Love your enemies.... but hate your parents?

Have you ever struggled to understand some of the apparently confusing and contradictory statements of Jesus? I know that I have…

If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. Luke 14:26 NKJV

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. Matthew 5:44 NKJV

These two mutually exclusive verses are pounced upon by the opponents of Christianity as a reason to ignore the teachings of Jesus Christ… a “surface reading” of what is being said would seem to support their reasoning.     

Students of Jewish rabbis (teachers of religious law and matters) were taught to place their affections for their teachers higher than that for their fathers, for as a Jewish proverb says: “his teacher has priority, for his father brought him into this world, but his teacher, who has taught him wisdom, brings him into the world to come.”  

Well... loyalty to, and respect for one’s teachers is not unusual. But hatred of parents… surely that’s taking loyalty to your teacher too far… even if that teacher is God in human form! It also contradicts another commandment… “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12 NKJV

Those of us who are native speakers of English often wonder how speakers of another language can master the endless complexities of “our” language with its prescriptive and descriptive rules, tenses, relative causes, verb conjugations, ceaseless “borrowing” from other languages, regional meanings, homonyms (ads,adds, adze, --no, know, --you, ewe, --flour, flower) and homophones (ad, add-- altar, alter, --aisle, I’ll, isle, yaw, yore, your, you're ) grammatical oddities such as oxymoron’s (civil war, pretty ugly, almost candid, alone together) and Siamese twins, (always "sick and tired", never "tired and sick", “take it or leave it”-never- leave it or take it, “forgive and forget”, not forget and forgive, "law and order" -never "order and law") heterophones, words written the same way, but with different meanings (I like to read. In fact, I read a book yesterday,  With every number I read, my mind gets number and number.) and the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between American and Commonwealth English

Biblical Hebrew and Greek suffer from similar problems, they lack the necessary linguistic tools to exactly define the comparative sense, i.e., ‘more than’ or ‘less than’. The Bible tends to express two ideas which may be of relatively dissimilar degrees like ‘first’ and ‘second’ as extremes such as ‘first’ and ‘last’. Thus, expressive emotions such as ‘love’ and ‘hate’ while appearing as opposites, may in fact be related, but lesser terms such as ‘love more’ and ‘love less’.

The Good News Bible has a clearer rendering of what Jesus was saying… “Those who come to me cannot be my disciples unless they love me more than they love father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and themselves as well.” Luke 14:26 GNB

The Amplified Bible throws more light on these vexing verses. If anyone comes to Me and does not hate [in the sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with his attitude toward God] his [own] father and mother  and [likewise] his wife and children and brothers and sisters—[yes] and even his own life also—he cannot be My disciple. Luke 14:26 Amplified Bible

We moderns tend to either love totally or hate completely; thus we can “fall” into or “out” of love, rather than recognizing that love changes, or matures. There is a concept that we do not embrace… degrees of love. This is apparent throughout the Bible. Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, but he still loved them both! Thus Esau was not so much “hated”, but rather unloved or rejected. We see love and hate as opposites, rather than accept that both emotions are graduated. We love chocolate, but hate Brussels Sprouts, when in all probability we enjoy the taste of one but not the other!

Jesus discipled 12 men, was especially fond of 3, but “loved” just one… “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved” John 13:23… yet He “loved” the entire world.

We don’t have to hate family in order to love Christ, but our love for Him does have to be of a “higher order” for us to qualify as His followers. Even if one were to take the ‘hating’ verse literally, a semantic twist would have us back where we started. For, Jesus tells us to “love our enemies”! “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.” Matthew 5:44 NKJV