Did Jesus teach his followers to dishonour or hate their families?

Jesus upheld the commandment to honour parents. He accused the Pharisees of “making the word of God of none effect” when their tradition let a man withhold from his parents the help he owed them (Mark 7:9–13), he named “Honour thy father and thy mother” among the commandments to keep (Matthew 19:19), and from the cross he gave his mother into John’s care (John 19:26–27). What he taught is that God comes first, and each saying read in its setting shows this.

When told that his family was waiting, Jesus pointed to his disciples and said that whoever does his Father’s will “is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:50). He was not disowning his family; he was saying that the bond of faith is as close as the bond of blood. “Call no man your father upon the earth” stands among sayings about religious titles, Rabbi and Master (Matthew 23:8–10): no teacher is to take God’s place as the source of their faith. As Barnes says, it does not forbid calling one’s own father ‘father’.

The man who asked first to bury his father (Luke 9:59–60) was told that preaching the kingdom could not wait; “Let the dead bury their dead” means, let those who are spiritually dead see to such things. The saying about hating father and mother (Luke 14:26) uses a Hebrew way of speaking in which ‘hate’ beside ‘love’ means ‘love less’, as when Jacob loved Rachel “more than Leah” and Leah is then called hated (Genesis 29:30–31). Matthew gives the plain sense: “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). So there is no conflict with 1 John 4:20–21: Jesus does not ask for ill will towards anyone, only that love for him should come first.

A father not yet dead

Some suggest that the man in Luke 9:59 was not asking to attend a funeral that day but to stay at home until his father died, which might be years away. The text does not say, and on either reading Jesus’ point is the same: the call of the kingdom comes first.