Christianity is the product of Christians, not of any words in the Bible. A Christian is free to ignore the Bible when its impractical for them to do so, or when it conflicts with their own personal beliefs. They also are free to quote any part of the Bible that agrees with their personal beliefs as well, especially to argue that others should agree with them. This is how Christianity has existed for so long, if it wasn't for largely ignoring the Bible, then the religion and its followers would have been wiped out. Christians quote some things and emphasize their significance, or add a new meaning to things via their own personay prefered interpretation, they ignore other things and play them down, or give them an alternative interpretation. To be Christian is largely to speak for yourself while pretending to speak for God. Christianity is the aggregate opinion of the Christian population, who selectively read and quote the Bible in order to justify their own personal take on any matter. If people followed the commands of Jesus or the laws of the old testament, or if they followed both by giving priority to Jesus to resolve conflicts, as is the intended mode of Christian conduct, then the result would be a world with no more Christians in it. I tried arguing for people just following the Bible as the final authority on political matters, talking about how Jesus commanded nonviolence, doing good for those who hurt you, submitting to to violence and theft without reciprocation or resistance, how he implored slaves to obey their masters, how he implored giving taxes to tyrants, how he commanded fir us to take strangers not only into our lands, but also into our homes, to feed them and clothe them without asking or expecting anything from them, how we should not concern ourselves with the wellbeing of ourselves or our loved ones, whom we should abandon, how we should give up all of our wealth, how we should refuse to pass judgment or punish lawbreakers bevause in some way we have all fallen short, how the gentile's place was as servants ("dogs") to jewish masters and not only would salvation be denied to gentiles, but that gentiles should only receive what the jews cast away ("scraps"), etc. What I got was people saying "well, Jesus did say those things, but here's why he wouldn't want us to do them". The arguments are typically nonbiblical or paeudobiblical in nature, or which use personal interpretation as a superior opinion to the interpretation that the Bible explicitly intends. Its like reading that wiki page on how some guy played Silent Hill 4 and thought that the game was all about how male circumcision is a traumatic experience. The first objection is that if we follow Jesus's commands without consideration for worldly matters, we would be wiped out. But Jesus specifically instructs us to only care about earning our way into heaven and is overt in saying we should ignore all worldly concerns, including the maintenance of our own lives and those of our loved ones, and thatvit would not matter if all the religion's followers died out, since the endtines were fast approaching and would arrive before the last of his followers had died. (The strange implication being that we have been living in the post rapture period since before the Bible was written, according to Jesus, as quoted in the Bible). The next argument is on how Jesus overturned the money changers at the temple steps, but fail to recognize that this act has no significance on how we should act as followers of Jesus, Jesus is God, he can do as he likes, mankind is explicitly told not to imitate God, but to abide by his commands. If God does one thing and commands another, that is because there is one rule for him, and another for us Jesus hated the pharisees, bit he did not hate the jews, and he did hate the nonjews, especially the romans (who would later be the very ethnicity to make Christianity a world religion through establishing the universal church). More important, however, is that Jesus told us to do good to those who gate us and to those whose we hate, to serve them and submit to them, to repay their hate with acts of love, he described this as being a means of "pouring hot coals atop their heads", ensuring that we go to heaven, and that of they would follow, they would have to become like us Jesus was a globalist, socialist, and pacifist, the example of how Charles martel saved Christensen by going against the commands of christ is shown as an example of how a Christian should ignore the Bible in preference of his own personal beleifs, and how this is a good thing since it means that Christians weren't wiped out by Muslims. But Jesus told us not to care about being wiped out, the end goal of a Christian is not the continuation of his religion on the earth, but his own salvation and acceptance into heaven after death. Jesus said to avoid caring for ones own life and for the lives of his loved ones or even for his people as a whole. Clsiminh to be the messiahnwas npt a violation of jewish law, there was the prophecy ghat was explicitly calling for candidates to present themselves, jesus was rejected for multiple reasons. First, he was not immaculate, since he was born out of wedlock (if he claimed Joseph as his father, he would have been clear on this front, but he didnt). Second he was not able to trace his lineage by blood back to King David (again, claiming Joseph as his father would have allowed him to meet the prophecy requirements for being the messiah). Third, even though the pharisees ignored that he was already a failure by his own account of being conceived immaculately as a demigod, and decided to test him anyway, he spectacularly failed the first test he was given, a test to demonstrate his knowledge of the Jewish law (he should have ordered that the man the adulterous woman was caught with, but instead he requested she go free, furthermore, he did this by equating forgivable sins that people are expected to partake in, with those unforgivable sins that can only be purified with a death sentence for the sinner). Fourth, he was inconsistent with himself, a hypocrite, he broke many of his own rules for being sinless, now, being God in the flesh, you could ignore this, but it got worse. He spent the time before he was rejected by the pharisees talking about how legitimate and holy they were, and how their authority should be respected and their rules followed. It was only after he was rejected that he threw a fit and started changing his tune, talking about how the pharisees and those jews whobrefused to accept him ad their messiah were a the spawn of the devil, were a den of vipers, were the fake jews who merely lay claim to the title. This would be alright if he were saying it from the start, but being reactive like this in taking a 180 with his opinions on the god-established jewish authority was a sign that he was unworthy as a messiah candidate. According to the Bible, the judges were right to reject him, according to the requirements laid out in the prophecy in the Bible's earlier pages. This is aggravated by attributing actions and words to Jesus that the authors of those books thought would help designate him as the messiah, when in fact the prophecy called for something else that Jesus never delivered on in any of the biblical accounts. As for taxes, Jesus explicitly told his followers to pay them to the Romans, "render unto Ceasars what is Ceasar's, and give unto God what is God's". Combined with the general "submit to authority" commands, he was basically the complete opposite of a rebel. Next objection is the whole "i came not to bring peace, but a sword", and "sell your cloaks and buy a sword" comments. However, the idea that he was referring to violence is later refuted by himself, when he says "i have come to bring a sword that will divide brother against brother, sone against father, etc." The "sword" in question is not a physical weapon for physical warfare, but the gospel of christ, which is a spiritual weapon for spiritual warfare, and the "peace" thatvis ended is how the "sword" is being used to divide the houses of the jews against themselves as sone come to follow him, while others stay behind with the status quo under the jewish authorities, who regarded his schismatic movement as heretical. Basically, Jesus wants Christians to kill themselves with actions and orders that are basically suicidal, and only a biblically illiterate person would disagree. Or that would be the case if Christianity was about following the words of christ. Its not. Christianity is about the Christian community, and their values, which come from the opinions of people, not some demigod. This is reinforced by the fact that the majority of Christian history is full of a Christian population that was incapable of reading the Bible, and even when able, were forbidden on penalty of death from doing so without the explicitly permission of the church authorities, who used the Bible as a prop for their personal political ideologies. Christianity was never about christ, or the Bible, or God, or heaven, it was always about the people who claimed to believe in these things, despite barely understanding the canonical version of these things, instead looking to authorities who deliberately misrepresented them to their followers in order to socially engineer a functional Christian society.