I've said it all before, in different words; but it really was and is an epic tragedy to comprehend how Christianity has been so profoundly misrepresented throughout most of recorded history - with consequences that may be worse than if Jesus as a person had been forgotten, and Men had had to reply upon direct contact with the divine within themselves and with the Holy Ghost.
(A false understanding often being worse than none at all, especially when complacent error become a delusion that closes-off the quest for truth about reality.)
Of course; there are multiple ways in which the basis of Jesus's work and our salvation have been twisted and inverted; but perhaps the worst is that which regards salvation and something earned by our behaviour in this world; and of God as a judge of our performance in this task.
(God, our loving Heavenly parent - cast in the role of a heartless, remorseless "hanging judge" addressing each Man as a terrified villain, pleading for mercy!)
This was partly overturned by the clarity of the Reformation of recognizing salvation as a consequence of God's grace for an individual directly, not as something earned or requiring intermediary or intercession. Yet this insight was twisted and inverted by resurgent background assumptions of Man's core depravity and spiritual helplessness - which negated the fact and necessity of Man's freedom in the matter of salvation. Even going so far as the monstrously anti-Christian notion of regarding each Man's fate as pre-destined, and each Man's freedom as an irrelevant illusion.
So many perversions of simple reality!
Some have rejected the false "weighing in the balance" idea of salvation as earned only to assert the equal falsehood that our actions are somehow irrelevant - as if the material had nothing to do with the spiritual! As if what we did in this mortal life was of zero consequence to eternal life.
A modern version is one of salvation as un-chosen because universally imposed upon everybody and everything; who are then utterly compelled to become Good according to God's idea of good - again, falsely denying the inexorable reality and necessity of each Man's freedom; and inverting Heaven into a Brave New World totalitarian dystopia.
I acknowledge that the devising of a coherent metaphysics of Christianity is something no church has yet achieved, something we must therefore do for ourselves (or do without) - so that there never has been an off-the-peg, externally available, understanding of Christianity.
That this was not an utter disaster is because, for most of history - really until the "modern era" (commencing gradually from the 1500s and evident to all in the West by the middle 1800s) Men were much less self-aware and much more groupish in consciousness; that "group" including aspects of spiritual reality as well as other Men.
...Such that Men un-consciously participated in truth, even when their theoretical understanding was variously false or opposite.
Not any more!
Now our nature is such that our theories dictate our inner realities; so false theories need to be detected, acknowledged, and revised. By us ourselves, because nobody else can be trusted to do it, and because we are each (and nobody else) ultimately responsible.
Freedom is a reality, a fact - not a gift, privilege, benefit or curse.
And on the flipside, we are able to do what needs to be done, to take personal responsibility for our religious assumptions; in a way that was not really possible for pre-modern Man.
But for this to happen we have to choose to do it; and therefore must want to do it - and this is the test for Christians.
Do we actually personally cast-aside the errors and deceptions of the ages and of our time; to make the choice of following Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven; which entails discovering for our-selves what that really means?
Or do we prefer... something else?
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