They do not adhere to a shared life as even a rudimentary multicellular organism. They have no living, effective contact with each other which would contribute to a vital unity.
Another marine life form,the Blue Whale, comprises 60 quadrillion - 100 quadrillion cells (I just looked it up) and they are organized into tissues, organs and systems which are differentiated as to physiological function, and depend upon each other for overall well-being of the one animal they are, a Blue Whale.
If one were to say "I am just a single-cell Christian" and "I don't need any others," it would be a self-contradiction, because St. Paul says we are more like the Blue Whale than like the zooplankton. We are feet, hands, eyes, noses, and ears of one Living Thing.
1 Corinthians 12:20-21
But now indeed there are many members, yet one body.
And the eye cannot say to the hand,
"I have no need of you";
nor again the head to the feet,
"I have no need of you."He teaches this a lot: Romans 12:5,1 Corinthians 12:12-27, Ephesians 3:6 and 5:23, Colossians 1:18 and 1:24.
So when a person says, or seems to say, that their connection to other Christians really doesn't matter, and they flick off "church" (or "denomination" or "reformed heritage" or "evangelical fellowship" or what-you-will) as if that's quite beside the point, as if it really doesn't amount to much, it's one of those things that makes me go, "Huh???..."
Can one take the Body of Christ and dissolve it into a vast soupy patch of zooplankton?
I hope this analogy will be taken for whatever small soupy sense it makes!
"About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter." - St. Joan of Arc
It makes no sense whatsoever since the premise is based on a corrupted concept of what ekklesia means.
That isn't actually true. Zooplankton is actually a categorization of marine life spanning a range of organism sizes including small protozoans and large metazoans.
They do not, like sponges and corals, form clumps or structures which include any degree of cell differentiation. They do not adhere to a shared life as even a rudimentary multicellular organism. They have no living, effective contact with each other which would contribute to a vital unity.
Again, it depends upon whether you are talking of proto or meta zooplankton, because most of them DO form groups and multicell creatures such as jellyfish (metazoan zooplankton include cnidarians such as jellyfish) and also krill (a crustacean) - which your Blue Whale - as large as he is - depends entirely upon to survive as krill is their only food source. In fact, species of zooplankton are not dispersed uniformly or randomly within a region of the ocean. Instead ‘patches’ of zooplankton species (this also applies to phytoplankton) exist throughout the ocean. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooplankton)
Even the tiniest organism living in the seas certainly DO adhere to a shared life - how else do they procreate? They DO have a vast shared life with higher species of marine life and even if their only God-given function is to be a food source for higher species, I don't think anyone could conclude that they don't contribute to a vital unity with ALL life.
Now, I know you aren't comparing the non-affiliated Christians here to zooplankton nor do I think you imagine your church is the Blue Whale (he EATS the little guys, remember - by the billions every day). What I would like for you to recognize is that NO Christian believes he has no connection to other Christians. Speaking for myself - and I think for maybe many others here, if I may be so bold - is that the connection we have to THE body of Christ is that we are all part of His spiritual house, the one where each believer is a living stone part of it. Just as Paul says, we are all one body, one loaf, no matter what house of worship we sit in on Sunday or other days. This bond is one of unity in the spirit as children of the Most High God, heirs and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. We become one with Him through faith in Jesus Christ. We follow Him, because He is the Shepherd, we hear His voice and only follow Him. We know Him and He knows us.
I understand the Catholic need to place identity labels on people and it's hard to think of someone apart from what "church" they attend. But, if I've learned one thing in my nearly ten years here it is that people don't HAVE to say their religious affiliation because if they participate on these RF threads long enough it gets revealed, whether they know it or not. I know Roman Catholics believe that they are THE church Jesus established on St. Peter and that gives them street cred to declare they alone hold the full truth of Christianity. But, we know that the early church was a loosely affiliated group of local, independent assemblies that had the gospel of Jesus Christ in common. They each had more or less complete copies of the Scriptures that were used as their rule of faith and those who delved into heretical beliefs contrary to what the Apostles taught - as they wrote it down for that purpose - they were countered BY the Scriptures and everyone that wanted to know what was orthodox belief could know it both by the leaders of the local churches who were handed down the teachings (traditions) and the Scriptures they used to confirm it. Anyone want to know what the Apostles taught? They had the Scriptures they wrote that ensured it would always be known.
So, if someone wants to judge what another believes here, all they need do is read what that person writes then verify if what they say is true according to God's ONLY inspired resource - His Scriptures. I don't expect anyone to just take my word for what is the truth of the Christian faith, that's why I usually include book/chapter/verse to back up what I might say. It's not going to be true because I say it, or because "my" church says it, it will be true because God's word says it. Having a record of what the early church taught through the church "fathers" is good - it helps to know what was believed by everyone from the start - but these men were not infallible or inspired by God to write what they did. We only have the Scripture for that authority.