This last week, once again, a text we read during our prayers struck me (as the heath has been relentlessly striking us ever since we got here):
Everything is permitted, but everything isn’t beneficial. Everything is permitted, but everything doesn’t build others up. - 1 Cr 10:23
It is a wonderful quote that, on one hand states the absolute freedom found in Christ (a far cry from the strict commandment-obeyance of the Old Testament), but also lovingly nudges us to the proper path. We are a long way from the sometimes overbearing God Nietzsche proclaimed dead (although one can, nontheless, conciliate christianity with this statement, one radical example being Gianni Vattimo's pensiero debole).
So the question does pose itself: where to go from here? As Kierkegaard put it, this dizzying freedom is the cause of a lot of anxiety (he gives the example of a man standing on a cliff: he's afraid of falling, but he is also frightened by the idea that he can throw himself). We experience this anxiety in our moral choices when we realize we can chose the most terrific actions. It is a radical freedom the one Paul proposes us.
Nontheless there are hints to follow, namely, the one commandment given to us, love.
I cannot not think of the decisions most of the people I meet daily have faced, and our their plight is related to the Gospel. They had the freedom to have had chosen differently: those coming from war-zones could have easily succumbed into the temptation of satiating their bloodthirst born from years of injustice perpretated against them by their own governments. Or they could also have stayed. And yet many decided to risk their lives in a crossing that for most takes years.
Most of us are sightly surprised by their choice, especially when we hear the almost mystified way they describe Europe, more positively than most europeans. One can compare this enthusiasm with the one european migrants once felt when going to America. Both had distorted pre-conceptions of what was expecting them on the other side of the sea. Both where fleeing stagnation and poverty and arrived in poor condition (we've been accompanying some refugees to the hospital and it is not uncommon at all to find cases of tuberculoisis or hepatitis, amongst others).
Regardless of their condition, and the ideas they had before arriving, they are here and they have more than valid reasons to be.
Now the freedom of choice is in our side. Are we going to act up to our christian values and welcome these people, build them up?
Francisco
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