A country that rejects the unknown – the foreigner, the one coming from outside-of-oneself – is a country that rejects its own salvation. The source of salvation is never in ourselves, it always comes from outside of oneself.
There is nothing that can save in this world of dust – go to the graves and ask the bones in them what came of their selfishness. Or ask Adam, who believed the same lie told by the same evil spirit speaking to the world today, that we are self-sufficient for our salvation, that we can become our true selves through our own means.
A monastic finds his or her salvation by allowing the will of an outsider to become their will. A married man and woman find their salvation by freely bowing to one another. This free act of humble obedience opens them to the Will of the Lord, and they become One with This Eternal Outsider to the point that the Divine Outsider lives in them and becomes their true Life, their true Inside. Those who love cease to live on the outside of one another. They contain each other. They are one.
The same applies to countries, nations, tribes and races – whatever name you prefer for what is essentially pride and self-will, demonic tools to compromise the oneness of our humanity in Christ. The salvation of a nation will never come by following the route of separation and rejection of the Outsider. Salvation comes by obeying to Christ’s commandments of Love, which always require self-sacrifice and openness. Just look at the Cross.
You cannot love the one you reject. In rejecting your neighbour, made by the same God as you, of the same dust as you, and facing the same death as you, you reject Christ, you reject His commandments. He welcomed us in Himself to save us from the death we had become, and we reject our brothers and sisters who are dust like us.
The choices we make in this world – as persons, as families, as countries – may seem unrelated to our spiritual lives, but they betray our hidden selves, and ultimately determine who we become. The hideous treasures of the heart are painfully exposed by our choices – money over Christ; power over Christ; sovereignty over Christ.
Dust, all this dust, all this death, all this nothingness that is so much more important to our selfish hearts than the Divine Outsider who became like us, so we may become like Him. In rejecting the Love of the Cross, we reject Him Who is Love on the Cross, and rejecting Him is the rejection of our own salvation.
