Jesus Taught Detachment

 What most Christians don't realize is that one of the core principles Jesus taught is detachment. That is, a letting go. When you look carefully, it undergirds everything He teaches in the Gospels right there along with loving kindness and compassion.
     Think about the conditions of discipleship laid out expressly in Luke. If you're too attached to your family relationships, you can't be His disciple. If you're too attached to your possessions, you can't be His disciple. If you're too attached to your own soul or self-identity, you can't be His disciple. 
     Jesus taught, "Don't judge and you won't be judged." Judgment is a kind of attachment to beliefs about right and wrong. Jesus taught "forgive and you will be forgiven." The word translated as forgive literally means "to drop from the hand," that is, to let go or to detach. 
     Think about the conditions He laid out for both the twelve and the seventy He sent out to prepare the towns and cities for His visits. Take nothing with you. Or the condition he laid on the "rich young ruler" when asked what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, "go, sell everything you own, give it to the poor, then come and follow Me."
     Being a disciple of Jesus Christ, learning how to live as Jesus taught and walk as He walked, requires that we let go of... "everything" that would keep us from it. Why? Because He did. Jesus had let go of family that would have held Him back. He let go of any possessions or sense of a stable job or income. He let go of everything that did not contribute to His one goal of doing what His Father wanted. His disciples were required to live the same way. Jesus practiced detachment.
      We don't like this word because we associate caring with attachment. We associate love with attachment. How can you love if you have no attachment to a thing? But that's the dysfunctional human brain talking. Attachment is not love. It's not kindness. Attachment is about what someone or something means to you. What they can do for you. Love is about what you can do for the other person. Love and attachment are two very different things. Genuine love lets the other person go for them to be who they were meant to be. It does not cling, and it does not push away. It wants the best for the other person. Genuine love understands that things, people, ideas, and identities change, grow, and move on and it lets them. It is not unseated because someone or something is no longer a part of its life for a time. It does not cling to them.
     The human brain doesn't like this. It clings to things and people it thinks it needs to survive, and it equates "happiness" with survival. It will enslave itself to the service or care of a thing or a person if it means it gets to be happy, if it gets to receive dopamine or serotonin from it. We call this addiction. Jesus required His disciples to break their addictions because they weren't going to be able to live as He taught and walk as He walked if they didn't.