Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep950: A Christian View of Immigration: Karen Gonzalez

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

In this episode, I talk to Karen about all things related to immigration. What does the Bible say? How theologically/ethically important is it? How should the biblical story on immigration shape our current Christian imagination when it comes to current political issues about immigration? How should Christians respond to undocumented immigrants? Karen Gonzalez is a speaker, writer, storyteller, and immigrant advocate, who herself immigrated from Guatemala as a child. Karen is a former public school teacher and attended Fuller Theological Seminary, where she studied theology and missiology. For the last 12 years, she has been a non-profit professional, currently working for World Relief, an organization that serves refugees and other immigrants, as the human resources director. She wrote a book about her own immigration story and some of the immigrants found in the Bible:The God Who Sees: Immigrants, The Bible, and the Journey to Belong (Herald Press, May 2019). She also has bylines inSojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and others. Karen is currently working on her second book, Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in our Christian Response to Immigration (Brazos Press, October 2022). She is also the co-host of the Latina-focused podcast Cafe with Comadres. You can reach her via her website Karen-Gonzalez.com or on social media at @_karenjgonzalez. Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. There is still a few spaces left for the Theology in the Raw conference on March 31st through April 2nd. You can sign up at presencepringle.com, attend live here in Boise, or you can attend virtually online. All the information is on my website. My guest today is Karen Gonzalez. Karen is a speaker, writer, immigrant advocate, and a self-described taco enthusiast. And actually, Karen shares my passion for the one and only future world champs and former world champs, the Los Angeles Dodgers. And we get a little sidetracked on the Dodgers at the end of this episode, but she wrote a book called The God Who Sees, Immigrants, the Bible, and the Journey to Belong. She's a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, has been a missionary, and has become kind of a national expert when it comes to a Christian

theology of immigration. And so I had a wonderful time talking to Karen. We've talked briefly before this, but as you'll see, just a very wise, humble, enjoyable person. So please welcome to the show for the first time, hopefully not the last time, the one and only Karen Gonzalez. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm here with Karen Gonzalez. Karen, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I'm really excited about this conversation. Yeah, thanks Preston.

I'm excited to be here too and get to talk about my favorite subject. The Dodgers? Theology is what I was thinking, thinking but yes the dodgers are a very close second and there's a strong connection between theology and baseball oh my god yes you know who i i try i'm trying to get on the podcast is uh daryl strawberry remember daryl strawberry from the mets back in the i remember him he's a believer now and he wrote a book for zondervan yeah about his whole story because i think he yeah major like fell into drugs and stuff i'm not sure i think about it with the prison i'm not don't quote

yeah but he got saved and he wrote a book and i'm like dude i want to have you on my podcast we'll probably just talk about baseball so you wrote a book on immigration and i want to get you on my podcast. We'll probably just talk about baseball. So you wrote a book on immigration, and I want to get into that. But why don't you first tell us who you are, your story, your journey, or academic theological journey. And then I'm sure that will land us into a conversation about immigration according to the Bible. Okay. So I'm Karen Gonzalez. I live in Baltimore, Maryland. I am not from here. I was born in Guatemala and we moved to the U.S. when I was 10 years old, which is when a lot of civil wars to do with sort of stopping a socialist movement that had arisen in a lot of the countries because of so much poverty and oppression. And so that's about

the time that my family migrated to the U.S. So I grew up here. I'm sort of not really first generation, but not really second generation. I'm like 1.5 because I do remember living in Guatemala, but I also have spent all my formative years here in the US. And I started out as a high school teacher. I actually majored in English. I was always interested in words and writing. And I was set to get an English degree when my father convinced me as a good immigrant father to add a teaching credential to my degree. And so I came out as a secondary teacher. And I did work as a teacher for several years and taught public school in Tampa where I'd grown up in that area. And I transitioned. I went overseas for a few

years and lived in the former Soviet Union. And then when I came back, I did not go back into teaching. I started working in the corporate world before I went to Fuller out in Pasadena and spent a few years getting my degree. I kind of worked half-time and went to school half-time. So it took a little longer because his degree was quite long back then. And yeah, I ended up studying theology and missiology, which they call cross-cultural studies at Fuller. But it was not what I thought. I thought I was getting a ministry degree. But they really inform their ministry degrees or missions degrees with a lot of social sciences. And I work for an organization that serves refugees and other immigrants. And it's out of that work that I ended up writing my first book, The God Who Sees.

