Alan Watts - Jesus, His Religion

I'm listening to an audio recording of Alan Watts and a point he came out with toward the end is that those who call themselves Christians do not follow the religion of Jesus. Instead, they follow a religion about Jesus. The distinction he makes is that the religion of Jesus included the belief that man is the son of God. Christians, on the other hand, put Jesus on a pedestal and depict Jesus as a freak (born of a virgin, has special powers and a connection to God that no other man can have). I think Neville Goddard suggested that Christians created an idol out of Jesus. 

Alan Watts also says that the church institutionalized guilt as a virtue. In Western Christianity, there is the goal of taking up the cross and following Jesus - an act where according to Christianity people will always fall short. For this reason, Alan Watts calls Christianity an impossible religion.

If you've read much of Neville Goddard, what Watts says of Jesus is similar to Goddard's understanding of Jesus. The greatest difference between Neville Goddard's understanding from Watts' is that Neville Goddard didn't believe that Jesus ever existed as a man. 

A lecture Neville Goddard gave also addresses his views on Christianity, the religion. The lecture I'm referring to is The New Christology. I think it's important to realize that there are different approaches to the Bible and to understanding Jesus than the mainstream view of Christianity. As Watts pointed out in the video discussed here, the Christian church is considered an authority for no reason other than that many other people follow it. Whether Protestant or Catholic, all Christianity is the same for the most part.