Making the World Less Hostile || Sins of the World #6

No Need for Hostility

Welcome back to “Sins of the World.” I’m taking a deeper dive in the words of Galatians 5:19-21 to talk about what we need to avoid and how they can lead us to the Fruits of the Spirit. In Part 5, we talked about sorcery. Sorcery, in the biblical context, is the practice of manipulating life or circumstances through potions, drugs, or magical arts from the living God. It doesn’t concern legitimate medicine, but it condemns the use of potions and hallucinogens. Revelation 18:23 showed us the influential status of the merchants of that time, who often sold the potions and magical substances that we talked about earlier. Sorcery are practices that deceive and lead people away from God. It brought up conversations surrounding horoscopes, crystal healing, and generative AI. We talked about how horoscopes and crystal healing are harmless entertainment, and how harmful generative AI is to both our environment and humanity.

In Part 6, we are looking at hostility. The anger that tends to fuel the majority of our arguments today. Hostility, in my opinion, leads to the lack of patience that we need to interact with each other. Let’s look at how Paul described hostility.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: How do you see hostility in your life? How does hostility affect you?

Living in a Hostile World

The Greek word that Paul uses for hostility is echthra (ekh’-thrah). It describes a personal hostility or deep-seated opposition between humans or God. It occurs 5 times in the New Testament, where Paul uses it here to show that persistent conflicts between people is an external symptom of our sinful nature. Christians are called to stay united in the mission that Jesus set before us, for hostility is incompatible with a life led by the Holy Spirit. The church needs to embody the peace found through Jesus. In the Greco-Roman society, political “friendship” was often masked practical rivalries. Paul’s addressing a centuries-long divide that existed through dietary, ceremonial, and social markers.

Christians need to focus on the goal of reconciliation. We, as the hands and feet of Christ, are called to dismantle the ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic hostilities that exist in our world to day. We need to look at the issues that cause our hostilities. Our unbelief involves active hostility toward God. We see so much hostility in this world. People are hostile towards others that don’t fit into the social norms of gender identities and sexual orientation (people that exist outside of the gender binary and outside of heterosexuality). People are hostile towards others based on the wealth disbursement in the world. There’s racial hostilities that still exist. There’s hostilities towards how we care for our environment (see all the arguments about global warming.) So, how do we handle these hostilities? Let’s look at Paul’s words in Romans 8:7 to find out.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: When you think about the hostilities that exist on a bigger worldly perspective, how do you handle those hostilities? How do you respond to them?

Thinking of Our Hostilities

AMP – the mind of the flesh [with its sinful pursuits] is actively hostile to God. It does not submit itself to God’s law, since it cannot,

NRSVUE – For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law – indeed, it cannot,

VOICE – You see, a mind focused on the flesh is declaring war against God; it defies the authority of God’s law and is incapable of following this path.

This hostility is an active rebellion against His authority, seen in corruption that existed since Genesis 3. God gave his law through Moses to show us what it meant to live a godly life and to expose the sinful desires and temptations. The ancient Jewish peoples struggled with disobedience and idolatry. It showed that fallen people resisted God’s commands through both internal and external behaviors and mindsets. Outside of God’s grace, we are stuck in our sinful mindsets and will struggle to obey the commands of God. When we seek a relationship with Christ, and begin our transformational process through our new identity as a child of God, is when we start to receive the strength to follow God’s command.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: So the hostility that we see in our world today can be an active rebellion against His authority. What does that mean when you think of the hostilities of this world?

Loving Our Neighbor

The hostilities that we see is a resistance against God’s commands. We start to set aside our hostilities when we start to find our transformation in our relationship with Christ. Let’s look at the verses that describe our hostilities between humanity, wealth, and environments.

Three verses came to mind when I think about our hostilities between each other, and at least help us look at how we can overcome our hostilities.

Matthew 5:44 “But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”

Luke 10:27 …”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.”

