There's a good reason why no one follows Jesus

[_Joseph]

If someone forces you to walk a mile, walk two miles. (Matthew 5:41)

*****************************************

It is 'walk a mile in their shoes'. That way you will be a mile away and have a free pair of shoes...

[_Milesius]

Christian and pseudo Christian religions give Jesus a lot of lip service, but none of them really seem to pay attention to what Jesus actually said. And there's a good reason for that. A lot of his advice is really terrible:

If you do something wrong with your eye or hand, cut/pluck it off (Matthew 5:29-30, in a sexual context).
Marrying a divorced woman is adultery. (Matthew 5:32)
Don't plan for the future. (Matthew 6:34)
Don't save money. (Matthew 6:19-20)
Don't become wealthy. (Mark 10:21-25)
Sell everything and give it to the poor. (Luke 12:33)
Don't work to obtain food. (John 6:27)
Make people want to persecute you. (Matthew 5:11)
If someone steals from you, don't try to get it back. (Luke 6:30)
If someone hits you, invite them to do it again. (Matthew 5:39)
If you lose a lawsuit, give more than the judgment. (Matthew 5:40)
If someone forces you to walk a mile, walk two miles. (Matthew 5:41)
If anyone asks you for anything, give it to them without question. (Matthew 5:42)
You should "hate" your family, and abandon your spouse and children for God (Luke 14:26, Matt. 19:29-30)

Frankly, this is just awful advice. I can't blame believers for not following it, but I do wonder at the disconnect between worshiping this guy and not bothering yourself about following his words.

And, of course, the reason why a lot of this advice is so bad is that Jesus sincerely believed that the end of the world was coming soon - there was no point in raising families and keeping gainful employment.

Did you eat a lot of lead paint chips as a kid?

"Don't work to obtain food. (John 6:27)"

John 6:25-27
25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" 26Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal."

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible
2. He directs them to better principles (v. 27): Labour for that meat which endures to everlasting life. With the woman of Samaria he had discoursed of spiritual things under the similitude of water; here he speaks of them under the similitude of meat, taking occasion from the loaves they had eaten. His design is,

(1.) To moderate our worldly pursuits: Labour not for the meat that perishes. This does not forbid honest labour for food convenient, 2 Thess. iii. 12. But we must not make the things of this world our chief care and concern. Note, [1.] The things of the world are meat that perishes. Worldly wealth, honour, and pleasure, are meat; they feed the fancy (and many times this is all) and fill the belly. These are things which mean hunger after as meat, and glut themselves with, and which a carnal heart, as long as they last, may make a shift to live upon; but they perish, are of a perishing nature, wither of themselves, and are exposed to a thousand accidents; those that have the largest share of them are not sure to have them while they live, but are sure to leave them and lose them when they die. [2.] It is therefore folly for us inordinately to labour after them. First, We must not labour in religion, nor work the works thereof, for this perishing meat, with an eye to this; we must not make our religion subservient to a worldly interest, nor aim at secular advantages in sacred exercises. Secondly, We must not at all labour for this meat; that is, we must not make these perishing things our chief good, nor make our care and pains about them our chief business; not seek those things first and most, Prov. xxiii. 4, 5.

(2.) To quicken and excite our gracious pursuits: "Bestow your pains to better purpose, and labour for that meat which belongs to the soul," of which he shows,

[_sock puppet]

Christian and pseudo Christian religions give Jesus a lot of lip service, but none of them really seem to pay attention to what Jesus actually said. And there's a good reason for that. A lot of his advice is really terrible:

If you do something wrong with your eye or hand, cut/pluck it off (Matthew 5:29-30, in a sexual context).
Marrying a divorced woman is adultery. (Matthew 5:32)
Don't plan for the future. (Matthew 6:34)
Don't save money. (Matthew 6:19-20)
Don't become wealthy. (Mark 10:21-25)
Sell everything and give it to the poor. (Luke 12:33)
Don't work to obtain food. (John 6:27)
Make people want to persecute you. (Matthew 5:11)
If someone steals from you, don't try to get it back. (Luke 6:30)
If someone hits you, invite them to do it again. (Matthew 5:39)
If you lose a lawsuit, give more than the judgment. (Matthew 5:40)
If someone forces you to walk a mile, walk two miles. (Matthew 5:41)
If anyone asks you for anything, give it to them without question. (Matthew 5:42)
You should "hate" your family, and abandon your spouse and children for God (Luke 14:26, Matt. 19:29-30)

Frankly, this is just awful advice. I can't blame believers for not following it, but I do wonder at the disconnect between worshiping this guy and not bothering yourself about following his words.

And, of course, the reason why a lot of this advice is so bad is that Jesus sincerely believed that the end of the world was coming soon - there was no point in raising families and keeping gainful employment.

You have to read the context.

He was speaking as a savior, so it's not doctrine.

I don't know that he taught that.

All this has already been refuted multiple times. Use Google.

Why in the world do you think Jesus meant ... [anything other than what the LDS Church now teaches].

On further/closer examination, all Jesus was really saying was ... .

[_The Nehor]

The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them....People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.

