Do you have to hate your 'father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters' to be a Christian? What the verse means ...

I recently quoted Jesus in the gospel, where he says: '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.' (Luke 14 v 26).

I explained that he did not mean that we should hate our parents and everyone important (after all, the 4th commandment is honour thy father and thy mother), but that what Jesus meant by that was that to follow the Christian way of life is to choose to be moral should the heavens fall, i.e. even if it comes at great cost in this world to the Christian and to all the people they love. It was a difficult verse of the bible I was explaining. I was not meaning people should hate their families, but that Jesus meant that morality should be pursued even at the ultimate cost of one's own life, and of everything that matters in life.