Christianity - crushed and tormented by centuries of theology

There are certain (often commonly used) Christian terms that I always have found deeply confusing, un-understandable. One is "redemption".

People have (for centuries) talked confidently about Jesus Christ redeeming mankind, of the world's need for redemption etc. They talk as if "redemption" was a clear and precise technical term, an obious thing; and as if it was axiomatic that redemption (above all) was what Jesus did - the main thing Jesus accomplished. 

So again I read into the subject a bit, looked at the explanations of redemption suggested by various historical theologians, and at some of the various denominations, and considered what they meant by redemption; and yet again I felt as if I was being pressed down and crushed by swarms of crazed and biting insects! 

I wonder how many others have felt like this? On the one hand, it would seem that what Jesus did must have been simple and easy to grasp - given the broad historical facts and context. On the other hand, it seems that almost immediately after Jesus's ascension, all kinds of things were being ascribed to him that were either incomprehensibly abstract and paradoxical - or else wildly at variance with what Jesus said and did.

The idea of redemption itself seems to have arisen as some kind of error, or perhaps for different and almost opposite reasons, or from different agendas... It is as if the idea that "what Jesus did" was to redeem Mankind, and The World, was swiftly accepted as a solid and mandatory assumption, without any agreement about what redeem actually meant or implied, or how it had worked (even in the broadest terms)!   

The sense I make from this is that here, as in so many other ways, Jesus was inserted-into pre-existing philosophical and theological schemes - whether Jewish, Christian or other. 

My conviction is that most of the people who wrote about Jesus in the early years after his ascension, made sense of Jesus in terms of what they already believed before Jesus's ministry - and these were the people who set the agenda for the various churches for centuries to come; until the sheer mass of commentary and contradiction is overwhelming and appalling. 

In this, as so many ways; Christianity painted itself into a corner. Only those who were able to live with a permanent state of imprecision and contradiction were able to participate in the discourse. Anyone who seriously tried to make sense of thing and get at the truth - was excluded. 

 It's hard for me to express (because it apparently invisible to most people!) my horror at the way Jesus Christ and what he did has been enmeshed in vast webs of other stuff. A new Christian may begin with a wonderful sense of simplicity and clarity; but is almost immediately confronted by such menaces wherever he turns. 

And the new Christian will find that such-and-such is regarded as necessary to being-a-Christian - that "being-a-Christian" is something which takes place within these assumptions - that there is asserted to be no real way of being-a-Christian except within such assumptions.  

What's worse is that the simple and obvious truth and reality which led to becoming a Christian, somehow gets reversed, in all sorts of ways. The whole thing gets smothered by an endlessly regressing and crushing external weight of mandatory demands; which cannot be grasped and must just be accepted and obeyed. 

Myself, as an individual, is implicitly (sometimes explicitly) regarded as utterly trivial, insignificant, of no consequence to the vast mechanism of Christianity - except in disobedience! 

...To be a Good Christian is to acknowledge and act as a tiny and inessential cog in a vast machine; and if the cog fails to accept this role, then he will be spat out into the consuming void beyond the machine.

Because life in service to the machine is so utterly miserable and hope-less - the only consolation is that our reward is that we will become so utterly changed as to find it wholly blissful. 

This is nebulous, and un-consoling - because such a transformation is to convert me into somebody (or some-thing) else; so in practice the main incentive is always negative...

"You may find this unsatisfying, but if you dissent then you will be actively tortured forever - so shut-up and get-on-with-it!

(Of course, this kind of threat doesn't happen much nowadays - not for good reasons but because faith is so utterly feeble that almost nobody really believes their church - as was evident in 2020 and by lack of repentance since. But for much of history and in many places; the negative incentives of Christianity were much more strongly asserted than the positive: fear rather than hope was the major drive.)

I am trying to express here something of vital import: which is the false and evil idea that in becoming a Christian one should be subordinating oneself to a vast social structure - one to which the proper attitude is submission (although such fear-full obedience is often praised as "humility").

My counter-assertion is that the freedom, agency, and chosen personal commitment by which somebody becomes a Christian; these are attributes that ought to be carried through into the life of faith. 

We should not just begin in freedom, but stay in freedom...

Stay in a Christian freedom dedicated to a personal quest of love, truth, virtue, beauty and other Christian values.     

A freedom that is rooted in the personal and not the abstract...

Rooted in our relations with the persons of God and Jesus Christ - certainly not defined by our obedience and service to organizations, or bodies of texts and commentaries, nor to traditions of teaching. 

To be a Christian ought not to be intimidated, crushed and suffocated by "the past" - but a joyous (because hope-full) engagement in the present quest of life - and in context of an eternal resurrected future.