In this mercifully short(er) chapter, Dean speaks of
God as priority over family. There are few surprises here; he as usual mixes
good points with poor exegesis, such as the usual misread of Luke 14:26 (he is
aware of the “love less”
understanding but says this is not so anywhere else is the NT, where it would “look RIDICULOUS” —apparently he is
unaware that the Matthean parallel indicates a “love less” meaning (as well as of Semitic and secular parallels),
so apparently RIDICULOUS in capital letters will be the extent of Dean's
scholarship on the matter.
There is also the expected abuse of Luke 2:41-52 and John
2:4 (they DO mean distance from
family by the Lord Jesus, but not for the reasons Dean thinks!), and to add to
his own misery he speculates that all the kids must have accused the young
Jesus of being a “know it all” and
that he must have been hated as an adult for being right all the time and
insisting on it. (You don't suppose Dean is setting up a paradigm for reactions
to himself, do you...? Nah.) Actually, given the nature of the world Jesus
lived in, such “insults” may have been common, and He would respond in kind in
the manner of riposte-challenge, as he did against his various opponents. But
it runs down to that as usual Dean takes 95% more words than he needs to get
his message across and adds in enough bad exegesis to render his commentary
useless.