Maximizing Moral Virtue

[Pat Mustard]

I'm trying my best here to understand your final line of reasoning. So I think what you are getting at is the idea that Christianity is fundamentally a flawed system? And by flawed that could mean divergent from what Christ himself would've wanted if he were alive today. Or that Christ himself was a flawed bedrock to build a church on to begin with.

For the first statement, yes I believe that Jesus would have many things to say about our endlessly sub-divided modern understanding of Christian doctrine which focuses more on reading the word and winning intellectual arguments about which theology is "correct" and dividing yourself from those condemned as "incorrect".
Jesus prayed for unity in the Garden before he was crucified but today we have defied that commandment wholesale. Beyond division we no longer drive demons out of a person's body and rarely do we heal the sick or perform miraculous feats by way of the holy spirit. These signs and wonders were meant to signify the move of God and distinguish it from a casual book study. Within the church we hear small stories here an there of prayers being answered but rarely do we see these things on display.

I really could go on and on about the protestant movement and how we are still in some senses still trying to re-connect with that original church recorded about in Acts. The disciples have long since passed away and the Roman Catholic Church took over for well over a millennia. So a lot of what we call "protestantism" is just a reaction to what we view as herasy within the RCC as revealed by the more recent translations of our Bible (The KJV, Geneva, and Tyndale versions). We've had about 500 years to protest the catholic church and create our own version of Christianity and it has led to many arguments and many divisions. My hope is that someday soon we will all begin to unite as followers of the way again, valuing unity over debate and not being prideful of our limited understanding of divine doctrine.

The second statement I think touches more on what an atheist would posit, that this Christ person was a fool and a liar whom no one should have ever placed any faith in to begin with so any attempt at re-connecting with the true Christ would be futile since all we will discover is some schizophrenic lunatic who thought himself to be God.
Personally I think that if the book of Acts were happening all around you, the blind being able to see because they attended a local Bible study. Violent schizophrenics who cut themselves and behave irrationally and violently having their demons removed and cast out. The deaf hearing, and prophets foretelling the future I think that the atheist would at least have to be a bit more curious as opposed to skeptical.

Are you a communist?