Author: Justin DaMetz

Father of Julian and Evelyn, Husband of Tabitha, Christian theologian, writer, 5th grade teacher, book addict, displaced Middle-Earth resident

saintliness

It is a great pleasure for me to remember such good and kind people and to talk about them, although I no longer possess any details about them. I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within, and from the habitual union of their souls with God in deep faith and charity.

Their farm, they family, and their Church were all that occupied these good souls, and their lives were full.

Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

The Politics of Charity

For those that don’t know, I do have a Substack newsletter, where I write longer pieces and essays that go straight to your email inbox. Currently, I am in the midst of a longer series examining Stanley Hauerwas’ essay “The Politics of Charity”, from his book Truthfulness and Tragedy. The essay takes on the idea that Christian political action must take on the priorities of the world, or in Hauerwas’ construction, the myth that Christians have any obligation to be effective political actors. In my essays, I am unpacking Hauerwas a bit and drawing some connections to our own time and place, where we have a church beholden to the left and right and obsessed with the political fight between the two. How do we break out of that? I think Hauerwas’ prescription of more charity and less effectiveness is a good place to start. Check it out, and subscribe to my newsletter. It is free!

welcome the stranger

I’ve become much less strident about the political conclusions that can be drawn from the Bible than I used to be. I think any fair reading of scripture can yield justification for a range of things, and besides, I’m pretty convinced Jesus wasn’t terribly concerned with winning the political battles of the day.

However, there are a few things that are indisputably clear political actions commanded by Christ. Feed the hungry. Care for the orphan and the widow. Free those in chains. Welcome the stranger. A lot of people who claim to be Christian fail that last one. Worldly political considerations become more important than the clear and unambiguous words of Christ directing our actions in accordance with Gods kingdom. In fact, an entire disastrous presidency was built on the back of a deeply anti-Christian antipathy of the strangers among us.

These things that Governors DeSantis and Abbott are doing – and that their followers are cheering so lustily – are not just immoral and unethical. They are at odds with the Gospel message of Christ, with the command to remember that we were all once strangers in these lands, and thus we should extend the same types of hospitality to others we would want extended to us if we were far from home, in a place alien and unknowable, surrounded by a language we don’t speak, fleeing unthinkable and inhumane conditions for the promise of a better life for ourselves and our children. We would all do well to remember: Jesus was a refugee and an immigrant. God forbid that in the face of the child of God we turn away and mistreat at our borders, we should see the face of God.

“Almighty and merciful God,

whose Son became a refugee and had no place to call his own;

look with mercy on those who today are fleeing from danger,

homeless and hungry.

Bless those who work to bring them relief;

inspire generosity and compassion in all our hearts;

and guide the nations of the world towards that day when all will rejoice in your Kingdom of justice and of peace;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.”