This question needs an answer that is simple and clear enough to be comprehended and grasped whole - or else it will be ineffectual.
But also, of course, the answer must be true - not some kind of incoherent answer; nor one that will soon be contradicted by experience because of its implications.
Furthermore, the answer needs to be one that may - in principle - be endorsed by intuition. It should Not be an answer that depends on "evidence" relating to the validity and interpretation of external authority.
(...Or else we will enter an "infinite regress" - and one that does not begin with Jesus, but has Jesus at its far, inaccessible, end - where he will never be reached.)
In other words; we need to know that the answer is true; and we need to know its truth for-ourselves, and from our-selves so that we personally can take the fullest responsibility for choosing and living-by the answer.
If it is agreed that Jesus's work was to offer Men the chance of resurrected eternal life in Heaven; then some modern people will regard this as irrelevant to this mortal life...
Either because this finite and temporary mortal life doesn't matter by comparison with eternity...
Or else (more likely) that our post-mortal state and destination, has nothing to do with the practical needs and minutiae of everyday life.
(i.e. The idea that everlasting life in Heaven would be very nice and all that; but is just pie-in-the-sky - maybe, sometime in the future - when what is needed/wanted is pie on the table, now and for-sure.)
In the past, in the era of church-led Christianity; the everyday implications were set-out in detailed commandments, rules, practices, and (especially) prohibitions - that dictated our lives in all important - and indeed apparently trivial - instances.
The Christian life was a complex and comprehensive instructional blueprint, and Christian living was obedience to its dictates.
I believe that this needs to be replaced - because it manifestly doesn't work, and never really was what Jesus said and did - and people instead require a personal and internally-endorsed understanding of what it means to "follow Jesus".
That is the nature of the task. When one becomes a Christian - in theory; then instead of looking to one church or another for instructions concerning "what to do next" - this is a personal quest.
And I feel sure that the quest is not going to be satisfied by any answer that we feel to be drab, materialist, mundane, utilitarian, monochrome, military rations...
We absolutely require an answer that is as broad and deep as our fullest and most-valued experience of this mortal life, and our most heart-felt aspirations for what we most desire life might ideally become.
And that answer must be the basis for a powerful and robust, inner-generated, personal motivation.
(Or else, if insufficiently motivated; we will surely succumb to the endemic evil of this world.)
So that if, like me, you value (insist-upon) that sense of life as being lived at a higher level - a state of awareness of the enchantment of living - then we need to know how the future, post-mortal promises of Jesus shall eventuate in the potential for here-and-now joy, meaning, purpose, and loving-creation.
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