And I'm now just finishing copy edits on the second book, which is called Beyond Welcome. Oh, wow. Is it also on immigration? It is. It's really elevating the discourse beyond the first book. Because, you know, it's called Beyond Welcome because welcome is where most people stop. They think, oh, I care about refugees. I want them resettled here. I want to welcome them. And so that's generally where the conversation stops in the church.

So I wanted to really challenge people because as I went around the country speaking and writing about the first book. And I had a lot of people sort of ask questions about what's next, you know, and really what's next is our own formation and the way that we view our neighbors, the way we think about the scriptures, the way we think about land and belonging, the way we think about hospitality, all of that. And so that's what I did. I started doing these workshops that turned into chapters in this new book. And so it's done and it comes out in October. Congratulations. I mean, writing a book is, oh my gosh. I mean, I love, love writing, but it's kind of a love-hate relationship. It's more of a love relationship than hate, but it's so challenging. Especially like you.

You love writing. You love English. And getting it right is like such a big deal. And it's never right. It's never like exactly the way you want it. But congratulations, two books. And the first one came out in 2018. Is that right?

So this one's not too far behind it 2019 oh 2019 wow so it's really close okay yeah so three years three years apart a little pandemic hit you know a year after so yeah yeah yeah yeah so um yeah yeah so three years and it is writing it's it's hard. And it's also hard emotional work because you put yourself into it. Why don't you summarize your first book? Give us the kind of what's going on in The God Who Sees. And I'm sure that'll open up other side conversations. Yeah, so I was really moved by, I read this Native American proverb that said, you know, tell me, if you tell me, you know, if you instruct me on how to do something, I'll remember. But if you tell me a story, it lives in my heart forever. And I thought about the way that narrative speaks to both your mind and your heart. It engages your heart first and then your mind. And so in that way, it can be really powerful.

So when I was writing this book and, you know, really praying about the structure, I did a few things. One is I wanted to tell the narrative stories of some immigrants in the Bible. narrative stories of some immigrants in the Bible. And so six of the chapters cover people who perhaps most people in the church are not used to thinking about as immigrants, people like Ruth, people like Jesus and his family, Abraham, you know, Joseph and Genesis. So I wanted that story of migration because you have to have eyes to see it. And most of us aren't given, you know, those lenses to be able to see it. So that's what I did. And I blended it with a lot of, um, information about immigration processes and in the U S

and Canada. And then the other chapters, which there are five others, tell the story of, you know, how I, my own migration story and how I became a Christian, you know, through that story. And it's framed around the sacraments of the Catholic Church. So, baptism, confirmation, confession. So, yeah. So, that was really the first book. I wanted people to see that the Bible speaks to this. The Bible doesn't speak to a whole lot of things that we try to make it say.

But it definitely speaks about migration. And there is a lot of movement of people in the scriptures. And for the same reasons people have always migrated. So, yeah, so that's really the framework of that book. Real quick, Karen, you used the term migration, and another guy, Mark Glanville, I don't know if you know Mark, he also prefers migration rather than immigration. I'm sorry if this is like a dumb question, but can you maybe explain the difference between the language, and should we be using migration rather than immigration when we talk about these themes? Right. So immigration is always talking about movement out of a country. Always.

So people, you know, immigrate. They leave their country and go to another country. But migration really refers to overall movement of people. So, for example, a lot of people you might remember after Hurricane Katrina migrated out of New Orleans, right, and moved to other parts of the country. That was internal migration caused about because of this natural disaster probably brought about by climate change. Same thing with the fires in California and in the Northwest, you see a lot of people migrating away. And so there's a lot of movement of people. It may not necessarily be out of a country. They may stay within their own country. And so really migration speaks more to that idea that there is movement of people.

