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Notes -
You make good points, mainly I disagree that things like "the world will hate you" referred to political power, and I especially disagree with the implication that this means that the later political power wielded by Christianity contradicts the Bible.
I think most of the "the world will hate you" referred to spiritual hatred etc., including the hatred each of us has towards our own higher impulses. Even in very Christian society, such as Christian Rome, there were plenty of high-level leaders who weren't sold on the religion. They were wolves in sheep's clothing, so to speak. That's not to say Christianity was not politically powerful, but spiritually it had much less power than "the world" i.e. all influences other than Christianity.
I generally read the NT as an amendment to the Old Testament. If the NT doesn't contradict the OT, then the teachings of the OT are still in force. With that in mind, I think it makes sense that the NT was more focused on the higher law--the lower law (all the laws etc.) had all been given and now Jesus was attempting to teach the next step. So yes, there was very little focus on laws etc. because that had already been covered. Kings, priests, etc. already had political power in Israel and now the next step was to take some of that away from them because they were misusing it.
I suppose I'm nitpicking, especially if that implication was unintentional. I agree with your point that Jesus taught poverty and passivity which is not very appealing in today's political climate.
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