Should we hate other people?
Commands linking faithfulness with hatred conflict with rules forbidding hatred and requiring love for family and neighbors.
- Textual conflict
- Interpretive tension
- The passages pull in different directions, but the conflict depends on how their wording, scope, or narrative context is read.
- Importance
- Foundational
- A central claim about origins, salvation, divine justice, or religious authority.
Required hatred of family conflicts with commands to love them under a literal emotional reading, but comparative allegiance or rhetorical degree remains a substantial ambiguity.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
Disciples must hate family and loving God's enemies brings rebuke
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
Context affects the comparison
Luke requires a disciple to "hate" family and even their own life. Matthew frames family loyalty as loving a parent or child more than Jesus. This affects whether the comparison concerns literal hostility or the priority demanded by discipleship; the wording of the two accounts remains different.
And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord.
People must love neighbors and must not hate their brothers
Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.
Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.
Understanding the contradiction
Luke 14:26 makes hatred of parents, spouse, children, siblings, and one's own life a condition of discipleship. 2 Chronicles 19:2 rebukes Jehoshaphat for helping the ungodly and loving those who hate the Lord. These texts tie religious allegiance to a rejection of ordinary relationships or solidarity.
Leviticus 19:17 prohibits hatred of a brother in the heart, and Matthew 19:19 joins honoring parents with loving neighbors. 1 John 4:20-21 says loving God while hating a brother is incompatible and commands both loves together. The relationships overlap directly with Luke's family list. The supplied wording does not define hate as a separate, harmless technical term. Read in its ordinary moral sense, the required hatred conflicts with the love demanded elsewhere.