Sometimes they stay within a country and sometimes they move out to another place, but movement exists no matter what. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Yeah. Okay. How would you sum up, I guess, because I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's not a subsidiary theme in scripture. I mean, it's from, it's all over the place. I mean, all the way from some of the key, I mean, the key story, well, the fundamental story of the Bible with this, you know, Abraham and God

making a covenant with Abraham to build a nation, to reach nations, to send Messiah. This is a huge theme, and it's all about migration, right? I mean, Abraham coming, leaving his homeland and coming to the promised land. So how would you summarize, how do I put it? The biblical storyline when it comes to migration, and I'm looking, I guess, how would you frame the moral, the ethical kind of demands that that theme places on the people of God?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And for me, what's most clear in that, so, you know, I was taught that there was a trajectory in the scripture from being lost, Adam and Eve, right? They're expelled from the garden, lost, and then to being found all the way at the end of Revelation. And I think that's there. There are some other people, however, who see a movement from, you know, oppression to liberation. But the thing is, there's also other things there. We can see a movement from people

who are strangers to then people who become the family of God. And so if you're looking for that trajectory, stranger or foreigner to family of God, you can see that all throughout the scriptures. And you really begin to see it when the Israelites make the exodus out of Egypt. And what happens then is that in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, there are several verses where God tells them, you know, you must be, you must love the immigrant because you yourselves were immigrant. You were oppressed and you must remember how you were treated as an immigrant. And then what happens is God in Deuteronomy begins to outline an ethical way of living with people who have less, people in the margins of society. And God identifies several groups. They call them the quartet of the vulnerable is what I've heard. They call them the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant, these four groups.

And you see that even in the command for Sabbath, you know, the Sabbath command says, everybody rests, the foreigner, the animals, everybody, your son, your daughter, nobody works, right? Everybody rests. And God is very interested in providing care for people who may not necessarily be able to advocate for themselves to receive that. And this is what you see in that command. And so you see something carried out in the book of Ruth, where these two women arrive, one of them from this despised foreign group, the Moabites, and Boaz does exactly what the scripture says in the book of Ruth. He is a man, he's powerful, he's a landowner, and he allows the poor, including the immigrant Ruth, to glean what is

left over in the fields, which was God's provision for the poor. And so God told them, listen, you can't pick what's in the corners, and you can't go over the field twice. Anything left over in the corners or in the field needs to go to the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the immigrants. And you know, there's so much when you read the Bible, there's so many times that you encounter things where God tells the people to do something and they completely disobey and turn away and they suffer these consequences. But in the book of Ruth, it's actually this very beautiful picture of flourishing for everyone, for God's people, for the foreigners among them, because the people of Judah, of Bethlehem, do exactly what the scripture says. They welcome Ruth, they allow her to glean, they treat her kindly with justice. You know, Boaz even tells his harvesters,

please don't insult her, don't abuse her, don't assault her. And it's interesting that he has to say that because it indicates that that was probably common, you know, the mistreatment of people like Ruth. But you see there that nobody responds with fear. Everybody responds with trust in the way, the economy that God has created. And everybody flourishes in that story. And this poor immigrant woman ends up getting into the lineage of Jesus, you know, and becoming an ancestor of David. So there is a very clear ethical framework that God establishes. And it's not nuanced that you have to, you know, understand certain things to get it.

It's very clear. And I don't say that too often about the Bible, but when it comes to that command to care for vulnerable people, it's repeated over and over again. They're reminded of it. They're reminded that the Sabbath is for everyone. They're reminded to care for the poor. And so the immigrant is included in that. And so what we know is that this problem of xenophobia, of suspicion of foreign people is an old problem because it's addressed in the scriptures. You know, Donald Trump didn't invent it. Pharaoh didn't invent it. It's something that's been ongoing, right?

