What is the moral and spiritual meaning of being a refugee? What does it do to a child's consciousness to be raised as a refugee - a person the world has officially deemed worthy of no home, no official status, no meaning? I ask this because Jesus was a refugee and his articulation of how God stewards blessing for the poor despite the world's treatment is stunning and revolutionary (try reading the beatitudes of the gospel of Luke from the perspective of a child refugee).
Again, our times force me to turn to Hannah Arendt, who experienced first hand the total rejection of being human that is the status of being a refugee. Arendt's thoughts run, in part:
What does it mean to use people as a weapon, as Putin has done in Syria, by turning millions of 'undesirables' into refugees? What does it mean to refuse refuge to those whose de-humanized status is being used to destabilize democracies, to undercut the principles of rule of law and inalienable human rights? These are the pressing questions we must ask in this time if we are to remain morally and spiritually resistant to genocide.
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