Conversion or Devotion?

Can you imagine Jesus telling his disciples to get a divorce or abandon their children so they can can follow him?  Can you imagine your pastor preaching a sermon like that in an attempt to convince lukewarm Christians to surrender their lives to Jesus?  Of course not; that would immediately qualify Christianity as a cult wouldn’t it?  Every Christian understands that Jesus would never affirm that Christian conversion or discipleship implies abandoning your spouse and children, destroying your family, to follow him.  Why, then, do we Christians sometimes expect non-Christians to risk destroying their family to convert to Christianity or serve Christ faithfully? 

Usually, we quote this scripture from Matthew 10: ³⁴ “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law —³⁶ a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’^{[c] 37} Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. ³⁸ Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹ Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

We Christians never use this scripture among ourselves to justify divorce or abandoning one’s children in order to follow Christ but we often do apply it to non-Christians who want to follow Jesus openly as His disciple but whose family life and responsibilities make that a very difficult thing to do.  Why do Christians do this?  We do it because we sub consciously believe that a non-Christian family is not as sacred to God as a Christian family. 

Is a young couple whose marriage is arranged by their parents and who are married in a non-Christian ceremony “less married” than a Christian couple who meet at a college, date for a year and then get married inside a church?  Is an extended family where grandparents, uncles and aunts are a real part of a persons life somehow less pleasing to God than a western nuclear family where only parents have any responsibility?  The extended family structures that predominate many non-Christian cultures are often much closer to the families that are portrayed in the Bible than the nuclear families of the “Christian” west, but western Christians are sometimes very quick to tell a young Hindu woman, for example, that she must put her possible conversion to Christianity ahead of her extended family relationships and commitments.  Christians almost never interpret and apply these scriptures to non-Christians in a malicious way; we are simply blind to our assumptions, so we stumble into bad interpretation and application.  What is Jesus saying in these powerful scriptures?  He is calling us to whole hearted devotion that is so supreme and predominant in our lives, that it may actually cause people in our family to break relationship with us. This level of devotion may cause people whom I love to leave me, but it should never cause me to leave them. 

In this scripture, Jesus is calling us to himself in a devotion of heart and life that is total and complete.  Hindus refer to this devotion as Bhakti, devotion to God that is from the heart and which commands my entire being.  That level of supreme devotion makes any other relationship in my life seem like nothing, less than nothing, in comparison to my devotion to Jesus.  Western Christians often see this depth of devotion commanding an either-or choice for non-Christians.  You either love Jesus more than your family which implies a willingness to break relationship with your family to follow Christ, or you love your family more than Jesus, which implies that your family has become an idol, making it impossible for you to follow Jesus.  This scripture does not require an either-or conversion interpretation.  It simply teaches us what to expect within our network of family relationships if Jesus is the object of our supreme devotion. 

My devotion to Jesus may bring my family into conflict with me. My closest relatives may rise up against me, scornfully even violently opposing my devotion to Jesus.  Some may want to drive me away, even threatening to throw me out of my own family.  I do everything in my power to remain devoted to them and to Jesus.  I strive for compromise and seek to understand, serving and listening and waiting and praying.  I have learned about this noble faithful love from my practice of supreme devotion to Jesus.  He commands me in the Bible to love my wife, nurture and discipline my children, honor and care for my parents and help to provide for my uncles and aunts and cousins and siblings. The family should accept me as I love them in this way because of my supreme devotion to Jesus, but they may not accept me and command me to go.  My supreme devotion to Jesus teaches me to honor their wishes and I leave the family, clinging strongly to Jesus along with his other disciples and praying for the day when my family welcomes me back.  This scripture does not teach us to break relationship with our family to convert to Christianity, but it clearly does teach us that answering the call of supreme devotion will be difficult and may be very costly.