Galatians 3:28 There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

The golden rule shows us that we must love our neighbors as we would want to be loved ourselves. That love is a reflection of how Christ loves us. It’s a selfless, sacrificial love that ensures the best for us. It leads us towards a path of reconciliation, justice, and peace. We’re even called to love those that we call enemies. Not everyone that we cross paths with will be supportive of what we do. Not everyone will cheer for us as we succeed. No matter who we cross paths with, we must be loving, caring, and respectful of all that we meet.

The biggest thing that we can talk about is Galatians 3:28, recognizing that we are all one in Christ. It does not matter what our gender identity is. It does not matter what our sexual orientation is. What does matter is our heart, and are we leading our lives through love, compassion, and justice. However, we are often willing to create barriers for people that do not fit the identities of falling within the gender binary and heterosexuality. We have learned that these things are on a spectrum, and were created in God’s love and light as well. God is everything between the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. The fact that humanity creates these barriers to allow all people an equal right to life is now how we push towards true equal and reconciliation. We need to help push towards enabling the proper gender-affirming care that works best for each person. We need to help create systems that allow people to receive proper resources so they can live a life that God calls them to live. All people have gifts, skills, and talents that can bring the Kingdom of God down to earth, and we should not prohibit people from using these gifts. We are not here to judge those around us, but are called to love all people.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: How can you help change the world through ensuring that all people have an equal right to life?

Sharing Our Resources

When it comes to wealth and the healthy view of wealth equality, there is one verse that comes to mind that shows the original mindset of how our wealth is supposed to be used:

Acts 4:34-35 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Everyone brought the proceeds of their sold lands so that others in need can help survive. Note that it wasn’t brought everything that received to give away, but it was their proceeds. They kept what they needed so that could survive, but they gave away everything above and beyond that. They weren’t asking for them to support those that were impoverished, but to care for those in need through their surplus. Everyone needs to provide their fair share into systems that can go and support each others, things like Social Security, Medicare, healthcare industries, and more. The idea that if you make too much, and therefore, don’t have to provide makes no sense. If anything people to make higher amounts should be required to provide into these funds because their provisions can help support those who are struggling to survive. The same can be said about certain corporations that manage our food, water, electricity, housing, clothes, and more. I understand that business need to make money in order to survive – don’t get me wrong about that. However, these businesses should not be extorting the general population in order to do so. That goes for governmental legislation that create the tariffs, the IRS with the Internal Revenue Code, the tax breaks and loopholes that businesses find to save a buck here and there, and the list goes on. For far too long business and corporations have been able to get away with things that do not benefit their consumers and workers. The governments and our elected officials are not working for us when they are supporting the companies getting away with bypassing rules and regulations. We need this system of checks and balances to be mandated across all grounds so that we can have a quality of life to look forward to for generations to come.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: When it comes to how our world views money and sharing resources, where do you believe we can be better in?

Caring for the Environment

When it comes to caring about our environment, there’s one key verse that comes to mind:

Genesis 2:15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to till it and keep it.

One of human’s first responsibilities for the world is to care for the environment. Now, we’re watching the environments that we grew up with fall apart. From watching an increased amount of wildfires and severe weather take over our countries, creating much damage and casualties. We’ve also been experienced an increased amount of heat domes that created intense temperatures across the globe too. As the planet has gradually warmed up, we have seen hotter weather, snow melting earlier, warmer temperature at night, and less rainfall in the summer – all of these things have been linked to more wildfires, which is emitting record high amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

We must go out and support laws that cut down on carbon emissions and protect clean water, hence why you saw my arguments against generative AI in part 5. We are called to go into low-income areas that suffer most from pollution and climate harm. I witnessed this first hand during the Flint Water Crisis. This was an incident close to my hometown that an entire city’s water supply was tainted with lead and iron. This happened in 2008 and just recently (like 2024-2024) got resolved. I witnessed communities, locally and nationally, come together to help out and provide clean water for all of the residents of the town. We can also look at things like adding solar energy to homes and getting LED lights. We can look at serving more local, plant-based, and organic food at home or at different events. We can move away from using single-use plastics and create and utilize recycling programs to help out. These are just a small amount of ways that we can help care for the world that God has gifted us.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: What is one way we can make our world less hostile, and more hospitable?