they will know we are Christians by our hate

Whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, cannot be my disciple.

The underground living area at the citadel in Oradea, Romania

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Luke 14.26, 33

Whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. None of you can be my disciple if you do not give up everything.

Everything means everything. Absolutely everything that would weigh you down and slow you down: Everything, including your family.

Jesus did it. He left his Father, his mother, his brothers and sisters. Paul did it. If you can’t do it—if you can’t leave behind everything that keeps you from being a disciple—then you’re not a disciple.

What does hate mean? The obvious definition is that it’s the opposite of love. Strange: Jesus tells us to love our enemies and hate our families. If he doesn’t really mean to hate our families is it possible he doesn’t meant to really love our enemies?

Jesus is telling us we are not allowed to do the easy thing. It’s easy (and natural) to love your wife or husband, children, and parents. And it’s easy (and natural) to hate your enemies. What’s not easy is to hate your family and love your enemies.

Jesus never said that loving your enemies was a matter of having warm feelings toward them. To love your enemy means you do things that are unnatural and difficult, because you don’t want to do them.

Now Jesus tells us to do the impossibly difficult thing in reverse. The people you care for most, don’t. The requirement is not to emotionally despise them, but to not do the things you want to do. The requirement is to do things that are unnatural and difficult: things you don’t want to do.

Would you miss Christmases and birthdays in order to be where God needs you to be? Would you miss your daughter’s wedding for God? How would it affect you if you weren’t there for the birth of your grandchild? For the life of your grandchild? Would it bother you so much that the other grandparents get to see the baby anytime they want that you’d leave the work? Would you be able to miss holidays, vacations, little league games, baptisms, graduations, engagements, marriages, new homes, car crashes, illnesses, emergencies, funerals... ?

Why not?

Do you understand that carrying your cross means you have to do things you don’t want to do? That it will hurt? That it will hurt others? That it will hurt even more because the people who don’t carry their cross get to enjoy all the things you are going to miss?

In Matt 24.37-39 Jesus says: “As the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. In those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away.”

There’s nothing wrong with eating and drinking and marrying—unless Jesus tells you should be doing something else. He’s not saying you have to starve. But he is saying: you don’t refuse to go because the food here is good and the food there is bad, or the water here is clean and the water there is dirty, or your don’t like heat, or you don’t like cold, or they don’t speak English there. You go with no concern about such things.

Jesus is not saying you can’t be married, but he is saying you can’t use that as the reason to not go. You don’t tell Christ no because you have a job or because you’re married or because you have children or grandchildren. You don’t abandon the work because someone gets sick, you don’t spend money recreating America once you get there.

You go.

You stay.

You do what you’re told.

Sound too strong?

Unloving?

I didn’t say it.

He did.

Who are you upset with? Me or him?

Or yourself?