The bible is constantly challenging us with all kinds of behavior we can’t achieve without becoming self-depriving monks. In all honesty, I haven’t done but a tiny fraction of what the bible requires me to do and in all honesty, I am not interested in living that when.
Then I profess to be a Christian, a good Christian, and then I don’t do anything about it. It seems like being a good Christian is almost unobtainable unless you train for it from birth. There are so many impossible demands made in the bible.
“The bible is constantly challenging us with all kinds of behavior we can’t achieve without becoming self-depriving monks. In all honesty, I haven’t done but a tiny fraction of what the bible requires me to do and in all honesty, I am not interested in living that when.
“Then I profess to be a Christian, a good Christian, and then I don’t do anything about it. It seems like being a good Christian is almost unobtainable unless you train for it from birth. There are so many impossible demands made in the bible.”
But this is God’s Word. So we are free to doubt and reject it, but not without facing the consequences.
I agree that God’s Word often strikes us as you describe, but whatever He commands us must be right and obtainable and for our good, our ultimate happiness. As God’s Word teaches, too, pursuing the things of this world actually leads to all sorts of misery, not happiness.
Accepting His Word instead leads us to being open to how He will make what is truly good happen in us.
Being “content with food and clothing” wouldn’t seem to mean having only food and clothing, but being thankful for the food and clothing and whatever else we have beyond them, and then not setting our hearts on acquiring more and trusting them for our happiness. That’s making idols out of them. But if we use whatever we have in Godly ways, in service to His kingdom rather than in rebellion to it, then we can find enjoyment in them.
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” 1 John 2:15
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26
“Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12:25