Anxiety’s central message is that we cannot afford to share our material possessions because we can never have enough for our own needs.
Put more strongly, in a culture marked by anxiety and fear, the very things we have traditionally called sins or vices (hoarding, greed, suspicion) become wise and prudent virtues. Fear, rather than love, governs our lives.
But such fear is a kind of idolatry because it suggests we are giving more attention to our own security than we are giving to God. As Scott Bader-Saye warns, “the ethic of security produces a skewed moral vision. It suggests that suspicion, preemption, and accumulation are virtues insofar as they help us feel safe.
But when seen from a Christian perspective, such ‘virtues’ fail to be true virtues, since they do not orient us to the true good — a love of God and our neighbor. In fact, they turn us away from the true good, tempting us to love safety more than we love God.”
The “human way out” of the despair of our age is through hospitality because a person well-practiced in Christian hospitality chooses love over fear, trust over suspicion, and even risk over security.
Special thanks to Paul Wadell
How are YOU able to practice Christian hospitality by choosing love over fear, trust over suspicion and even risk over security during the last four months of the pandemic?
