in a Christian anime mood

I know that all the Christian/religious symbolism in the show was used simply because it looked cool and the authors liked the aesthetic without knowing much about theology, but it always seemed so fitting to me because it tells a story of death and rebirth, similar to that of Jesus, except in the case of the show it's the ego death and rebirth as it is the characters minds that suffer and are born anew by the end of the series. You can even view the instrumentality at the end as a conception of heck into which Shinji descends before rejecting it and being born anew. Similarly the angels are generally more than the big monsters the kids have to fight as each of them exposes a character weakness that has to be overcome to defeat them, leading to character growth, which is closely in parallel to how angels in the bible often test the faith of those who interact with them, presenting challenges that too foster growth through adversity.

I know I'm probably reading too deep into a show about giant robots fighting aliens likely intended for children, but I just find the parallels to be very strong for something that wasn't explicitly intended