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THE MAN AS A MIGRANT IN THIS WORLD TOWARDS THE KINGDOM OF GOD. A BIBLICAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

C. Vatamanu

Abstract

Created in the image of God, the man is destined for a perfect life, for the similarity with Him, which must be materialized through the presence of grace in his life. The first man, who wavered in the Garden of Eden between „eating” and „not eating” from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, chose to live no longer close to God and to „win” the distance, the independence, and the existence „outside”. Destined to be person, capable and open to the communion of persons, following the model of the Trinity, the man cannot end in nothingness and death. Stepping out of eternity into time, the man is a migrant that has no other aim than the Kingdom of God. From a secular point of view, the migration can be defined as the movement of a person or a group of people from one region to another, motivated by the change of residence, for a fixed period or not. This is the reason why the anthropologists studied this phenomenon in its cultural and social dimensions and they focused on the perception of immigrants by the societies into which they enter as well as how they respond to these perceptions. This is a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, which bring together different aspects of migration processes: economic, politic, social, cultural and religious. Nowadays, it is necessary for the Church to be a voice in the society, whose attitude is biblical, Christian, theological, based on mutual fellowship and hospitality. Managing this phenomenon only secular, the state institutions risk creating a global solution, neglecting the national identity and the religious consciousness of the immigrant.

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