Hate thy family and Love thy enemies

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A muslim sent me this image, and i was intrigued. I wanted to know what you, my brothers and sisters think of this image and how to refute it and for me to truly understand the faith. Since they accuse the bible as contradicting Because we have to love thy enemies but hate thy family.

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Whoever made this did a good job of taking at least one of the those verses out of context.
 
You could just say tI the person that Theological concepts are not effectively argued over meme. And that many Muslims are offended when they are.
 
Love thy enemy is self explanatory, Our Lord is telling us to love and forgive even our enemies, as Our Blessed Lord did.

The “hate thy family” is just a Muhammadan trying to do a gotcha moment and take a quote out of context, what it means is that, above all, we must love God first.

As to what I feel about it, I feel it’s in poor taste. I wouldn’t even bother getting into an argument about it, since I doubt they sent that to you in order to start a proper debate.
 
First of all, tell the person who sent you this that it’s rude to mock someone’s religion with a meme and that if he has a question he should ask respectfully and you will do him the same courtesy.

Second of all, yes we’re supposed to love everyone including our enemies. This is pretty basic.

Third of all, regarding “hate our family”, the verse in question is explained by the NABRE Catholic Bible footnote:
26 “If any one comes to me without hating his father[a] and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Read full chapter

Footnotes​

  1. 14:26 Hating his father… : cf. the similar saying in Mt 10:37. The disciple’s family must take second place to the absolute dedication involved in following Jesus (see also Lk 9:59–62).
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As explained in the footnote, Jesus is not telling people to literally hate their families; if so, he wouldn’t have a Commandment that said “Honor your Father and Mother” and the Church wouldn’t direct us to spend family time especially on Sundays.

What Jesus meant is that if your family is getting in the way of you following Jesus, such as your family doesn’t want you to be Christian, or your family is forcing you to sin, then Jesus needs to come first.


I would further note that every single time this verse comes up in the Mass readings, the priest explains it in the homilies, apparently because there is always someone out there who misses the point and thinks Jesus is telling us to hate on our families. I guess if your Muslim friend is not super-familiar with the Catholic Bible he might be confused, but it’s pretty obvious that Jesus does not want us to “hate” any persons (family or not); rather he wants us to hate and reject bad influences that keep us from following him, even if it’s coming from family.
 
CS Lewis discusses this apparent contradiction in his book the Four Loves.

“ To hate is to reject, to set one’s face against, to make no concession to, the Beloved when the Beloved utters, however sweetly and however pitiably, the suggestions of the Devil.”

It is at this point that we have to be sensitive to the different sense that the word hate is being used.It seems impossible that what God desires for us is that we we hate - ie will evil upon - our families. He is merely stating that if we ever come upon a choice between our families or God, we are bound to choose God.
 
“A text without a context is a pretext” - Ravi Zacharias

God rest his soul
 
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SPBlitz said:
He is merely stating that if we ever come upon a choice between our families or God, we are bound to choose God.
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That i agree with. For example, if your father asks you to rob a bank, then it is better to disobey. But i am concerned about the use of the word hate. Even if your father asks you to rob a bank, you still should love your father and attempt to help him see that it is not the right thing to do. i think it is wrong to hate your father, even if he asked you to rob a bank. After all, the commandment says to honor thy Father and thy Mother?
 
To a Muslim the idea of loving your enemy sounds like lunacy. They are tribal people. They always support the family and the tribe first, right or wrong. “The enemy of my brother is my enemy” is what they practice. So when a Muslim sees a statement like that from Luke, he is puzzled.
 
MoonlitYT said:
A muslim sent me this image, and i was intrigued. I wanted to know what you, my brothers and sisters think of this image and how to refute it and for me to truly understand the faith. Since they accuse the bible as contradicting Because we have to love thy enemies but hate thy family.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
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Jesus uses hyperbole to show that we should prioritize God before everything else.

Peace.
 
Adamek said:
To a Muslim the idea of loving your enemy sounds like lunacy. They are tribal people.
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Muslims are not a tribal people. The vast majority of Muslims are not members of tribes. Islam puts itself ahead of all such human groupings. Have you any evidence for what you say about how this injunction of Jesus sounds to Muslims? They do, after all, consider him to be a prophet, and the Messiah, born of the Virgin Mary and that he will come again to judge humanity. Unlikely I would have thought that his words would be considered ‘lunacy’.
 
The Bible is full of paradoxes. And that’s okay.

The two verses are counter-intuitive. We naturally bond to our family and try to gain the advantage over our enemies, but Jesus calls us to rise above the “natural man.

We are to place God above the demands of family and to will the good (forgive) the people who hurt us.
 
FiveLinden said:
They do, after all, consider him to be a prophet, and the Messiah, born of the Virgin Mary and that he will come again to judge humanity. Unlikely I would have thought that his words would be considered ‘lunacy’.
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They also claim that the Virgin Mary is the third person of the Trinity and that Jesus stood off to the side laughing while someone else was crucified, which has its roots in a Gnostic heresy.
 
‘All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab; also a white person has no superiority over black, nor a black person over a white, except by piety and good action.’ (Final sermon of the Prophet - Peace and Blessings be upon him).
 
StudentMI said:
They also claim that the Virgin Mary is the third person of the Trinity and that Jesus stood off to the side laughing while someone else was crucified, which has its roots in a Gnostic heresy.
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Really? Where exactly?? Chapter and verse would be good.
 
Sources for my claim.

The Crucifix on Mecca’s Front Porch by David Pinault
111 Questions on Islam by Samir Khalil Samir

Both of whom speak Arabic and are far more learned than I am on the sources. Are you saying Islam doesn’t teach that Jesus wasn’t crucified?
 
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