Wow. I'm really, really glad to have faced this question today. I can't answer it at a detail level now but I see the heart of the answer.
At the heart of our tragic errors regarding Jesus is the mistaken, wishful belief that he was creating a club, or some ritual by which to be saved.
In the way you can join a country club, the Elks, or Chamber of Commerce, or a local Church:
Can you join the neurosurgeons?
Can you join the corporate lawyers?
Can you join the F14 pilots?
Can you join the Everest assent team?
Can you join the Navy Seals?
Can you join the Olympic Gold Medalists?
Can you join the Harvard Graduates?
Can you join the Nobel Peace Prize Winners?
Can you join the Christians?
You can only become these things. It takes:
* Heroic effort
* Enormous discipline
* Enormous sacrifice
* Enormous training
* Enormous will
* Enormous self development
* Enormous risk
Jesus was not playing. Jesus saw the one and only way to lead us from world-as-hell to Heaven on Earth - ALL OUT NONVIOLENT, GIVE YOUR LIFE FOR BATTLE TO MELT THE ICE OF SELFISHNESS SMOTHERING THE HUMAN HEART. He saw this as the prize worth dying for, the Prize that many would have to die for. Why? Partly because the pursuit itself is "Heaven on Earth;" Partly because Hell is no place you can tolerate for your family - all of us, God's children. Jesus saw that the all out, give-your-entire-life-for-it war of Sacrificial Love for Heaven on Earth is Life Itself, that everything else is death.
We want to think that Christianity is like the Health Club - pay your fee and you are "Saved."
God forgive the "Church." Jesus and the apostles warned us over, and over and over about this. God forgive us. May it not be too late for us, the world, our children.
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