Trying to Make a Horrible Jesus Quote Look Good
The high-profile, very wealthy televangelists—Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen come to mind—make us wonder if they really do believe in Jesus. They have played major roles in turning Jesus into big business. Their lifestyles don’t seem compatible with the ancient preacher portrayed in the gospels. Jesus, so we’re told, championed the poor and condemned the rich, e.g., Mark 10:25 (KJV): “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Luke 6:20 (NRSVUE): “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:21 (KJV): “Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.’”
So pardon our suspicion that Copeland and Osteen—and many others—are phonies. They’re in it for the money.
But what about the thousands of Christian apologists—who draw ordinary salaries? They’re not in it for the money. They know for sure that belief in Jesus is the one true faith and they’ve taken on the challenge of proving it. Their intense emotional investment—without Jesus, there’s no eternal life, being saved from hell—has put their brains into feverish defense mode. They have to prove that ancient superstitions and magical thinking (of course, they don’t use these terms!) deserve a place in our modern world view. Thus Jesus-on-the-cross (a human sacrifice to divert a god’s anger about sin) has to be made to look logical and respectable. Magnificent church décor helps with this.
However, the gospels present other challenges. I’ve often said they’re a minefield, because there are so many Jesus quotes that don’t sound right at all (here’s a list of 292 of them). So the apologists have to make Jesus himself look good. Who would have thought! In fact, this can be an even bigger challenge than making human sacrifice look legitimate.
The Jesus quote that probably causes the most angst to apologists is Luke 14:26: hatred of family is required if you want to follow Jesus. I’ve come across churchgoers who don’t even know this verse exists, and they get flustered when it’s brought to their attention. Which means that apologists have to do their best to make it go away.
I recently came across an article by a devout fellow named Nathan Cook, titled, A Radical Call: The Challenge of Discipleship in Luke 14:26. Cook is described as “Mission Pastor” for Christ Church Memphis, with a twenty-year career in “church planting and missionary work.” Apparently this focus has enabled him to master double-speak—and to remain ignorant of the work of mainstream Bible scholars.
According to Cook, the Jesus of Luke’s gospel “emphasizes the need for self-sacrifice, service, and a transformed heart in order to participate in God's kingdom.” And: “Jesus is inviting His followers to join Him in His mission of bringing hope and healing to a broken world.” Just how does hating your family bring healing to a broken world? Cook’s solution—he is so in sync with Jesus that he can read his mind: “It’s hyperbole”!
“This verse does not mean that we should literally hate our family members or ourselves. Instead, Jesus is using hyperbole to emphasize the importance of putting Him first in our lives. Our love and devotion to Jesus should be so great that, in comparison, our affection for our families and ourselves seems like hatred.”
Really? Is this how most devout Christians make their way in life? Loving Jesus so much that their feelings for family “seem like hatred”? Does Cook actually believe this himself? Moreover, Luke 14:26 stipulates that followers of Jesus must hate life itself. Most of the Christians I know are happy to be alive, and want to enjoy the experience. When we come across people who hate life, our impulse it to get them into therapy. Luke 14:26 collides with reality in too many ways.
I suspect that Cook’s study of the gospels has been limited to what other apologists say, to what evangelical/fundamentalist interpreters have written. He should consider the work of scholar Hector Avalos instead. There’s a 40-page chapter titled, “The Hateful Jesus: Luke 14:26” in Avalos’ 2015 book, The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics. It would be hard to find a more thorough analysis of Luke 14:26, and it’s clear that some devout scholars, as Avalos puts it,
“…do not fully reckon with the nature of the linguistic evidence. Often these discussions reflect theological rationales that are being substituted for linguistic and historical ones…Although the text seems as clear an expression of literal hate as any text found anywhere, Christian apologists have attempted to erase or lessen its negative connotations.” (p. 51)
The hyperbole excuse doesn’t work. Cook’s essay should get a prize for resorting to theological rationales—and a prize for dishonesty. Translators who delete or disguise the word hate also deserve a dishonesty prize.
Avalos bluntly calls attention to the bad theology here:
“How would we judge a modern religious leader who said that we should prefer him over our families? Why would we not treat such a person as an egomaniacal cult leader who does what all cult leaders do: transfer allegiance from one’s family to him or her. In other words, that demand would be viewed as unethical in itself” (p. 89).
What great moral teacher resorts to such grim hyperbole to make a point? Hate your family. If your eye causes you so sin, pluck it out.
