Luke 14:26... What does Jesus mean?

Well, this is from the Lectionary readings for this Sunday (September 05, 2010). The Gospel passage comes from Luke 14.

According to Luke, Jesus says, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes,even life itself--such a person cannot be my disciple."

'Hate your father, mother, wife, children, brother and sisters, event life itself?'

HUH?!?

Well, what does the Greek say? (Check Luke 14 with the Greek lexicon here).

Hate = miseo = hate, despise, pursue with hatred?

It is interesting that the word 'cannot' in the Greek transliteration is 'Dunamai'. Which is about power. In other words those who do not 'hate' their 'relations, even life itself' will not have the 'power' or 'ability' to be Christ's disciple.

Here's what I think is happening. I believe Jesus is talking about codependence and codepency (see wikipedia - codependency).

For the sake of ease here is a quote from the wikipedia article...

Codependency or codependence is a tendency to behave in overly passive or excessively caretaking ways that negatively impact one'srelationships and quality of life. It also often involves putting one's needs at a lower priority than others while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others. ^[1] Codependency can occur in any type of relationship, including in families, at work, in friendships, and also in romantic, peer or community relationships.^[1] Codependency may also be characterized by denial, low self-esteem, excessive compliance, and/or control patterns.^[1]

Codependency describes behavior, thoughts and feelings that go beyond normal kinds of self-sacrifice or care taking. For example parenting is a role that requires a certain amount of self-sacrifice and giving a child's needs a high priority, although a parent could nevertheless still be codependent towards their own children if the care taking or parental sacrifice reached unhealthy or destructive levels.^[1] Generally a parent who takes care of their own needs (emotional and physical) in a healthy way will be a better caretaker, whereas a codependent parent may be less effective, or may even do harm to a child.^[1]

Codependency does not refer to all caring behavior or feelings, but only those that are excessive to an unhealthy degree.^[2]

Currently our culture struggles deeply with codependent relationships. We are almost always basing our actions not on who we are and need to be but based on our perception of what and who we percieve others to want us to be.

Basically, 'codependency' and being a Christ follower would be like serving two masters. Jesus seems to see this as impossible. You either hate the one and love the other or you despise the one and serve the other.

Luke (who happens to be a 'doctor' kind of person in Jesus' day) is pointing out that in our codependency we cannot (do not have the power) to truly follow Jesus, because we will always be behaving through our codependency.

Luke presents that Jesus believes that people need to lay down all of their needs and desires at the feet of Jesus to trust that God will supply and provide what we really need. Without this reliance on Jesus, it seems that Luke believes that we cannot be whole or free.

Following Jesus is not to be another 'codependent' relationship; but a relationship that truly brings freedom to live 'wholly' and have interdependent relationships.

Jesus isn't removing the self from the person; instead he is freeing the person to live fully as the one God created them to be.

What do you think?