Quote Originally Posted by afghooey
Does that sound like an order from Jesus to go hating everyone? To me it sounds like a statement that in order to become a deciple, you must already be in the state of mind of hating your life and that of those around you. Maybe the word 'hate' here isn't even being used in the same context as we might assume. Maybe it's not meant to be taken so literally. I'm not going to presume to know exactly what the J-man was talking about, but I somehow think there was probably more to what he was saying than, "Hate everyone or you can't become Christian."
I've actually looked into this interesting verse before. It seems that "hate" is a pretty good translation for what the original Greek word meant. The meaning of the verse, it seems, is that the disciples must leave behind the love of their families to fully embrace their love of Jesus Christ. Much like modern cults, which urge members to leave their families who might try to persuade them into believing something else, Jesus did not want to compete with his disciples' families for their devotion and loyalty. This is also why Jesus urges his disciples not to marry or have children. He isn't literally urging people to feel hatred for their families, but rather to disregard their love for their families so they can put all their love into Jesus.
Yeah, there is a lot of bullshit in the bible, especially in the old testament, that I'm not even going to try to justify as a good source of spiritual guidance. But would you burn down an entire library just because most of the books there are crap? There's good stuff, too. You just have to search for it.
I'm not saying we should burn every Old Testament everywhere. It's an interesting document that provides a lot of insight into ancient Jewish mythology. I'm just saying that most of it is barbaric immoral bullcrap, and a responsible Christian would edit that shit out before giving it to their children. Believe me, I've sat down and forced myself to trudge through it. There are some good bits, sure, but there is so much crap that it's like trying to eat a sundae made out of dog shit with a cherry on top. I'm sure there are some good quotes in Hitler's Mein Kampf too.

The Old Testament God promotes homophobia, sexism, slavery, absolute monarchy, animal sacrifice, human sacrifice (yeah seriously, human fuckin' sacrifice), infanticide, killing adulterers, killing Sabbath-workers, killing rape victims who don't scream loud enough, killing women who aren't virgins on their wedding night, killing disobedient children, punishing people for the wrongdoings of their parents and ancestors, and lots of other crap that just has no place in modern society. If we're going to search ancient texts for moral inspiration, fuck the Old Testament. Let's use Socrates and Buddha and Lao Tzu; their ideas are much more sensible overall.