That's a great point. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like, especially in the last couple of years, everything's been so, right? That's a great point. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like, especially in the last couple of years, everything's been so tense and flared up. People think, what happened? It's like, well, no, this has always kind of been there. It is fascinating that the Ruth, the book of Ruth, we have a whole book. It's not a long book, but I don't think the length matters. We have a whole book devoted to this theme. I mean, obviously it's, it's theologically, you know, it's talking about the,

you know, the lineage of David and that's the main theological theme at the end, but he could, you could have just listed that in a genealogy, you know, it's not like, but you, God in his providence, right. Took time to, to, um, I time to illustrate and exemplify these kind of commands that you see in Deuteronomy. I'm repeating everything you're saying, Karen. I don't know why I'm doing this, but amen and amen. Again, going back to the idea that this is not just a verse here and there, and it's certainly not just an Old Testament theme, though it is very pervasive in the Old Testament. Would you say that there is strong continuity between the old and New with this theme? Because sometimes we don't have continuity. We'll have something in the Old Testament that gets a lot of attention, like

the land promise or something. But do we see a lot of carryover in the New Testament? And what does that look like? Yeah, we definitely do. If you think about, you know, there's a verse that people bring out often where Paul talks about being a citizen of heaven. And as he was a Roman citizen, which was a highly, you know, coveted situation or status, the fact that he says, this doesn't matter, you know, what matters is, we're all part of the same kingdom, you know, all of us. So you definitely see it. There's movement of people in the New Testament as well. And then there's Jesus himself who says in Matthew 25, he takes on the very identity of people on the margins of his society. He doesn't say, hey, be kind to people in prison and welcome immigrants. He says, no, I was an immigrant and you welcomed me. I was in prison and you visited me. He takes on that identity and he says that when you care for these people, you are caring for me. You know, you are worshiping me, you know, through these acts of mercy and compassion.

And you see also there's a lot of foreigners in the Bible. And I think it's hard because we live in a completely different culture. So the idea that somebody like the Samaritan in the Good Samaritan parable is now held up. This foreign person, different ethnic group, seen as these kind of unclean people that we go around their land. We don't even go through their land. They're so dirty and contaminated. But he's held up as the model of love by Jesus. And this is a radical thing, right?

Who would say, you know, it's like saying Osama bin Laden is the one who cared for a poor American beaten on the side of the road. And so there's also mention of a lot of foreigners. You have Jesus' encounter with a Syrophoenician woman. You have Jesus encountering the woman at the well in John chapter 4. There's encounters that Jesus has with a lot of people who don't belong, a lot of people who are on the margins. And then you have Paul, who's specifically called to Gentiles. And we know that this put him at odds with the other disciples after Jesus' ascension, and yet he continued, you know, this mission. And it's funny, I have a, when I was at Fuller, I had a professor who did his entire doctoral thesis

around the collection of funds that Paul was making as he was traveling to different churches. funds that Paul was making as he was traveling to different churches. And, you know, the whole idea was he was collecting this money for the poor among the churches in Jerusalem. And he asked all of his little house churches to give, you know, to this group. And they did, and he collected this money. And what this, you know, professor concluded was that there was no record that James, who was then the bishop, James, the brother of Jesus, there's no record that this basically a Jewish church, right? At that point, most Christians were Jewish people. So there was conflict, you know, even back then around some of these subjects, around who was in and who was out. And it's in the New Testament as well. I would say in the New Testament, it's a little more nuanced,

although you do see it's in key places that you have to look for. Like for example, lots of key important people reject Jesus, but then you have these foreign magi who come to worship him and they come from these far away place and they take great risk, right?

