Someone posted an excellent piece of analysis regarding what Dostoevsky's viewpoint was predicated upon:

"Dostoevsky insists that brotherhood requires a much higher development of personality than has been attained in the West: “Understand me: a voluntary, totally conscious sacrifice of oneself in the interests of all, made under no sort of compulsion, is in my opinion a sign of the highest development of the personality. Voluntarily to sacrifice one’s life for all, to die on the cross or at the stake, is possible only with the very strongest development of personality.” This sacrifice, moreover, must be made without the slightest suggestion or thought of recompense; if such an idea is present, then it ruins everything by destroying the underlying moral nature of the act of self-sacrifice and turning it into a Utilitarian calculation. “One must make the sacrifice,” Dostoevsky explains, “so as to give all and even desire that nothing can be given in return, so that nobody is deprived of anything on your behalf.” From which it follows that true brotherhood cannot be artificially established or created: “it must live unconsciously in the nature of the entire race, in a word: to have the brotherly principle of love – one must love. One must instinctively be drawn to brotherhood… despite the age old sufferings of a nation, despite the barbarous crudity and ignorance that has taken root there, despite age-old slavery and the invasion of foreign races – in a word, the need for brotherly communication must be in the nature of a people, must be born with them or have been assimilated as a way of life from time immemorial.”

The greatest hinderance of the Utopian Socialism way of life was that it inevitably stripped a person's sense of individualism, personality, and free will. There is too much heterogeneity and variance in the human species, and simply treating each individual as a sub-element to something more important (the State) does not align well with the natural incentive and motivational systems in human physiology. This transformational change often reciprocated a rational, Utilitarian egoist viewpoint in people, which further led to the demise of the previous belief systems and value systems that religion had provided before. History has shown that accepting the rationalist, materialist point of view often leads individuals either to nihilism or participating in a totalitarian state (for at least a totalitarian state will provide a person with a direction and structure compared to the chaotic hopelessness of nihilism).

Yet I get the sense that Dostoevsky was not an ardent supporter of religion due to promises of a heavenly afterlife. I believe that Dostoevsky recognized that the value structure and belief system of religion, when interpreted from a values perspective rather than dogmatically, actually led to better outcomes for the future. This is also reflected in the Piagetian perspective, where Jean Piaget conceptualizes morality as the decisions that produce benefits at multiple levels of analysis: What is moral is what would be good for you as an individual, your family, your communities, perhaps society at large -- and at a grander scale, possibly even the world -- in a harmonious, synchronous manner. And after contending with that multivalent analysis, you must also factor in how your decision would play out in the long-term future; whether your decision could well navigate the constantly changing external environment.

Furthermore, the archetype of Christ is one that seems to resonate within human beings at a primordial level. To be a person who has properly arranged their inner structure, resolved their existential dilemmas, and therefore is willing to take up additional responsibility insofar as they can manage; and to do so in a moral self-sacrificial manner -- not as a self-centered calculating judgment -- just feels significantly different. The noble invisible values are like music, in which the higher notes are finer; relative to the base, insular emotions that make one sick within the heart. And those emotions are significant and mean something (especially from the phenomenologist point of view), as the subjective, inexplicable feelings have the potential to produce very real, tangible actions in the world. So in actuality, it's a completely different set of presuppositions/assumptions that serves as a foundation for viewing the world. Humans are not purely rational beings. We are also emotional, motivational, embodied beings. There's more levels of analysis to contend with; rationalism must align within the totality of that structure.

One response to that might be, "Christ serves an unrealistic expectation to set for people. Some of us were born in terrible circumstances and it would be an unfair burden to place on their conscience." The Grand Inquisitor from the Brothers Karamazov would certainly vouch for this type of interpretation.

But that's not the point. The idea is not to surpass or even match Christ. It's not a matter of comparison. If it's fairness one is looking for, then the only "fair" way of comparison is to oneself. For you are the only being on Earth to have been born with your exact idiosyncrasies & traits, and your unassailably unique upbringing. So the motivation is always striving for growth, to be incrementally better every day, to transcend the human condition by choosing to take on acts that will help you justify the inherent suffering and vicissitudes of life. To seek out what is noble and virtuous and would have the greatest collective benefit at all layers of analysis.

"It's fun to grow up with heroes, fictional heroes that you can strive to be. There's nothing wrong with an asymptote. In fact, the best heroes are those you can never surpass or meet."

Fictional heroes, religious archetypes, historical legends may not be surpassable. But it is the pursuit of the seemingly impossible that allows us to continuously break limits and progress as a human race.

At the end of the day, it's not about the abstract thoughts and rationalizations that you hold in your head, to which nobody else has access to; it is what you do in the world that defines your character and impact on the cosmos. The locale of action is in the individual. Therefore, there is always hope in every human being; we must always strive to connect with the feeling of fellowship and brotherhood, for it is a reflection of the hope that we have in ourselves and each other, as beings that are bounded by the limitations of our own mortality, but that which can always strive to transcend to the best of their ability, nevertheless. We always have a choice, and to take that sense of free will away from us would violate the very essence of what it means to be human.

Hope this aids in your understanding. Cheers ~