“Religious man”
Yes, a time old subject, declaring its self by many definitions.
What a religious man is, is determined by what set of belief structures and circumstances one was brought up in.
For example, let’s take a man or woman born to a tribe of people in the deep heart of Africa who have no ties to the outside world, but exist solely on their own environment with their own belief system or structure, and who have not the slightest clue to who God really is.
The one adhering to that belief structure passionately is the religious man of its time.
I define religion as a search for a higher intelligent source to which, our spirit can relate to, for a source of comfort while n a hellish environment.
One can say then , that one, is limited to the degree of spiritual-ness one has available at the time.
If: as you “china”say, it is the searching out of all our humanness, then with the amount (degree) of passion you devote to it, makes you a religious man of the sorts.
For others could care less, making them non-religious.
My studies and understandings, based on my religious up-bringing, and the studies (searching’s) that I have devoted to, on my own behalf, have concluded in my gaining knowledge and understanding through experience of who and what God is in my life.(Not in anybody's else's life)
I can say, by observation that a man who goes to a casino to gamble regularly, that, that man gambles religiously.
By the same token, a man who tries to honor his or her beliefs, (what ever those beliefs may be) passionately, is considered to be a religious man or woman.
So, can we discriminate simply by observation, by the degree of passion that others excercise in their beliefs, and say that they are “A religious man or woman”? By whoose standards?
Where is the line drawn? Who draws the line of definition? Whose line is it anyway?
Here are some answers: if all are concluded as being under some penalty, and by that same penalty, all are condemned: then it only stands to reason, that all are under the same condition.
And again, if all are relieved (liberated) from that penalty and condemnation, then, what is left for us to do?
The answer to that last question is: to what or who does one honor in degree, to the liberty by which one was made free; and how do we behave in respect to that?
It therefore behooves those of us who do have the knowledge and understandings of the true God to introduce this true God to the rest of the world, by exercising those attributes of that God in revelation of that God: in us.
Requiring nothing of them but to believe.
If the introduction of that true God, by us, was demonstrated with that God’s attributes, then that God is responsible for changing the lives of those to whom it calls.
We are instruments yes, but that’s it! Instruments of a higher being, A God of demonstration, and that demonstrated is LOVE.
Peace>>>AJ