Jesus’s Teaching on Family vs. Christian Teaching on Family – Polar Opposites
The teachings of Jesus about our biological family members are the complete opposite of what most Christian churches teach today in America, where the false teachings are basically a version of the "prosperity Gospel" that tells people they can become rich as Christians without sacrificing anything, and without persecutions and suffering. If you are an "upstanding" and model Christian in these churches, you most certainly would never leave your family or job, as that would be seen as irresponsible and not "Christian." And yet, if you read the biblical texts yourself, you will clearly see that leaving our families is exactly what Jesus taught his disciples to do. There are exceptions, of course, in American Christianity. If you're a member of the armed forces and your government deploys you to some battlefield to kill people from other countries and other religions who are declared a "threat" to Christian America's "national security," for example, then that's OK. You can leave your family for a year or more on deployment to go kill some "bad guys" in another country, and no one will blame you for leaving your family behind in those situations, because it is the "Christian" thing to do. When we read the accounts of the life of Jesus in the New Testament, we see that Jesus had become so popular from his miracles of healing, raising the dead, and casting out of demonic spirits, that people from all over Israel, and beyond, traveled to see Jesus. But one place where Jesus was NOT popular, was in his own hometown of Nazareth, among his own family and relatives. While the whole nation of Israel was talking about Jesus and debating who he was and if he was, indeed, the promised Messiah, his own family thought he was insane, and literally tried to stop him by taking custody of him. Jesus made it very clear, publicly, that his new family were those who "did the will of God" and followed his teaching, and that his biological family who opposed him, had no authority over him.