Galatians 5:20 - On flying solo, and the real intolerance...

"...idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, wraths, factions, dissensions, divisions..."

-Next we have people living into a spiritual identity but doing so outside of God’s design, which is intended to be an intimate, open, and forever relationship with Him, the God Who made us (Jeremiah 1.5, 31.3).  He knows us, and He is the God with Whom we have to do.  But the flesh likes to fly solo, constantly coming up with ever-cascading forms of religious devotion which are actually devoid of the one true God.  Put other things in His place: that’s what the flesh - aided and abetted again by the world and the devil - pursues with undying diligence.  On the one hand we have the flesh worshipping false gods (who are no gods at all, but rather manmade statues of metal and stone and wood, not to mention the innumerable other things which the flesh will ‘worship’ and give first place in its heart above and in place of the One Who truly deserves to be there), and on the other we have the flesh actually consorting with fallen angels, attempting to contact and channel other-worldly (demonic) powers thru both religious means as well as thru incantations and potions (the Greek word here is pharmakeia, which gives us our English word, ‘pharmacy’).

-Next on the list of things the flesh is wont to do is a list of eight social sins (including envyings in the following verse).  There is another set of two others in the next verse, but this first set encompasses those things which create division and exacerbate brokenness between people.  So here, first we see vertical brokenness (in our relationship with God), followed by brokenness on the horizontal level (which is precisely the biblical pattern).  So once we begin putting self (what we want) before the Lord (and what He wants), we see self intrude in other broken ways as we relate to those around us.  Hiding and hurling, distrust and disrespect - it's straight out of Genesis 3.  We have jealousy and envy, discord, disagreements, arguments, outbursts of anger, factions, hatred.  Invariably, when the flesh is allowed to have its way, that is something we’re sure to see: broken relationships.  Wounding and woundedness.  Irreconciliation.  Relationships of pain and hurting.  This is the real intolerance - men and women of flesh unable to even tolerate each other, allowing not only wounds and slights but even differences and petty disagreements to fester and come between them, pulling and keeping them apart.  It is the manifest inability to accept or endure (much less love) someone unpleasant or unlikable or to peacefully coexist with someone with whom I do not necessarily agree.  But things should not be this way.  We were not ever meant for this.  And sadly, we have built up such a tolerance for this intolerance that we don’t know any different.  But there is One Who came to rebuild the divide, and to heal the brokenness...