One man's enlightened truth is another's heresy. As Jesus' arrest, trial, & execution most eternally, vividly demonstrated, you buck the Powers That Be at risk of your very life.

Jesus was born into the greatest monotheism on earth, no question. Almost like it was planned. But he found it woven with both truth and error. He sought to dramatize, amplify, glorify the truths. He didn't waste time correcting the error, but was not reticent to condemn it and show the better way. For this heresy, he paid the full price.

Christianity today is like Judaism of Jesus' day, the mightiest truth encumbered with innumerable superstitious and philosophical flaws. Considering the wildly conflicting variety of what is called or considered Christian, this seems undeniable.

Error has a range, from harmless misconception which might actually transiently strengthen belief, to the inversion of truth which undermines faith.

The harmless really should not be corrected precipitously: the young-earth believer who comes to understand geology may, lacking good counsel, throw out the baby of faith with the bathwater of misinterpretation. (Apologies to all young-earthers, especially any whose weak, belief-based faith I've just crushed.)

Grievous error, however, is inimical to one's spiritual progress, and to promulgation of the gospel. That which Jesus cited were the potential, and eventual, doom of his people: nationalistic pride, false messianic beliefs, basically the problem as old as the prophets, subversion of their spiritual value to mere worldly things.

Evil won in the small when the leadership in Jerusalem, and the masses who can be fooled most of the time, chose to reject their greatest prophet. Good won in the large, naturally, as "the stone which the builders rejected became the cornerstone" of a new religion. That was only the backup plan, though, and it had some problems of its own.

Besides their theological readiness for Jesus' uplifting truth, Judaism's strengths, as a people, were their unity through Jerusalem while yet being threaded through all the world; from Britain to East Asia there were Jews. They traveled; they kept in touch. Had Jesus' preachment been accepted, this ready network would have been the means of proliferation of the new truth, peacefully infiltrating the world's peoples.

The Greeks, the Romans, and the raggedy bunch of ex-pat Jews who took up Christ did not have the same kind of central temple, tribal loyalty, nor theological and philosophical foundation as a group, as basis for the most faithful representation of Jesus' actual gospel, as free as possible from superstitious barnacles.

Needless to say, the new religion also suffered from a lack of the continuing presence of the Teacher, at least in the flesh, to guide new understanding and weed out error, as he might have done for decades if he had been permitted to live, accepted and appreciated by his people.

What errors of Christianity are relatively harmless and which are dangerous surely varies from Christian order to Christian order, from congregation to congregation, from Christian to Christian. Some have flotsam of belief which are not required for faith, but which keep their faith afloat for now, and to take that away can only be done by showing first that one is safely on dry land. Some have exclusivist ideas which I deem Jesus would disapprove, and which they will cling to, unto death; not their death, but maybe yours if you try to correct them, depending on the century and location.

What if there is a flaw in Christianity that is so fundamental it must be addressed, for the sake of Christianity's very survival as the messenger of Jesus' gospel? What if teachers of a better way, not the many who think they have a better way when they really only bring more old baggage, but a true new and better way, what if such teachers came to Christianity today? Would Christianity learn from history? repeat it?

What if the prime error of Christianity is its purported prime tenet? What if Christianity is in effect two religions, admixed, the teaching of Jesus, and the beliefs of men, and the time has come for purification, enhancement of truth and disavowal of faith- and gospel-encumbering error?

Would the preponderance of Christian authority conspire with state authority to effect the annihilation of the new truth and its adherents?

Nawww. That kind of thing never happens.