Anxiety’s central message is that we cannot afford to share because we can never have enough.
Put more strongly, in a culture marked by anxiety and fear, as is happening today, 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 hoarding material things than we are giving to God and others.
As someone has said, “The ethic of self produces a skewed moral vision. It suggests that suspicion, preemption, and accumulation are virtues insofar as they help us feel more secure.
“But when seen from a Christian perspective, such ‘virtues’ fail to be true virtues, since they do not orient us to the true good—love of God and neighbor. In fact, they turn us away from the true good, tempting us to love accumulating material things more than we love God and our neighbor.
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 and trust over suspicion.
Thanks to Paul J. Wadell for sharing some of these penetrating thoughts.
During this coronavirus pandemic, have you been able to choose love over fear and trust over suspicion. What makes you say that?
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