rch leaders have burned at the stake, tortured, imprisoned, or massacred those who did not believe exactly as the religious leaders believed. Was that following the commandment to turn the other cheek?
Christ later exhorts his followers to "Enter into thy closet and pray and not to do it from the house tops," yet practically all of the religious congregations since that time pray loudly and publicly.
Another of Christ's philosophies is against thrift and saving.
He tells men to "take no thought of the morrow, to lay up no treasures," and if his suggestions were carried out we would have a nation of paupers expecting to be fed from heaven. Suppose everyone followed Christ's saying -- "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on.... Behold the fowls of the air, they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly father feeds them." Of course, Christ does not tell of the terrific struggle that goes on among birds and other animals for survival; or how the birds fight, scratch, hunt, and dig all day for enough to eat, and how they must be vigilant against all kinds of enemies. As a rule they lead a very fearful life and few die of natural causes. If God is warden over the birds and the animals, he certainly is a poor protector, for many of them are wounded, injured in fights, starved, frozen, and torn to pieces by their fellows at the least sign of weakness or sickness.
At one place, Christ says: "Which of you, by thought, can add one cubit to his stature?" But in another place Christ claims "Thy faith can do anything, even to moving mountains."
Christ exhorts his followers to seek the kingdom of God, and for centuries priests and preachers have exhorted their followers to seek the kingdom of God. But what is the kingdom of God? Most of the priests and preachers have had different ideas as to what the kingdom of God is, and certainly the garbled accounts, exhortations and preachings of Christ give no idea as to what men are to do to seek the kingdom of God, because many of his statements are conflicting.
It is true that religious leaders have sought to pick out and magnify certain parts of the Christian philosophy as a basis for attracting followers, but if they choose to minimize some of Christ's sayings, that is only an indication that they don't believe in them fully and, again the argument is presented that if one part of the book is fallible or false, or erroneous, the whole structure, including the claim of the existence of a Supreme Being, falls.
Had Christ wanted to expound a philosophy of the golden rule, and let it go at that, there could have been little criticism of his sayings, and had the whole Bible been based on the golden rule, the bloodshed and persecution of the ages might have been avoided.
Certainly it is not a very reverent act for Christ to tell one of his followers to let his dead father lie, -- "let the dead bury the dead" and, of course, this is a commandment which the churches do not follow, as there is a huge revenue for them in conducting funerals.
In one passage Jesus denounces the publicans and sinners, but in Matthew 9:10 he sits down and eats with them.
At one place Christ quotes the golden rule, but in Matthew 10:21 he says: "And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child; and the children shall rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death."
It is impossible to harmonize these two principles. At one place Christ tells his disciples: "But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another." But at another place he says: "Preach ye upon the house tops and fear not them which kill the body." What would a disciple do? Of course, this, like all of the Biblical injunctions, provide the followers with many "outs" or excuses to do whatever they want to do.
Christ's claiming to be the Son of God and the King of the Jews and boasting to John in Chapter 11:4, of the things that he had done, was the opposite of being meek and lowly, which he held up