A new insight
During my daily devotional yesterday, I came across Luke 14:26: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." At first, this made no sense to me. Doesn't God call us to love one another? Why, then, would Jesus tell us to hate our own families? But after a while I understood. Jesus told us to "love your neighbor as yourself." Paul also wrote that husbands should "love their wives as they love their own flesh." It's perfectly consistent with scripture to hate your wife as long as you hate your own life as well, which is something Jesus commanded us to do. This is revolutionizing my attitude toward marriage. Thus far in my marriage I've been taking an attitude of love toward my wife, when an attitude of hate is required. So when I came home from work today, I barked my order for supper instead of kissing her and telling her I love her as I've been doing for the past five years. She made me my supper and only cried a little bit, so the hate seems to be working.
All of this is, of course, complete nonsense that I wouldn't write on any day of the year except April Fool's Day.
From the Luke 14:26 entry of The Expositor's Bible Commentary:
Hate is not an absolute but a relative term. To neglect social customs pertaining to family loyalties would probably have been interpreted as hate. Jesus is not contravening the commandment to honor one's father and mother. Moreover, he says a disciple should hate even his own life, whereas he speaks elsewhere of loving ourselves (Matt. 22:39; Mark 12:31). It is important to understand the Near Eastern expression without blunting its force.
From the April Fool entry of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:
Called in France un poisson d'Avril, and in Scotland a gowk. In Hindustan similar tricks are played at the Huli Festival, so that it cannot refer to the uncertainty of the weather, nor yet to a mockery of the trial of our Redeemer, the two most popular explanations. A better solution is this: As March 25th used to be New Year's Day, April 1st was its octave, when its festivities culminated and ended.
I've never been very good with April Fool's jokes. One time I went into a cafe and saw a man I didn't know sitting alone at a table, so I sat down across from him and said, "You know, a few of us have been watching you for a while and we're a little concerned. We've been talking about it, and we think you're beginning to exhibit the classic signs of paranoia."
I didn't really do that either, of course. It makes sort of a funny story, though.
