gospel of Thomas 55

Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become a disciple to me. And whoever does not hate his brothers and sisters and take up his cross in my way will not be worthy of me."

Here is a strong teaching from Jesus. Down the ages, Christianity has put a huge focus on family values, on the traditional family unit as the basis of society. And yet here is Jesus saying, unless you hate your father and mother, you cannot become a disciple. Wow. What is Jesus trying to say here? What's behind this?

When a human being is born, he or she pops out into the world in a pure state, in a natural state, in the state of buddhahood – enlightenment. There is nothing wrong. Not a single atom of the being is out of place. And yet, somewhere along the way, it all seems to go horribly wrong. And the difficulties start in early childhood, as we become conditioned, as other people's beliefs and rules of behaviour are imprinted upon us. And this conditioning, although it comes from the whole of society, is particularly strong from the parents, in the early years of a child's development.

And it doesn't matter how much love and goodwill the parents have towards the child. The parents also have been caught in the same trap. They are passing on the conditioning that was handed down to them. And this conditioning is enough for us to lose touch with who we really are. We become fake. We copy the behaviour and the rules of others. We no longer behave from an authentic space. We have lost the feeling of being at ease in the world. We are no longer natural.

And how to break this vicious cycle – which continues from generation to generation – how are we going to change that? Of course, the way is to decondition ourselves from everything that has been forced into us, against our will; from everything that is unnatural to our being.

And apart from the conditionings from the wider society, we have to decondition ourselves from everything that the parents forced into us, when we were tiny and dependent upon them. Nowadays, we can use primal therapy, and other group activities, to address some of this conditioning. But when Jesus was teaching, such options probably did not exist. And it was much more of an effort on the individual's part, to break free from all that conditioning. And the starting point, the starting point for that bid for freedom, was to hate one's father and mother.

It's strong, isn't it? The language that Jesus uses here, whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become a disciple. One can't even begin this work unless one hates one's parents. This hatred – it's not really a personal thing in the end. The hatred is for having been subjected to conditioning. And it doesn't really matter much exactly what that conditioning involved.

In different cultures, the details will differ. But the mere fact that as a baby, as a small child, one's parents' beliefs were forced into one, is enough to have led to all the trouble in the world. So here Jesus is saying, if you hate your parents, yes, you can become a disciple, you can start on the path to freedom. That is the first step. And without that hatred towards the parents – without a total commitment to turn one's back on one's parents – then one cannot go far. One will live always under the shadow of their beliefs.

So this is the starting point, according to Jesus – a hatred towards the parents. Or a positive way of putting it is a deep desire to break free from parental conditioning and parental control; to stand alone in one's own authenticity, and become natural again in the world.

Jesus does not stop with hatred of the parents. He continues, whoever does not hate his brothers and sisters…will not be worthy of me. And here I feel Jesus is touching on another point. The brothers and sisters do not play as strong a role in our conditioning. But rather, the members of our family tend to form a closer bond with us than others. There is attachment within us, towards our brothers and sisters – or perhaps the opposite: a rivalry, leading to a hatred. But in any case, whilst we are treating our brothers and sisters differently to the way we treat other human beings, then we have set them apart, put them in a special category. And until we treat the whole of humanity equally, we will not be at ease in the world. We will be creating divisions, boundaries, favouring some above others.

All of this requires a great tension in our being to sustain. It takes enormous energy to maintain boundaries of any sort, including the boundary around a nuclear family. So to be at ease, we have to go beyond this small, family mentality. When the whole of life is our family, then of course, we can relax. Then we will not be feeling anyone, or any being, as an enemy. There will be nothing to defend, and no one to defend against.

But the first step in this direction is to hate one's brothers and sisters, according to Jesus. That is, to turn one's back on the family, to break free of that. And in the end, of course, it is not the mother, father, brother, sister, who is the problem. It is our attitude towards them, our attachment, our dependency – whatever peculiar feelings we have for those individuals. Once we are relating to them as we relate to other people, then the attachment has gone. And we are in a space where we can, indeed, be worthy of Jesus; where we can be a disciple, open to the new; and not living, a secondhand life that has been passed down to us by others.