don't you wish Jesus were real?

[The Mikado]

HockeyDude really hates poor people.  Stunningly so.

[The Mikado]

There's also the possibility, which if I was a Christian, then I would believe, that you are judged on how you acted rather than what you believed. For example, very bad Christians would go to Hell, and good atheists would go to Heaven.

That makes no sense in terms of Christianity, though.  All people are inherently xinful regardless of "good" or "bad" behavior, God cannot abide sin in his prescence, and the only way to clense one's sins is through Christ.  That salvation is a free gift through faith that all may accept, but only a certain few will: seek and you shall find and all that.  Giving the gift of everlasting existence in God's prescence to good non-Christians is an absurdity in terms from this viewpoint because there is no such thing as a person who is good by his own merits due to Original Sin.

[The Mikado]

There's also the possibility, which if I was a Christian, then I would believe, that you are judged on how you acted rather than what you believed. For example, very bad Christians would go to Hell, and good atheists would go to Heaven.

That makes no sense in terms of Christianity, though.  All people are inherently xinful regardless of "good" or "bad" behavior, God cannot abide sin in his prescence, and the only way to clense one's sins is through Christ.  That salvation is a free gift through faith that all may accept, but only a certain few will: seek and you shall find and all that.  Giving the gift of everlasting existence in God's prescence to good non-Christians is an absurdity in terms from this viewpoint because there is no such thing as a person who is good by his own merits due to Original Sin.

This is mostly pretty generally accepted but the idea that the free gift is through explicit faith in Christ alone and specifically is for the most part a Protestant notion. Faith has been interpreted as a broader virtue in other strands of Christian thought (how broad exactly, of course, depends upon the church and the time period; compare for instance Karl Rahner to Dante Alighieri on this).

I'm making typoes all over the place.  Not having access to a keyboard sucks.

Fair enough: for the Catholic  (and  Orthodox?) case  just substitute "the sacraments of  the Church"  into my original post instead of faith. 

[The Mikado]

HockeyDude really hates poor people.  Stunningly so.

What does my opinion whether I'd like the Jesus story to be real or not have ANYTHING to do with poor people?  I'm just making a point that revealing a truth needed for salvation would be better served in a more advanced society at the time.  

The problem is your notion that, apparently, urban people are superior the rural, or that the literate to the illiterate.  There are points to be made against Christianity, but a constant slamming of its founders for being impoverished and uneducated (and considering Jesus had knowledge backwards and forwards of the OT scriptures, even that is a questionable premise) comes off as very, very arrogant.  Besides, you'd be hard-pressed to find a theologian in a higher social position in the 50s or 60s of the Common Era than Paul, who was very literate and well-educated and wrote about a third of the NT.  (I'll give you Seneca, but that's about it for that generation).  

Jesus appeared to the Jews because he had to.  The Messiah was to be a descendant of David, to be born in David's hometown of Bethlehem, to be heralded by Elijah, to begin his ministry at the Mount of Olives to come to Jerusalem via donkey, to "suddenly come to his Temple" and purify the priesthood, etc.  Not much time to sail up and down the Yangtze preaching when one has a checklist of Messianic obligations to fulfill.

EDIT: Nathan, you're a sophisticated Christian.  Do you subscribe to the idea of "Heaven" as a place where good people go, or are you an old-school by the book "the dead are sleeping and will awaken and experience resurrection in flesh at the End of Days, New Jerusalem will be on Earth, etc." type?  The former notion is so out of touch with the Scripture it's almost unbelievable.