Luke 14:26 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.
Sounds like a loving Jesus
Sounds like a loving Jesus
It should probably be understood as something rhetorical, as explained in Chopra's The Third Jesus.
When we take Jesus literally, we are faced with the impossible. How can we truly "love thy neighbor as thyself"? But when we see the exhortations of Jesus as invitations to join him on a higher spiritual plane, his words suddenly make sense.
It is to be understood literally within the context of a comparison between loving God and loving anything else. This can be seen in the words: "... he cannot be my disciple." In other words, if it means choosing anything, even the things dear to you, over Jesus and salvation, hate everything else so that you choose Jesus and salvation.
Secondarily, everything in this life is tainted by sin. Sin is weakness. Most of us do not want to make mistakes - sin. If we want to sin in certain ways, this, also, is a sin. Hate the weakness/sin of this life.
Since following Jesus and salvation is most important, love your neighbors by attempting to bring them out of the sinful world - causing them to hate everything in the world, if it means clinging to Jesus and salvation - so that you can hate their sinfulness and weakness as your hate your own, but love them for eternal life just as you have found eternal life... in Jesus.
