Over the past eight years; my reading-of and brooding-on the Fourth Gospel (called "John") has had many and profound effects on my understanding of the profound differences between what Jesus said and did, and the Christian churches that came after.
In particular, that the core of Jesus's work was to provide Men with teh possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven.
This means that the primary concern of Jesus was to save mankind from entropy and death - therefore Jesus's primary concern was not evil.
However, most of religion before, during and since the time of Jesus is about morality - the behaviour (and attitudes) of people.
Such religion is therefore therapeutic - it is "about" minimizing suffering and/or maximizing human happiness in this world and mortal life.
That is what all those Laws and rules are about, the propitiations offered to divinity, the abasements and obedience - they are trying to make this world a better place and ourselves to have a better place in it.
And this is why all religions have considerable overlap in the approved behaviours.
But this was Not what Jesus was about.
Jesus came essentially to save us from death, not from moral sin.
Jesus was primarily against death, not evil - but his cure for death was also a cure for evil.
For Jesus the problem of death (of entropy) was more profound than that of evil; because in this mortal life and world death is absolutely universal and completely unavoidable; destructive change may be slowed, but is always at work...
Jesus was necessary and unique because he offered a solution to death; not because of his moral teaching, not because of his moral laws and principles, not because people could make a church from the moral laws and principles.
This was and is very difficult to grasp, because most people (including most early Christians, including those who formed the Christian churches, apparently) - want morality.
Or else they want immortality Now in this world, and without dying first.
People do not, therefore, want what Jesus actually offered... Or, at least, they think they don't want it, or they do not want it as strongly and urgently as they want other things - such as relief from suffering, or happiness.
But relief from suffering and positive happiness in this mortal life are not the core of Jesus's message - because they are promised for post-mortal resurrected life, not for this life.
The error of making "Christianity" primarily moral distorted it from very early and has led to its current near-destruction.
Those who made Christianity continuous with Judaism (including the authors of the Matthew and Luke Gospels, and Paul); tried to conflate the primacy of resurrection with their continued primacy of morality...
Leading eventually to the bizarre concoction of Original Sin - in order to pseudo-explain why Jesus was both unique and necessary.
In other words, they made Jesus primarily "about" morality; and resurrection was made conditional upon the approved morality.
This world morality was made of core importance and to come first - and resurrection was relegated to a secondary status as reward for good-morality.
But morality is about this-world, here-and-now and before death...
Whereas resurrection is of cosmic and eternal significance - it is a change in the nature of reality.
Everybody everywhere has their ideas of proper morals; and this is continually contested. And morality does not require resurrection.
So morality is both regarded as primary by almost-everybody, yet morality is detachable from Christianity...
And morality has, in fact, already-been detached-from Christianity - even in those lands historically (or nominally still) Christian.
As of here-and-now; Christianity is just one of many competing this-worldly moral systems; and evaluated in terms of its material "success" in producing good behaviour.
But if we are talking about Jesus Christ, rather than social institutions and traditions; then this is wrong, a mistake, an ancient error.
Jesus brought the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven - and that fact should come first and foremost, and be kept at the core, of our Christian discussion and teaching.
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