Hate My Family? - One Year of Dinner Table Devotions and Discussion Starters

Hate My Family?

If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:26

I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News, will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property—along with persecution.

Mark 10:29-30

When we read the words of Jesus telling us that to be his disciples we need to hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, it is shocking—and perhaps confusing. We wonder for a minute if Jesus forgot the fifth commandment: “Honor your father and mother.”

But Jesus actually criticized the Pharisees for coming up with a way to get around the commandment to honor their parents (See Mark 7:9-13). So we know he hadn’t forgotten it and he considered it important. What did he mean when he said we need to hate our families to be his followers?

Jesus likely meant for his words to be shocking. He wanted to startle his listeners into understanding what would be demanded from them if they were going to follow him, so they could count the cost. Jesus was not saying that we should neglect our families or dishonor our parents. The hate he was calling for has nothing to do with dislike or unkindness. Jesus was calling his disciples to such a radical devotion to him that their attachment to everything else—including their own families—would seem like hatred by comparison.

Jesus wasn’t so much talking about how we care for our families as he was saying that he wants to be more than just another person we care about. He is calling us to have the kind of loyalty and devotion to him that we give to the people we love most.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

How do you think Jesus treated his own earthly family?

How is the hatred Jesus was talking about different from hatred as we usually think of it?

What does Mark 10:29-30 promise to the person who loves Jesus more than anyone else?