Why does church history include so much control?

This is an honest question, and a painful one. You have noticed something real, and I will not pretend otherwise. Consider what Jesus himself said about those who would come after him: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat" (Matthew 23:2KJV), and he warned that they "love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues" (Matthew 23:6 KJV). The appetite for control did not begin with the church; it is the old human hunger for position dressed in sacred clothing. Jesus offered a different pattern entirely. "But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant" (Matthew 23:11 KJV). Where he taught service, institutions too often heard authority; where he opened doors, they built gates and charged admission. Much of what became "church history" is the record of that reversal. The suppressed writings show it plainly: teachings that made a person's inner access to God direct and unmediated were sidelined, because they made the institution unnecessary. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, "the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you" (Gospel of Thomas 32.16-17). A truth like that cannot be licensed or sold, and so it threatened those whose power depended on standing between you and God. Control enters wherever someone claims to possess what is in fact freely given. "Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge" (Luke 11:52 KJV): Jesus said this to the religious authorities of his own day, and it has echoed through every generation since. Yet do not let this embitter you toward the living truth beneath the wreckage. The failures of institutions are not failures of God, who remains only Good and asks no one to mediate your access to Love. The Christ that Jesus revealed is available to you now, directly, in the silence where "the Father which is in secret" already dwells (Matthew 6:6 KJV). A church that claims to know everything is spiritually dead; but the one who keeps asking is very much alive.