Jesus asks us to hate our loved ones?
Luke 14: 26 – If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.
It’s puzzling, isn’t it, that God would ask us to hate our loved ones, when he spoke so ‘loudly’ about loving your parents, your spouse, your children, your neighbours and even your enemies everywhere else in the Bible? But let’s see…let us look at this notable character, Jim Elliot, and perhaps we could then further understand what God is trying to convey to us in this verse.
Jim Elliot – the husband of Elizabeth and father of Valerie. He was the missionary who was murdered by the vicious Auca tribe together with four other missionaries in Ecuador in Jan 8, 1956.(http://www.love-above-all.org/). Overnight, his wife was widowed, and his daughter became fatherless. However, his and the other missionaries’ deaths were not wasted. Through the sheer grace of God, Elizabeth was able to forgive the murderers. In fact, she went on to live with them, and show them the way to God’s love and salvation. This saw the conversion of the Aucas to Christianity.
If Jim Elliot had loved his wife, daughter and himself sufficiently to think twice about reaching out to the Aucas, if Elizabeth had loved his husband sufficiently to hate and not forgive what the Aucas did, then we may not have seen their conversion. What happened also encouraged many Christiians and missionaries out there in the large. The verse, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple,” denotes extremity. The word, ‘hate’, is expressed in extremity to denote the need for full devotion to what God has called us to do. In essence, God wants us to release our loved ones and own own being to God, so that we could move forward bravely and excitedly to do God’s will.
We, who are Christians, need to learn that our lives are earth are temporal. We have Heaven to go to. We have a God who loved and is waiting for us to be with Him, when we finally died a physical death on earth. I have told my friends, and i will tell myself many times, that we are that close to God, we will not be bothered by our physical afflictions and sufferings. Personally, I need to and will continue to learn that awesome truth of God’s Love and Grace.
