Deity Focus

At some point my religion moved away from the ethics and way of life that Jesus taught, and became focused on who Jesus is, Who God is, the noun, and what the church is.  Maybe this is the way it goes with spiritual paths.  Buddha became The Buddha.  He went from a person who taught a way of life, and how to live to overcome or endure obstacles, to someone who is to be practically worshiped. Hinduism moved from a wisdom to the worship or talking about the identity of various gods.  What is common in all this shift, in my limited opinion, is that people cannot live the teaching, so they simply move to worship and dogma, creed.  In my religion, it seems that Jesus hung out with the poor, or lower income people, the people with little political clout.  Nowadays, you can be Catholic and not care much about or judge the poor as less than you.  I think that religion tends to become influenced by culture.  My religion, as Jesus seemed to say, was supposed to be leaven in the culture. Each day, I have to ask myself if I am living as the gospel demands.  Or am I going to be a church attending person who believes a creed, but lives no differently than a nonbeliever.  It is embarrassing when I see a backslider, nonbeliever who lives the gospel better than me.  How about you?