What Jesus meant in Luke 14:25-33 when he said to hate family can be better understood when we consider the cultural context in which that hyperbolic statement was made. Some Bible commentators remove this from our modern sense of emotion associated with the word hate. Instead, it seems that family honor or tradition was often offended when a person became a Christian. This is certainly the case for some today, when either a family group or even a professional community is incensed when one member declares belief in the God of the Christian Bible. In this kind of scenario Jesus is not really professing a hate of individual family members per se, but the family dignity that has been idolized and stands between a believer and God. What did righteous kings of Israel do with idols? They smashed them.
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