In the Gospel of Luke, Christ utters some of the most shocking words in the New Testament: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (14:26). A similar injunction is recorded in John’s Gospel: “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (12:22).
It seems, on the face of it, that Jesus is teaching us to actively despise our own life and the people in it. But other passages clearly contradict such a reading. Scripture commands us to love father and mother (Exod. 20:12), wife and children (Eph. 5:25, Mark 10:14), and brothers and sisters (John 13:34-35). Godliness, St. Paul tells Timothy, holds promise not only for the life to come, but also for “the present life” (1 Tim. 4:8). And in one of the most famous verses ever recorded, we hear, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).
So what did Jesus mean by “hating” this life? Biblical scholars have pointed out that this was an exaggeration common to the language and culture of the time. (And it wouldn’t be the only time Jesus exaggerated to make a point: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off”—Matt. 18:8.) In his Brazos commentary on Luke, David Lyle Jeffrey writes, “The extreme language here is an example of Jewish hyperbole; Jesus is making a rhetorical, not a literal, point designed to show that following him is a radical choice, requiring a clear priority in allegiance.”
In short, “hate” (miseo in Greek) in this context means “love less than God.” This reading is borne out by the parallel passage in Matthew: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. . . . Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:37, 39). As St. Cyril of Alexandria succinctly put it, “he permits us to love, but not more than we love him.”
So although we can (and must) actively hate “the world” in the sense of the world’s sin (see 1 John 2:15), we cannot (and must not) actively hate “the world” in the sense of the world’s being. The Christian refuses to put this life or anyone in it above God—ultimately, there can be only one first place of our hearts, and again, we will “hate” the runner-up (Luke 16:13)—but he also refuses to despise God’s good creation.
To love this life more than life eternal, or to put our own family or friends above God and his commands, is to fall into an “earthward” trap: we lose sight of heaven’s primacy. But to actively despise life and the people in it is to fall into a “heavenward” trap: we lose sight of earth’s goodness. In his incarnation, his teachings, and his paschal mystery, Jesus underscored both—the absolute primacy of God on the one hand, and the irrevocable value of human life on the other—while refusing the pitfalls on either side.
Even if this interpretation finds broad acceptance, Christians have struggled to strike a balance in practice. How do we think and talk about the world and all that’s in it? Is our default posture toward life below one of antagonism or one of friendship? Or can it somehow be both, simultaneously?
To be sure, in the writings of many modern Christians, who are more prone to this-worldly pragmatism, one often finds a skew toward the love of life. In this case, Christ’s own words begin to sound foreign and disorienting. The things of eternity are so identified with this world—and even ignored altogether—that they feel irrelevant.
But in the writings of many ancient and medieval Christians, more prone to otherworldly ascetism, one often finds the opposite tendency: a skew toward the hatred of life. In this case, the original hyperbole begins to sound merely descriptive. The things of this world elicit so much disdain, disgust, and contempt that the earthly—in a quasi-Gnostic register—feels inherently evil. And just as the modern earthward approach was understandably reacting (but often overreacting) to the excesses of earlier eras, no doubt new heavenward extremes are already percolating in response to the extremes of the present
What might it look like to capture the whole picture of both hating and loving the world laid out in Scripture, while seeing and avoiding the pitfalls of each without the other? We can only continue to aspire toward that fullness. But this much seems certain: although Christ’s exaggeration about “hating” this life should remain impressed on our minds and lips, so should the truth of what he meant to convey—not a denigration of the world, but an elevation of God, such that our earthly loves are always oriented by love of him.
We’re called to love as God loves, and God’s love isn’t stingy. On the contrary, it extends to everybody and everything: “You love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made, for you would not have made anything if you had hated it” (Wis. 11:24).