Hate your father and mother?

For the full context of this post read Luke 14: 25-33.

For many of us, being a Christian is synonymous to being an American. We allow Christianity to be our nationality, our cultural status, or our religion of birth, rather than allowing it to be a transformative lifestyle. Living a Christian lifestyle requires us to study the Bible in context from which it was written while acknowledging that Jesus’s teachings were intended for all believers. We must be willing to allow his timeless truths to transform our lifestyle.

25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “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. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple (Luke 14: 25-33).

As if in one breath Jesus tells the people to hate their parents, renounce all that they have, and check the blueprints before building a tower. His teachings were hard to accept during his day and age! In our day and age, we glance over these hard teachings as if they don’t apply to us, but they do. Jesus doesn’t want us to be cultural Christians. He wants us to be transformed Christians. Jesus was instructing us to count all the costs of following him. Jesus was not advocating that we hate our parents, but there is a cost to being his disciple. When friends and family don’t follow Christ, the cost of discipleship requires us to follow him. Jesus wasn’t telling us that we have to give away all that we have, but the cost of discipleship is a willingness to invest all that we have, materially and spiritually, into pursuing him. When building a tower, going to war, or executing any of our modern plans, we carefully consider risks, costs, and strategy to calculate the best plan of action. Living a Christian lifestyle requires the same considerations. Christianity is more than checking the religious box on a census. Christianity is a lifestyle. Are you willing to follow Christ in our modern day culture regardless of cost? The costs are high! The payout is even better!