You Asked For It: Hate Your Family?

June 22, 2025

Pastor Patrick presented today's message, "You Asked For It: Hate Your Family?." A video of today's message is here on YouTube. This series started with folks being asked to submit scriptures that they would like explained/explored. So, it's quite literally: "You asked for it!"

Today's scripture is Luke 14, especially verse 26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters - yes, even their own life - such a person cannot be my disciple."

So, I ask myself the same basic question each week about the message... What does the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy) say about that? Is there a similar concept in the Torah? And I will extend that to look throughout the Old Testament if that seems relevant or helpful.

In today's case, the question becomes, "Does the Torah make it clear that God wants your all? Is God first in your life, above all else? Does God seem focused on true followers as opposed to crowds whose genuine commitment may be tenuous? Does the God of the Torah warn people to consider the ramifications of following Him?"

Here goes...

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This is the first part of the Shema which I talk about in depth here: Bonus: The Shema (Sh'ma). Jesus actually referenced the Shema when asked "What is the greatest commandment?" (Mark 12:29-31)

"You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3). This is from the Ten Commandments, of course. It's relevance to this conversation becomes clear when you fully understand the meaning of "no other gods." We have all kinds of "other gods" or "false gods." Anything we hold as more important than God and His will is a false god: career, reputation, wealth, family, fame, blood/nationality, nature, art, etc. Think of false gods as something that always tempts us to focus on it/them to the exclusion of everything else, including God.

"For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God (Deuteronomy 4:24). That's a little scary. A fire that eats all. I think that qualifies as a warning that following God may be hard, and risky.

Ridding yourself of distractions (false gods) in order to make God #1 takes time. Consider Jacob's name change to Israel. The name change is predicted in Genesis 32:28, "Then the man said, 'Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel..." But God did not actually change Jacob's name until Genesis 35:10. So what happened in between? Jacob took the time to rid himself of all his idols. Sometimes waiting periods are to get rid of one's false gods.

It's interesting to note that "false" mathematically equals zero. Worthless.

"How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him" (1 Kings 18:21b). If you're really following someone or something else, God may not be much interested in you.

Psalm 86:11, "Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart [You're #1], that I may fear your name."

By now you've probably read from me that "heart" has a different connotation today than it did in the Ancient Near East (ANE). "Heart" then meant more like what we think of as your brain/mind today. "Kidney" was the inward part of us, what we might call "heart/mind" or "inner being" today. God wants that, too. "I the Lord search the heart and test the mind [kidneys], to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds" (Jeremiah 17:10).

What God wants of us is put another way in Deuteronomy 10:12-13, "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?"

Bonus

Christmas Hump Day (June 25)

June 25, 2025, is this week. It's a Wednesday so it's Hump Day for the week. But more importantly, it's Christmas Hump Day! On June 25 we'll be exactly halfway to Christmas 2025 from Christmas 2024. That means my Christmas movie watching for 2025 is about half over. That's right, I watch Christmas movies all year long! I thought I'd mention a few I've found uniquely interesting lately...

Picture a Perfect Christmas. One of the messages is not to let a career become the third wheel in a relationship. The Bible would say it like this, "don't let a career become a false god." When the career is forced aside by circumstance, things can happen, and do. Additionally, the characters are truly lovable. And voila, a new family is formed.

My Christmas Family Tree. Speaking of forming new families, this movie takes a unique spin on that theme. And I think our big family (with bios, adoptees, guardians, and fosters) made this one even more interesting to me. Here's the setup... a 30-year-old woman does the DNA test thing with a girlfriend and discovers a paternal match (her single-parent mother died when she was quite young). She contacts the matching father-figure, they agree to meet, and she soon discovers he has a wonderful family with a wife and three kids in his household. The characters are quite convincing, i.e. real, and there's not a lot of normal Hallmark Christmas scenes (ice skating, gingerbread house construction, etc.). And as you might imagine, especially in a Hallmark Christmas movie, she gets along famously with the family, and vice versa. And, there's a family friend, male, about her age. Oh my! But then a piece of information comes to light. No spoilers here, just watch the movie.

