Living According to Christ: Is it Reasonable?

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I would like to discuss the teachings of the New Testament that instruct us on how to live. The specific question up for debate will be: given the difference between the mindset with which they were issued and the mindset with which we read them today, are such instructions reasonable and/or relevant in our present age?

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The New Testament presents a lot of teachings telling people how to live and how to behave. These how to live teachings often ask that individuals disregard their earthly wealth and worries to live a life in devotion of Christ and God. But, of course, Jesus preached, and Paul believed, that the world was soon to end. And it appears that many of Jesus', and Paul's, how to live teachings seem specifically tied to this belief.
  —"Jon"

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Problem: You begin by asking if the instructions of Jesus are reasonable in the present day, but then narrow the field significantly, and - I would suggest - entirely in the wrong direction.The most impressive argument comes from looking at the infamous Luke 14:26, which has been explained as tantamount to placing religious conviction above duty to self, family, and others. This (along with subsequent suggestions that what people do is irrelevant compared to how strongly they believe) is a far less encouraging model for a world as massively connected via communications and trade as ours is, since it can be used to justify all kinds of behaviour.As an aside, Jesus differs strongly from the OT God largely as he delivers instructions via parable and inference rather than strict legalism, which leaves for a huge margin of personal interpretation. I feel this shows Jesus' model to be too flexible; I suspect this is why Paul is taken so seriously, since his more legalistic approach closes a lot of gaps.Edited by Queue, : Paragraph spacing fix.

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I don't think you can make such a soft generalized argument given the passage in Luke; the argument that the purpose is to place religious conviction above life and family is better supported by the passage in Matthew I cited above. The passage in Luke is much more drastic than this and requires a much more drastic interpretation, or, alternatively, a simple denial of the reality of what is written.
  —"Jon"

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Oh, I agree; "Hate" is strong and specific. I'm making a concession to Blueletter Bible's apologetics in this case. I didn't have to, but I can make my point even on the pillow-down interpretation of the passage.

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I am not sure why you feel I have taken my thread in the 'wrong' direction. The purpose of narrowing the topic down was to focus on only those instructions that may seem unreasonable given the present age. There are certainly many other instructions Jesus and his followers gave for living life, but few of them would cause any trouble for modern Christians were they to follow them in the fullest. Those may be interesting in a thread on their own, but this thread is meant to be about the problematic instructions specifically.

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Well, leaving aside everything else, Jesus' model fails to provide reasonable guidelines for even what modern morality cites as proper family values. It's a crack at the very bottom of the pyramid - living life according to Mathew 12:46-49 (my followers are my family, so I'll ignore my actual family) and 10:37 (love me more than your family) could encourage a lifestyle that even a moderate modern Christian might negatively associate with a cult.