Once I heard people are confused about Jesus’ words on hate, consider this.

Luke 14:26 “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. (NIV) 

hate?  Jesus?   The Ten Commandments tell us to Honour your Mother and Father, right?

Therefore I can see that religious themed bloggers who are atheists, or from another religion are likely to pull this ‘hate’ word out in a debate.

It seems common bible translations including the King James also state this; compare them here https://biblehub.com/luke/14-26.htm

Why is this?  It seems like this is a bad translation from the Greek to English.  This isn’t a problem with the scholars who re-jigged the scriptures to English.

I learned this from doing a bit of Hebrew whilst in Israel, or French a really long time ago at school.

Some words in certain contexts in certain languages are actually really hard to find the right equivalent word that fits.

Let’s look up the original Greek.   Its this word “μισέω” which is Miseo.

https://biblehub.com/greek/3404.htm 

“to renounce one choice in favour of another” – yes this is a better fit.

Jesus is telling his followers to re-prioritise their choices onto following him then their own family.

I really like the Strong’s concordance.   You can easily look tricky words up in the Hebrew or Greek on the www.biblehub.com or get the actual book.