-C.S. Lewis

My response is equivalent

[_just me]

Yeah, all Mormon's know the Bible isn't to be taken literally. Duh!

[_The Nehor]

Yeah, all Mormon's know the Bible isn't to be taken literally. Duh!

[Blatant attack deleted by mod Scottie] Please interpret this literally.

[_Chap]

The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them....People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.

-C.S. Lewis

My response is equivalent

Of course.

When a 'grown-up' reads a text where Jesus says 'turn the other cheek' he or she realizes that it is really a symbolic way of saying 'pull out your legally carried concealed weapon and blow that low-life's head off'. And so on.

[_The Nehor]

Of course.

When a 'grown-up' reads a text where Jesus says 'turn the other cheek' he or she realizes that it is really a symbolic way of saying 'pull out your legally carried concealed weapon and blow that low-life's head off'. And so on.

I would call that a radical interpretation of the text. I don't think it means when someone hits you you are honor-bound to allow him to strike you again by offering an easy target or that you should plot horrific revenge and murder them.

Try getting the Holy Ghost to help you. If that is beyond your capabilities at present perhaps you should consider the interpretation Christians have been giving to the text for thousands of years? Or what scholars of the language and time think it means? Or just use basic common sense?

[Personal attack deleted by mod Scottie - Nehor, please stop making me work to delete your personal attacks.]

[_Chap]

You are also a jackass.

Ah. The old 'soft answer turneth away wrath' trick, eh? Abuse is rarely a sign of confidence in one's position.

As the OP pointed out, many of the sayings ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament have been such as to cause grave inconvenience to those who wanted to say they were his followers, but who also wanted to raise families, own property and businesses, invest for the future, defend themselves against robbers, and so on. That is because he often talked in ways which, if he meant the words ascribed to him, implied that doing none of those things mattered very much. One possible reason for this problem, favored by a number of scholars, is that the historical person behind the multi-layered Jesus of the New Testament believed that his deity was just about to intervene in history in a way that would render most wordly concerns irrelevant.

But whatever the reason for him saying things like this:

Matthew 5
38 ¶ Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

it is clear that such sayings cannot be put into practice by a social group that intends to have a continuing existence - and that is what early Christians soon found (perhaps to their surprise) that they were going to be.

Now a non-believer has no problem here: a millenarian preacher who thinks the world is coming to an end says things that make normal life impossible. Big deal. But for the huge majority of Christians in the centuries after Jesus, who believed that he intended to found a church that would endure for centuries, there was a huge cognitive dissonance to be resolved.

You can attempt to do that in various ways, as the Nehor so kindly suggests. One way is the Lewis way: you simply sneer at those so naïve as to think Jesus might have meant what he said, by accusing your opponents of believing something clearly nonsensical. The passage to which he is referring is of course:

Matthew 10:16 ]Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

Clearly no sane non-Christian interpreter of this passage, which ends with two similes, would ever claim that Jesus was instructing his followers to resemble doves in their reproductive practices, rather than in their harmlessness. But Lewis pretends that that is what they mean when he says:

People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.

And that is the kind of argument we are to call 'grown-up'? If Lewis had said anything so stupid in a seminar on medieval literature his colleagues would have laughed at him. But with his 'revered Christian apologist' hat on, he was addressing an audience who were less critical than willing to be reassured, and he could get away with a lot.

As for the rest of the Nehor's ways of avoiding the inconveniences of a Jesus who means what he says, we seem to have the following:

Try getting the Holy Ghost to help you.

OK. Believe in my religion first, and then you will see that it is true. I don't think The Nehor can reasonably call a secular critic rude names for finding that unconvincing.

Next:

consider the interpretation Christians have been giving to the text for thousands of years

That does seem to be a bit circular, doesn't it? The whole point of the OP is that Christians have, for good, practical, wordly reasons ignored much of what the founder of their religion said. To appeal to that practice to justify their ignoring what he said is not a strong argument.

Next:

Or what scholars of the language and time think it means?

I don't think that you will find many scholars of New Testament Greek who will say that this simple bit of Greek:

ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν μὴ ἀντιστῆναι τῷ πονηρῷ· ἀλλ’ ὅστις σε ῥαπίζει εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα, στρέψον αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην·

means anything but:

but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

New Testament Greek is mostly simple, straightforward stuff that people like you and me can follow without straining our brains too much.

Are you thinking, I wonder, of attempts to explain away the 'eye of a needle' passage about rich people entering heaven by reference to an imaginary narrow city gate of that name?

Next:

just use basic common sense?

Tut. The literal words of supposed divine saviors are to be interpreted away unless they conform to the 'common sense' of a 21st century American? Any one foolish enough to do that might deserve a worse name than 'jackass', I think.

[_Nightlion]

Christian and pseudo Christian religions give Jesus a lot of lip service, but none of them really seem to pay attention to what Jesus actually said. And there's a good reason for that. A lot of his advice is really terrible:

The sad thing is that people DO refuse to follow Christ and HAVE invented their own religion. But, IF, there was a community of Zion today you would see the proper interpretation of all the words of Jesus manifested in the wonderful lives of those people.