Cook’s ignorance of mainstream New Testament scholarship is also obvious from his claim that this gospel was “composed by the physician Luke around AD 60-61.” The consensus of NT scholars is that we don’t know the authors of any of the gospels: the traditional names were attached to them in the second century. But Luke the physician is mentioned in Colossians 4:14 and Luke is also mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:11. There is no evidence whatever that this is the Luke who wrote the gospel. This is speculation, wishful thinking. In fact, if this Luke, a companion of Paul, later wrote the gospel, how is it possible that Paul didn’t hear about any of the details about Jesus that we find in the gospel? In all his letters, Paul doesn’t refer at all to the teachings or miracles of Jesus—nor is there any mention of the empty tomb.
And where did Cook come up with AD 60-61? Mark is commonly dated by scholars at around 70, and Luke copied major portions of it.
The context of Luke 14:26 helps us grasp the author’s motivation for including this verse. Jesus has just told the Parable of the Great Dinner. The host had invited many people to his table, but at the last minute they all decline, offering a variety of excuses. So the host ordered his slaves to “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame”… “compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.” (v. 21 & v. 23) The point seems to be that there are no restrictions on those who are welcome in the Jesus cult—no matter social standing or position in life.
But there is a major requirement: you’re not welcome if you have divided loyalties. If you put family first, don’t bother.
In fact, Luke’s author might have been trying to heighten the severity of Matthew 10:37-39:
“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, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Both Matthew and Luke emphasized the demands of the Jesus cult, and Nathan Cook is doing exactly the same thing:
“Pray for the wisdom and courage to make the necessary sacrifices to put Jesus first in your life. As you grow in your relationship with Him, seek out opportunities to deepen your commitment and demonstrate your love for Him, even when it requires personal sacrifice. Remember, the cost of discipleship may be high, but the reward of a life devoted to Jesus is priceless.”
But please, back to reality: at any given moment there may be a million devout Christians claiming that they feel Jesus in their hearts, confident that their intense emotions about Jesus are ignited by the holy spirit. Non-believers don’t buy it—nor would most devout Muslims and Jews, who dismiss the hype about Jesus. Those who have been groomed since their earliest years to feel Jesus and the holy spirit fail to see that these feelings—no matter how intense—don’t qualify as reliable, verifiable, objective evidence about Jesus.
Back to reality includes this candid statement by Tim Sledge:
“Faith in Jesus produces inconsistent results because Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who is now deceased” (Four Disturbing Questions with One Simple Answer: Breaking the Spell of Christian Belief, p. 76). This apocalyptic prophet shows up full strength in Mark’s gospel, especially in the frightful chapter 13 (also see John Loftus’ essay, “At Best Jesus Was a Failed Apocalyptic Prophet,” in his 2010 anthology, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails). This ancient superstition champions the idea that the human sacrifice came back to life, and ascended through the clouds to join his god in the sky. In Mark 14:62, Jesus promised those at his trial that they would see him descending from the clouds to set up his kingdom. This is fantasy literature.
Back to reality:
“If Jesus were still alive—indwelling and empowering every individual who has believed in him and made a commitment to him—we would see consistent and compelling evidence that the Christian life is supernaturally powered. And it would be clear that Christianity —unlike every other religion—is the way that God lives through human individuals. But the opposite is true (Sledge, Four Disturbing Questions, pp. 80-81).
Nathan Cook does everything he can to sustain belief that Jesus is alive and craves devotion. He ends his essay—in which he fails utterly to make Luke 14:26 fit into even a semi-rational Christian faith—with a flattering prayer to boost his god’s ego: “Heavenly Father, we adore You for Your holiness and grandeur, for You are the sovereign Creator of all things. You are perfect in all Your ways, and Your love for us is unfailing” … “As we journey on this path of discipleship, help us to resist the temptation to live for ourselves, to seek our own pleasure, or to derive meaning from the world's standards.”
Back to reality: It’s just a fact that the “world’s standards” include loving family and loving life—and overcoming the obstacles that work against these ideals. Our planet and humanity are much more likely to survive if we can move beyond superstitions, fantasies, and magical thinking. I hope there are common sense Christians who are alarmed and disgusted by Luke 14:26, and appalled by attempts of apologists, in the most pathetic ways imaginable, to use this text to encourage devotion to a long-dead apocalyptic prophet.
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available.
His YouTube channel is here. He has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
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