How Christianity Lost Its Way

Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, which is his term for the awareness of the Presence of the Divine. His message was the omnipresence of God, not as a doctrine to be believed but a reality to be experienced. That was the gospel of Jesus. But that is not the gospel that has been historically proclaimed by the Christian church. When one looks for evidence of this message throughout church history it is difficult to find. One only spots glimpses of it sticking up like flowers growing between the cracks in a sidewalk, but it is rare.

Christianity could have been a movement that preached and lived the firsthand direct awareness of the presence of God. Instead it became a religion of doctrines, a legalistic and hierarchical institution that replaced experience with dogma and replaced direct awareness of God with faith in the authority of the Church. The gospel of the historical Jesus very quickly became a gospel about the Christ of faith, invented by men who did not know Jesus, did not hear him preach and did not experience or understand what Jesus was talking about. 

Christianity lost its way. How did this happen?