ContradictionsReading order 105Bible context 2 min read
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.
Luke 14:26
Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)
Read the full chapter:Luke 14
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.