Rhian,

<<Do you think Jesus really wants us to hate our parents, spouses and children (Luke 14:26)?>>

A course in Hermeneutics 101 would help you to understand this verse in context of the NT.

Luke 14:6 states, "“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." This is a strange saying in light of Jesus call to love one another and love enemies.

To interpret Scripture, we compare Scripture with Scripture: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37).

What does Luke 14:6 mean? It means that just as things can come between the believer and the kingdom of God, so can family ties interfere with our relationship with God. For Christians, the interests of God's kingdom must be given priority - even over family ties.

"Hating" in Luke 14:6 is shown to mean "loving less" in Matt 10:37.

The teaching of Jesus is: 'Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life."'

Rhian,

I made a couple typo errors in my last post where Luke 14:6 should be Luke 14:26.

Ozspen- I'm not a Christian Religious Scholar and you are obviously knowledgeable about such things. However it seems that John Wesley democratised religion in England through Methodism based on the principles of Jacobus Arminius, Martin Luther and others as a counterpoint to the thesis of centralised authority however not capable of forming an authority of it's own. Queen Elizabeth bridled protestantism under centralised national control but methodists freed it again. Elizabeth relocated religious power at the national level of the global hierarchy- methodists were the religious equivalent of anarchism- no authority. Many traditionalists such as Reagan believe in small government (limited authority) but not anarchy.

Societies can go through periods of balancing interspaced with stability- a form of creative destruction- similar to that of modern capitalism- in a sense but different. Communism doesn't believe in permanent authority but permanent revolution- permanent instability.
A balancing of structure vs chaos, parent vs adolescent, nurture vs nature. How many of us want weeds in the garden and doors off their hinges.
I see Communist/ political liberalism and Protestant/ religiously liberal forces as developing in parallel- based on similar principles- partly due to the formation of mass society, technology, and the inherent resource and arms race. Tradition in a sense represents authority- an adolescents duty to destroy and rebuild in their own image- but what of the devil in the middle- the bug in the flour- the snake in the grass- the pedophile seeking to guide children into adulthood- for their own purposes.

Hi Spencer

I have no problem interpreting Luke, but I do wonder how people who take Jesus’ words at face value interpret them, which is why I asked for your understanding of this text. Even with Matthew’s somewhat kinder take on a similar theme I think many people would regard as problematic a call to abandon one’s children to follow Jesus. Anyway, Luke has a virtually identical passage at 18:29-30, so I’m not sure comparisons with Matthew are either necessary or appropriate to understanding this text. I assume that Luke included both this and 14:26 for a reason.

Anyway, I agree with your broad conclusion that both texts point to the fact that many things, including family ties, can interfere with our relationship with God. Indeed, using social-scientific criticism to evaluate the role of the family in Jesus’ time and culture can assist greatly in understanding these passages. See e.g.

https://www3.nd.edu/~jneyrey1/loss.html

I’d still be interested in examples of liberal theology’s grammatical errors.

Rhian,

See the article on liberal theology at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/liberal-theology/

Rhian,

<<I’d still be interested in examples of liberal theology’s grammatical errors.>>

John Dominic Crossan wrote: "I formulate it here as I see it" (The Birth of Christianity:xxx).

Do you read any book with the view of "I formulate it here as I see it" or do you choose to follow the grammar and syntax of the author and you interpret the book according to the author's intention?

In my understanding of English grammar and syntax, when an author engages in free play with the text (as Crossan does), I have departed from English interpretation and entered into postmodern deconstructionism.