SPIRIT IS THICKER THAN BLOOD
Jesus told people who wanted to follow Him to count the cost of doing so. The first cost Jesus mentioned was potential dissolution of familial bonds. Your family may hate or disown you (Matthew 10.21-22,34-37; Luke 14.26).
Family – home – is our natural foundation. Family creates for us a sense of ‘normal’, the familiar, that with which we are comfortable. ‘Family’ knows us – has always known us – and we know them.
Family is also oddly temporary. We were made to leave father and mother and strike out on our own. It is not ‘normal’ to stay (or to want to stay) in your parents’ home. Despite our parents’ love and care for us, living under their roof eventually becomes a strain. We must get out and become independent. When that happens, our familial bonds are strained but not dissolved. We restructure them in a new way comfortable to both parent and child. We adapt and life goes on.
Family creates tensions between our loyalties and loves. We want to be free of our home and yet we find comfort in the ‘normalcy’ of home. No matter how far a child strays, parents – especially mothers – are usually driven to provide some level of understanding and acceptance. Breaking this deepest natural bond seems perverse. It is almost impossible to bring ourselves to do it.
But Jesus says if you are going to follow Him, you must “hate father and mother”.
He doesn’t mean malicious hostility to parents is required of believers. Rather, if a conflict arises between Christ’s demands and the family’s wishes, loyalty to Christ must take priority over the family’s expectations and its sense of the ‘normal’ and ‘familiar’.
When such a conflict arises, the family sees itself as normal and Jesus (or your interpretation of Jesus) as the aberration. The family wants you to come to your senses. They try to woo you back to the family fold. They may question your love for them. They may complain about your cold, hard heart. They may wonder if you’ve lost your mind. They may shame you to others.
Jesus warns His followers not to fall prey to that kind of manipulation (Luke 9.26).
If you weren’t raised with any religion or were raised in a non-Christian religion or even in a Christian tradition outside of evangelicalism, when you commit yourself to following Christ you are likely to taste some degree of the social alienation Jesus speaks about.
There is something of a silver lining to this sacrifice. Peter once said to Jesus, “We have left our homes and followed you” (Luke 18.28). He wanted to know if there was any reward for this sacrificial commitment. Jesus responded that those who follow Him will receive back many times more of what they have sacrificed, not only in the age to come but in this age as well (Luke 18.29-30). If you leave your family to follow Christ, God will bless you with others who will fill the role of “family” for you.
Jesus is speaking, I believe, of the fellowship of His church.
We become that new family to each other and must create for one another that sense of ‘familiar’ and ‘comfortable’. We must rejoice with each other when we rejoice, and weep with each other when we weep. We must care for each other, love each other, put up with each other, and rebuke each other – and maintain close ties with each other.
Blood may be thicker than water, but the Spirit is thicker than blood.
If calling people to follow Christ leads to broken social connections, replacing those connections and nurturing those so alienated becomes a crucial part of both evangelism and the work of the church. This is what we must build.
We do not follow Christ in isolation.
We were not made to be alone.
We are made a part of His body when we believe, and our love for one another is in turn a key way in which others know that we are followers of Jesus (John 13.35).
At least that’s the theory…
Family – home – is our natural foundation. Family creates for us a sense of ‘normal’, the familiar, that with which we are comfortable. ‘Family’ knows us – has always known us – and we know them.
Family is also oddly temporary. We were made to leave father and mother and strike out on our own. It is not ‘normal’ to stay (or to want to stay) in your parents’ home. Despite our parents’ love and care for us, living under their roof eventually becomes a strain. We must get out and become independent. When that happens, our familial bonds are strained but not dissolved. We restructure them in a new way comfortable to both parent and child. We adapt and life goes on.
Family creates tensions between our loyalties and loves. We want to be free of our home and yet we find comfort in the ‘normalcy’ of home. No matter how far a child strays, parents – especially mothers – are usually driven to provide some level of understanding and acceptance. Breaking this deepest natural bond seems perverse. It is almost impossible to bring ourselves to do it.
But Jesus says if you are going to follow Him, you must “hate father and mother”.
He doesn’t mean malicious hostility to parents is required of believers. Rather, if a conflict arises between Christ’s demands and the family’s wishes, loyalty to Christ must take priority over the family’s expectations and its sense of the ‘normal’ and ‘familiar’.
When such a conflict arises, the family sees itself as normal and Jesus (or your interpretation of Jesus) as the aberration. The family wants you to come to your senses. They try to woo you back to the family fold. They may question your love for them. They may complain about your cold, hard heart. They may wonder if you’ve lost your mind. They may shame you to others.
Jesus warns His followers not to fall prey to that kind of manipulation (Luke 9.26).
If you weren’t raised with any religion or were raised in a non-Christian religion or even in a Christian tradition outside of evangelicalism, when you commit yourself to following Christ you are likely to taste some degree of the social alienation Jesus speaks about.
There is something of a silver lining to this sacrifice. Peter once said to Jesus, “We have left our homes and followed you” (Luke 18.28). He wanted to know if there was any reward for this sacrificial commitment. Jesus responded that those who follow Him will receive back many times more of what they have sacrificed, not only in the age to come but in this age as well (Luke 18.29-30). If you leave your family to follow Christ, God will bless you with others who will fill the role of “family” for you.
Jesus is speaking, I believe, of the fellowship of His church.
We become that new family to each other and must create for one another that sense of ‘familiar’ and ‘comfortable’. We must rejoice with each other when we rejoice, and weep with each other when we weep. We must care for each other, love each other, put up with each other, and rebuke each other – and maintain close ties with each other.
Blood may be thicker than water, but the Spirit is thicker than blood.
If calling people to follow Christ leads to broken social connections, replacing those connections and nurturing those so alienated becomes a crucial part of both evangelism and the work of the church. This is what we must build.
We do not follow Christ in isolation.
We were not made to be alone.
We are made a part of His body when we believe, and our love for one another is in turn a key way in which others know that we are followers of Jesus (John 13.35).
At least that’s the theory…