love – Good Question

Why did Jesus say we should hate our families?

Q. Some of Jesus’ teachings have puzzled me over the years. While some may have been part of a parable, others were definitely spoken directly to people as instructions. Take this one: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” I thought we were supposed to love even our enemies. So why does Jesus say we should hate our families?

In this earlier post I explain that when Jesus says we should love our enemies, he doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to feel a warm and delighted attraction to people who have hurt or betrayed us, a feeling that makes us want to be in a close relationship with them.

Rather, we should understand “love” in this case to be a commitment, not a feeling. We commit to doing whatever is in that person’s best interests, in the hopes that this will help them realize that they’ve done wrong and lead them to pursue restitution and reconciliation.

It’s just the opposite when Jesus says that we should “hate” our families. He’s not saying that we should be committed to doing whatever is most harmful or hurtful to them. Rather, in this case, he’s talking about a feeling, not a commitment.

Jesus is saying that we should be so devoted to him as his disciples that if anything or anyone should ever threaten to come between us and him, we would react to this with a strong feeling of antipathy and revulsion that makes us choose Jesus over that person or thing, without hesitation.

In the culture in which Jesus lived, family loyalty was probably the thing that was most likely to come between a would-be disciple and Jesus. (The same is still true in many parts of the world today.) And so Jesus is saying that if your family members try to keep you from following me, you have to react with such horror and revulsion that you’re prepared to lose your relationship with them in order to become and remain a disciple of mine.

Beyond this, however, Jesus told his followers to be very careful to follow the commandment to honor their parents. This included doing such things as providing for them in their old age. Jesus’ earliest followers similarly taught the importance of caring for family. So Jesus’ words about “hating” family must be understood only in the context of never letting anything come between us and our loyalty to God.

To state the matter simply, when Jesus says we should love our enemies, he’s talking about a commitment, not a feeling. When Jesus says we should hate our families (if they would come between us and him), he’s talking about a feeling, not a commitment.

Can we truly love our enemies?

Q. Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” Forgiveness is one thing, but I think this is impossible.

Jesus would certainly be asking us to do something unreasonable, if not impossible, when he tells us to love our enemies–people who have hurt us, or violated our trust, or taken advantage of us, or who are out to get us–if love means a feeling, a warm and delighted attraction to another person that makes us want to be in a close relationship with them. A person who’s been badly hurt by someone else simply can’t force themselves to feel those things towards that other person. Our feelings and emotions aren’t under our control in that way.

But the kind of love for enemies that Jesus commands isn’t a feeling. It’s a commitment. It’s a decision of the will, which is under our control. Specifically, love is the commitment to act consistently in the best interests of another person.

This is clear from the way Jesus immediately elaborates on his statement: “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” He’s talking about actions, not feelings.

This is also how Jesus’ earliest followers understood his statement. Paul writes in Romans, for example, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but . . . if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink . . . do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

The goal, in other words, beyond forgiving someone who has hurt us (which sets us free from bitterness and the hold that the other person’s action might otherwise have over us), is to choose to pursue their best interests in our actions towards them, so that good triumphs over evil. This also makes own our character more godly, as Jesus goes on to explain: “Love your enemies, do good, and . . . you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Doing loving actions as a commitment to another person’s good may mean, however, actually breaking off our relationship with them for a time, if they would only hurt us again if we stayed in relationship. We aren’t called to enable other people’s destructive behavior. There need to be positive signs of change on their part before it’s safe for us to pursue reconciliation, beyond forgiveness. But we can still pray for them and hope for the best for their lives.

In other cases, we may be able to do something practical to help them, and when we do this, it might even enable them to recognize that they were acting wrongly and that they need to change. But we need to be led carefully by God’s Spirit to do, in any given case, what is healthy and appropriate for us and the other person.

So, to sum up, the kind of love Jesus commands us to have for our enemies isn’t a feeling. It’s a commitment to act consistently in the best interests of another person. And I believe, God helping us, we can do that even for our enemies.

What does it mean to “fear” God?

Q. There’s been something that’s been eating away at me about our relationship with God. Jesus said the most important commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart, your soul and your strength. Okay, that might be possible if it weren’t for the “flip side.” In Matthew 10, Jesus said not to “fear those who can kill the body but not the soul. Fear Him, rather, who can destroy both the body and the soul in hell.” I don’t think I’m alone in having felt far more fear during my life than love. I don’t think anyone can truly love and trust someone they’re scared “to death” of. People have told me that “fear of God” means “reverential awe,” but the idea of body and soul being destroyed in hell seems more like “terror and shaking” to me.

You’re right, there’s no question that Jesus told us both to love God and to fear God in the sense of being afraid of what might happen to us if we really displeased God. But I think the essential issue is, “What is God’s fundamental disposition towards us?” Is it to welcome and heal and bless, or is it to accuse and judge and punish? I believe that God is both loving and just, gracious and righteous, so the real question is whether we can count on God wanting most of all to see us healed and transformed and restored, or whether God is basically out to get us, just waiting for us to mess up so he can nail us.

God’s own self-description in the Bible leads us to believe that he is fundamentally gracious and loving. Moses begged God, “Show me your glory,” and in response God “proclaimed his name” to Moses in a special divine appearance. He said, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” Here we see the two sides of God, the side that attracts us to love him and the side that makes us afraid he will punish us and even makes us wonder how God can go after the children and grandchildren of offenders. (But that’s for another post.) However, the loving side is clearly primary and predominant. So we can be eager to love and please God knowing that he’s working with us to make that happen, and not looking for every chance to punish us.

I remember that when I went to the dentist once when I was a kid I reached up for some reason to try to move his hand when he was working on my teeth. He quickly and powerfully slapped my hand away. But then he explained patiently and kindly that I could hurt my mouth and teeth badly if I ever moved his hand while he was at work. (Not that I’d really have had the strength to do that!) He told me I could just raise my hand and he would stop what he was doing and listen to my concern. So, should I have been afraid to go back to the dentist after this, fearing that he might slap me again? Or should I have been reassured that all he wanted to do was protect me and care for me? So long as I didn’t reach for his hand again, I could be perfectly secure and safe trusting him to care for me.

I think it’s the same way with God. He has great power that he will use to keep us from harming ourselves and others. But what he really wants is to help and protect us. If we know that he wants the best for us, and that we’re working with him to help bring that about, we don’t need to have the “terror and shaking” kind of fear. But we should still have a healthy respect for what God can and will do to protect us and others from the destructive things we might do. And that, in itself, shows that God is essentially loving.