I don’t know that it usually has a purpose other than being a glurgey warm fuzzy, the kind of thing you see overlaid on a picture of two sets of footprints going across the beach, posted on Facebook with the caption of “SHARE IF YOU’RE A BELIEVER TOO!!!.”
If two Christians are recounting different instructions from God, how do you know which one to believe?
The bolded part seems to be an example of what I suggested in the OP:
(Is it an oblique attempt to discredit other religions by implying that their deities aren’t real?)
Could a Muslim, a Jew, or a follower of any other religion who sees it as The Truth claim the same thing?
If your answer is, “no, because those religions aren’t The Truth”, I think you’ve answered the OP.
[/quote]
I would say anyone who sees any religion as The Truth does not have that relationship with God (God will not share His glory with another - including religion), but a Jew can know God personally (Jesus is one such person. Abraham another(well not technically Jewish at this stage), King David another etc.), A Muslim can also. A Buddhist can also know God personally, their own ‘god self’, though they usually do not have that terminology, but that is God also. Also a Atheist can know God, as God is Love and if they have a loving heart, that is God their acts of Love are acts of God, so they know God because again of their God self that they know, but won’t associate that Love with a diety.
Age old questions will do this
The one that more successfully perpetuates the existence of the church.
There are a lot of problems and disputes with this word “religion” and the way that it is defined, and the way that it is applied to people. Labeling something as ‘religion’ brings with it a whole bunch of associations and assumptions that are often unjustified on the personal/local level.
When people come to know a definition or connotation of the word ‘religion’ that does not match what they see themselves as doing, and see it used to define them, it isn’t surprising that some will seek out a term that they feel better defines them, and promote their claimed identity over their assigned one.
Similarly, I’ve seen bumper stickers that say:
I’m not religious.
I just love the Lord.
Duh. That sounds religious to me.
It’s a way of having the rewards – salvation, heaven, God’s love – without paying anything for it. You don’t have to go to church or tithe, and you don’t have to evangelize. It makes for a completely personal form of faith.
Now I remember at least one place I’ve run across the claim that “Christianity isn’t a religion”: in the writings of Robert Farrar Capon:
[QUOTE=Robert Farrar Capon]
Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle to the Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever succeed (see the Epistle to the Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection.
For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade. The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical, and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace.
[/QUOTE]