A Reason for the Season. Although not overtly, one of the big lessons of this movie is gratitude. The overall plot, however, has to do with getting to know people and their genuine needs and wishes. In a nutshell, a 35-year-old trust-fund baby is sent by her very wise mother to a certain small town to get to know a special handful of people well enough to discern a true and meaningful life wish of each. And to grant that Christmas Wish. You'll learn very early on why Brookswood is the town chosen...

Christmas Bells Are Ringing. Pretty cute, feel-good movie. I always like stories about photographers. There's a fun side-story about a snowman that moves around town like the Elf-on-a-Shelf moves around the house. The movie has nothing to do with bells until, at the very end, there are a few bars of handbell choir music!

Wondering what the flag has to do with this? It's the George Rogers Clark Flag, a Revolutionary War era flag related to the Battle of Sackville (1779). There's no direct connection to Christmas, other than the wildly obvious colors! Two passions of mine tangentially connect: Christmas and U.S. Flags.

Have you heard of Leon Day? Leon spelled backwards is Noel. It's another name for June 25 as it occurs when the Earth is on the "opposite side of the year/sun" from where it is at Christmas.


Merry Christmas Hump Day to All!

Bonus2

Kings Kaleidoscope - "Modern Psalms"

The back of a t-shirt caught my eye at church this past Sunday morning. It read, "MODERN PSALMS." Interesting. So, I did the unimaginable (for an introvert) - I asked him about it. Turns out it's the name of an album containing, guess what, modern psalms (lyrics/poems often intended to be sung), by Kings Kaleidoscope (Wikipedia entry), a Christiam rock band out of Seattle, Washington. Here's their own website: kingskaleidoscope.com. A download of the album is available ($10).

Jonny Harmon photographed one of their MODERN PSALMS concerts and posted a few images and video clips from the show: Kings Kaleidoscope MODERN PSALMS - live concert. "I had the honor to shoot and edit this 68-minute live concert by my all-time favorite band Kings Kaleidoscope. MODERN PSALMS is a beautiful reimagining of some of my favorite songs that convey the complex intimate moments of walking through life in faith." The lyrics are available on Genius.com.

Pictured above at right is the album cover's artwork.

Kings Kaleidoscope will be doing a MODERN PSALMS concert in Denver at the Bluebird Theater on November 4, 2025.


The image above is on the group's home page (the day I visited, at least). You can imagine why/how it caught my eye. The Hebrew in the center of the seat says "Torah" (תּוֹרָה) in the midst of what seems to me a very Protestant church layout. Of course, that's entirely appropriate; just not often seen.

Bonus3

Do Not Misuse God's Name

Given the news this past weekend regarding the Middle East and lots of questions from the kids, we made this the topic of our Family Dinner on Sunday. We started by brainstorming what all the "613 laws" of the Old Testament are. I said we'd stop when we hit the one I was waiting for, which happened about 13 into the list. I was looking for the 4th of the Ten Commandments, "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name" (Exodus 20:7, NIV).

"Misuse the name" is often translated as "take the name in vain." Neither of those translations gets to the root of the Hebrew which says more like "carry the name." Bottomline, this commandment says to not do something bad/evil claiming/implying that God wants it done. A great example is blowing up a bus full of people while yelling "God is the greatest!" It doesn't help God's reputation, at all. Religious people calling "Death to Anything" based on religious beliefs doesn't help either.

The second part of this commandment is unique. It makes clear that such acts will not be forgiven, i.e. "not held guiltless."

Couple all that with the notion that "all evil needs to win is for enough good men to do nothing" (paraphrased, probably a quote essentially from John Stuart Mill) and you can understand some of what's happening lately.

For a little more about U.S./Israel relations, see PragerU's video: Is Israel a Liability?