It’s not calling Jesus a liar to say the Scripture does not teach us to hate our parents the way we normally use the word hate. It’s an honest attempt to resolve an apparent conflict by legitimate recourse to cultural features of the language and by comparing Scripture with Scripture. For example, would you have Jesus versus Jesus if your parents were your enemies? Love your enemies, hate your parents, but your parents are your enemies? No, the first rule of Biblical interpretation is that when you hit an apparent contradiction, dig deeper, because God wrote the whole thing, and will not contradict Himself, and therefore you will always find a resolution in the nuances of language, history, and context.
The simple answer here is that hate can be used in more than one sense, as we also do all the time. Someone gets a promotion, and their best friend says, “I hate you.” Jihadic hatred? I think not. Friendly hatred, a mere joke, with no misunderstanding.
In the case of parents, there is no escaping a rule to love them if you look at the broader context. If they are believers we are told to love them because they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. If they are our enemies, we are told to love them because we must also love our enemies. Hatred as Jesus used it in Luke 14:26 must therefore mean something different than the simple, polar opposite of what we normally think of as love.
In the context of Luke 14, Jesus is speaking of whatever might be in conflict with the desire to obey and follow Christ, that any such thing must be treated as you would treat the inferior of two choices. You will always go with the one you most desire.
Solomon was blessed with great wisdom, yet he chose to treat with tolerance the pagan deities of his many foreign wives, and it led to great spiritual harm for him. He should have treated all persons or things that would woo him away from his Creator as inferior choices, as things that will always be desired less, that will always be trumped by a love for God. That’s all it means.
Not to underplay the seriousness of such choice-making. It can be very difficult to do in the real world.
But understanding hate this way begs the question, what then is love, if not the polar opposite of strategically distancing oneself from temptation?
The ancients viewed love differently than we do. Love to them, and I think Biblically as well, was the activity of seeking someone’s best interests, not simply a feeling of positive emotion. If I love my infant child I will change her messy diapers even if she doesn’t like the experience, even if it upsets me to see her tears. If my parents want me to abort my baby, I will see my parents wishes as against my following Christ, and I will disobey them, in that sense “hating” them.
But the testimony of my love for my child and my respect for the God-given life of that child may win them ultimately to follow Christ themselves and to repent of their former sins. So in that sense, I am really seeking their best interests, I am loving them, just as I am commanded to do. Thus the contradiction is resolved.
Well stated. Thank you.
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