Much of what Jesus taught centers on humility, restraint, sacrifice, and even martyrdom in a world that tends to reward the opposite. Often, people who try to live by those ideals end up exploited, while those who don’t seem to do just fine.

What adds to the tension is that many people who identify as followers of Jesus don't actually live by those teachings.

They invoke him symbolically, but operate according to power, status, and self-preservation.

If the message doesn’t scale well, and the followers don't consistently follow it, what role is it really meant to play?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5813874&forum_id=2:#49537683)

Christianity like any other cultural form is an adaptive strategy. It's pretends to be rooted in deontological claims but the heart of it is a set of ontological ones. Like any system it presupposes that ontological truth implies adaptive fitness.

But the ontological claims are exceedingly narrow and no one has really worked out their moral implications, likely because the latter are not fully determined by the former. The latter are also primarily designed relative to understanding the former, not vice-versa.

So it turns out there really is no coherent "message" in the sense of a moral program.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5813874&forum_id=2:#49539150)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zEfYbsrr0

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5813874&forum_id=2:#49537730)