In my opinion this passage shows the extreme ego of Jesus, in that He cares more about peoples love of His self than He does about family unity.
What do you think about this passage?
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The problem with some contemporary Christianity is the way in which it deifies the family and then treats it as an exclusive unit at the expense of the other social bonds.
One of the strongest strands that I get from Jesus's ethical teachings is that blood ties are not as important as the family you create."
(
Baggini, Julian. The Godless Gospel (pp. 108-109))
"
You are all brothers. Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven"
(Matthew 23:8-9)
It is understandable why someone would construe the above passage in the fashion that you have Daniel, at least on a surface reading.
But I think one must balance this, with the recognition that Jesus did not see himself as a recipient of fealty or servitude but rather as the self-denying
servant of other people: "
For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45) and put this into practise by bowing down to wash his disciples dirty feet: "
After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him" (John 13:5).
There's no denying, the wording itself makes it one of the "
hard" sayings attributed to Jesus in the synoptic tradition, which you need to take a close and penetrating second look at. It's intended for its shock value, as a kind of clarion call for followers of Christ to question their sense of priority and what they value the most in life.
However, it does not evidence a pathological egoism in the person of Jesus to me, like you would find in a sociopathic cult-leader seeking others' unique devotion and adoration for the purposes of emotional abuse and personal self-gratification (i.e. making a person see their family and loved ones as "bad" so as to remove those pillars of social support and thus make them wholly dependant upon oneself, or rather
gaslighting).
And these are some of the reasons why.
Firstly, the ancient 'model' of family was no cuddly, modern American TV 'mom and dad'. As the historian Professor Larry Siedentop explained in his 2014 book entitled
Inventing the Individual:
The [Roman] paterfamilias (father) was originally both the family’s magistrate and high priest, with his wife, daughters and younger sons having a radically inferior status.
Inequality remained the hallmark of the ancient patriarchal family. “Society” was understood as an association of families rather than of individuals.
The
paterfamilias exercised authority of life and death over the members of his household. The
Twelve Tables, the constitution of Rome for example, included a law that said disabled or deformed children should be put to death by their own fathers, usually by
stoning: "
A father shall immediately put to death a son recently born, who is a monster [or 'seriously deformed'], or has a form different from that of members of the human race." (Law III).
Ancient fathers “
represented patriarchy, the old society in which the man alone ruled and decided. In the new family of Jesus into which the disciples are to grow there can no longer be anyone who dominates others.” (
Gerhard Lohfink 2014). In their analysis of
Mark 10:29–30, Osiek and Balch conclude, “
The old family included a patriarchal father; the new one does not, since God is the only Father.”
What Jesus is actually doing here is asking people to
abandon 'domineering', closed and inegalitarian family structures to radically 'extend' and subvert this traditional definition, so as to see God as one's Father and every human being who strives to do his will (i.e. live in a life in accordance with the values of the Sermon on the Mount) as one's equal 'brother/sister'.
Its radically 'inclusive', not cultish
exclusive - as evidenced by the sayings recorded earlier to:
"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (
Matthew 5:44-45).
He expressed this bluntly: "
For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother" (
Mark 3:35).
If you are a tribalistic person who loves only 'your own', then you are going to have an exceedingly hard time adjusting to the radically pro-social ethics of Jesus, which are premised on non-differentiating and non-exclusive 'love' for every human. It is about enlarging the circle of our kinship bonds beyond mere 'blood ties' and having the ability, like the Good Samaritan in the parable who refused to pass by a wounded man left for dead but bandaged and cared for his wounds, to have a sense of filial obligation of care to everyone you can muster it for.
To develop such a mindset in his followers, Jesus had to be 'bold' about breaking down some received wisdoms that were deeply ingrained in a patriarchal society where one's blood family under the life-and-death sovereignty of a
paterfamilias (the 'Daddy', like in the Godfather) was the fundamental cell of society.
The focus on himself as the divinely appointed agent of this social revolution, the Son of Man (literally in Greek '
the human one', the person who represents what it means to live a most fully human life), is comprehensible once you realize that Jesus called himself the 'Son of Man' not to receive glory in his own person, but because he saw himself as
standing for and
representing every oppressed, needy person.
In the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, he said:
"I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?’
“Most certainly I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’" (Matthew 25:31-64).
At first, he talks in the first person, seemingly referring to himself - "I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, I was naked" - and his disciples initially understand that literally and are flummoxed, "when where you hungry, thirsty, a migrant, or naked and we showed you compassion?" And the answer Jesus gives is that they did this to
him, whenever they tended to the needs of the most vulnerable persons in society - the poor, the infirm, the imprisoned - whom Jesus saw himself as the representative of.
He is the Son of Man and thus the self-declared spokesperson for suffering humanity (that's how he conceives of himself). This perception of his role in life was preserved by the church in an extra-canonical saying found in a third-century code of ecclesiastical law:
The Epistula Apostolorum: Epistle of the Apostles
And Jesus said unto us: Verily I say unto you, that I have obtained the whole power of my Father, that I may bring back into light them that dwell in darkness...and that I may loose them that are in fetters.
I am the hope for them that are in despair, the helper of them that are helpless, the treasure of the poor, the doctor of the sick, and the resurrection of the dead.
Is this self-confident? Absolutely, but no one ever got an essential message conveyed to others by being a bashful wallflower, in my opinion.
