The desperate need love and mercy, not judgment.

ester­day my very excel­lent fel­low Patheos blog­ger Mary Pez­zu­lo asks: What Must a Chris­t­ian Do For the Help­less? Her answer is that we must “con­form our­selves to Christ” and do what he would do. When we see the help­less, we must live in imi­ta­tion of Christ; the imi­ta­tion of Christ is not just for when we are feel­ing pious at ado­ra­tion. Still less is it for when we take to our blogs and defend, nei­ther Christ nor the help­less, but our­selves. Christ nev­er, Mary points out, blamed the help­less for being help­less. “I do not con­demn you,” Christ said to the woman caught in adul­tery who was in dan­ger of being stoned to death. Though one might say this woman brought it all upon her­self, Christ did not. We are to imi­tate Christ.

Then today, Mary writes about the sheep and the goats. How we treat the desperate—and just as impor­tant­ly, how we speak of the des­per­ate—is how we treat and speak of Christ. Mary makes the excel­lent point (I had not thought of it before) that Christ’s words about the sheep and the goats is not a para­ble. It’s a prophe­cy. It will hap­pen; God will judge us by how we treat those who are hun­gry and thirsty and strangers and in prison and des­per­ate in what­ev­er way. It’s very seri­ous.

Both posts are very good and you should read them. Mary is, whether she’d call her­self this or not, one of the best Catholic apol­o­gists I know.

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Now, all this comes up because some peo­ple are attempt­ing to explain why the father who recent­ly drowned with his daugh­ter try­ing to cross the Rio Grande was neg­li­gent. Such peo­ple (they include Catholics and self-styled career apol­o­gists) say the father is to blame. Such folks will deny they lack com­pas­sion. But Alt! they will say. A lit­tle girl is dead. I say this because I do have com­pas­sion for her life. The father was irre­spon­si­ble!

Of course, what this “But Alt!” crowd fails to men­tion is that the father is dead too. Where is the com­pas­sion for him? But no: What real­ly is behind this is judg­ment upon a des­per­ate father in the guise of com­pas­sion for the daugh­ter.

Some among this “But Alt!” crowd float in their swim­ming pools and muse upon the book of Proverbs. This is the kind of life that migrant father could hard­ly have imag­ined. What he did imag­ine was escap­ing an utter hell and giv­ing some­thing bet­ter to his lit­tle girl. He was des­per­ate, and he was turned away at a cross­ing sta­tion.

When peo­ple are des­per­ate, they are will­ing to take risks they might not take when they can just float around in their pools all day and chant the wis­dom of Solomon. Fr. Angel Sote­lo explains why this poor migrant father may have felt that cross­ing the Rio Grande was a risk worth tak­ing:

That peo­ple have crossed the Rio Grande, with their chil­dren and have made it to the oth­er side means that there are odds in one’s favor. So, there is some defen­si­ble hope, that they can do it.

More to the point, when the human heart is des­per­ate and with­out hope, a man should not be impeached with cul­pa­bil­i­ty, with the assump­tion that he was in a ratio­nal state of mind.

Oth­ers have done this, and there­fore the father may have thought he could risk it and suc­ceed. And he was des­per­ate. At one time, Charles Ingalls crossed a rag­ing riv­er with his daugh­ters. But he was a pio­neer! He was a pull-your­self-up-by-your-boot­straps Amer­i­can! No one says he was a neg­li­gent father. But the Ingallses were poor and des­per­ate, and Charles took risks because of it. The only dif­fer­ence is, Charles and his fam­i­ly did not die, and there were no stu­pid blogs then.

•••

A few years ago, a sto­ry made the rounds of social media about a des­per­ate woman who stole five eggs to feed her chil­dren. Now, a blog­ging apol­o­gist might say, “You know, she goes to jail and leaves her kids with­out a mom alto­geth­er. Such a neg­li­gent par­ent!”

But the cop did not see it that way. Instead of arrest­ing the woman, he brought her two truck­loads of food.

That’s imi­tat­ing Christ. It’s “I was hun­gry and you gave me food”; not, “I was hun­gry and you said I should have bud­get­ed my mon­ey bet­ter and not stolen those eggs.”

It’s “I was a stranger and you wel­comed me”; not, “I was a stranger and you told me the coun­try’s full.”

It’s “I was in prison and you vis­it­ed me”; not, “I was in prison and you said I should not have bro­ken the law.”

We’re sup­posed to be Chris­tians. We don’t ask, when some­one is in need of our help, what bad things they did to bring all this on them­selves. We help them. We love them. We show them mer­cy. God’s their judge, not us.