To come and worship this Christ child. So I would say in the New Testament, it's not as blatant as you see these clear commands. I think there's like 84 of them in the Hebrew scriptures. So that's not the case in the New Testament, but there is a thread that runs throughout of different foreign people having these encounters with Jesus. You even see the Ethiopian eunuch, you know, in Acts, right? He becomes a Christian. Well, they trace the entire Ethiopian church, you know, back to this Ethiopian eunuch, you know, a church that's still in existence today. So there is a thread that runs throughout. And I think in the

New Testament in particular, you have to have eyes to see it, to recognize it. And it's also, I mean, you referenced the statements in the Old Testament where God says, because you were at one time, you know, an immigrant, therefore care for those who are in your midst. But you see that covenant identity, if you will, strongly in the New Testament, right? In 1 Peter, that we are aliens and sojourners. And yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, I just use that phrase. I don't know if that's been used before. Our covenant identity is one of being an immigrant, regardless of where you live or whatever. But then also,

in the Old Testament, you have Israel as a nation state, and they're also the covenant people. But that's all flipped on its head in the New Testament, right? Now we are scattered among the nations. Again, that's kind of like our fundamental identity scattered among the nations. Even if you happen to be born in a country, raised in that country, have kids in that country, like your fundamental identity is still, I am an alien and stranger. So that's, I agree. It's not, you don't have 84 commands necessarily, but man, I mean, there's so many themes interwoven throughout the New Testament that carry it on. I want to talk about the contemporary church in America. Because you go around, you speak on this topic.

What are some resistance you might face when you talk? Or do you face resistance? I'm not sure what kind of churches you go into. Some I could only imagine would be exciting. And others might be like, yeah, this is kind of like, obviously, this is how we should behave as Christians. But yeah, what are some pushback or resistance you get? Sure. So I want to say I go to mainline and I go to evangelical non-denominational churches. And I want to tell you that the only difference between these two churches are the pastors. The congregations are the same in terms of their knowledge, their receptivity, their posture toward the immigrant. And it's supported by even Pew Research. If you

follow that, you'll see that mainline denominations are only, you know, slightly ahead. There's like slight percentage points at which they welcome and care about immigrants, but it's only slightly ahead of the evangelical church. So, the most welcoming people, oddly enough, are atheists and agnostics. So that's just a sad sort of testament to the times that we live in that are so polarized. And I will tell you the biggest pushback I get, one, I think people, this is even in some reviews if you read them on Goodreads and Amazon, and I'm really honored that people think I'm so influential and powerful. But warning people that I'm reading the Bible through an immigrant perspective, and that's not biblical.

That's not in the Bible. Actually, a few people have pointed this out. They're like, she says the story of Ruth is not about a kinsman redeemer. There's a Jesus figure in this story and that's what that story is about. And there's room for any other story to be in there. I think the story of the kinsman redeemer is in the book of Ruth, but I think there's other stories in there too. You have stories about women, you have stories about a foreigner, you have a lot of different things that are happening there. And all of those things are true. I don't think it's, you know, one or the other. So that's a huge pushback. And I think that is because it's really difficult to encounter a new

perspective after, you know, if you've been told your whole life, there's only one way to read the Bible and there's only one message and this is it. Here you go. Take it. I packaged it for you. And then all of a sudden someone says, oh no, the story of Ruth is a story of migration too. That can be really threatening. It can really bother people to think either, A, I've been lied to, or B, this person's making stuff up, making up an agenda and projecting it into the scriptures. And so that's a huge pushback that I get. And pretty much I'm patient with those people, to be honest, because I also know what it's like to have your faith shaken by different perspectives. Because I remember when I was at Fuller, you know, learning for the first time that there were different ways to interpret end times, that the rapture was a relatively new teaching.

And I was just really shocked because I'd been told this was it and this was the way. And I remember how difficult it was and unsettling, right? And so I have a lot of grace for people who are encountering that. And I try to encourage them to sit with that discomfort and lean into the ambiguity and uncertainty it raises for them. And to really seek the Holy Spirit. Like, is this really wrong or am I just used to only one perspective, one story being here? So that's one significant pushback. The other one has to do with Romans 13. I wish I could, like, take a razor blade and cut Romans 13 out of the Bible.

Everyone's Bible, only because what happens is people take Romans 13 out of the context of Paul's entire story and teaching, and even his death, because, you know, Paul was executed by the Roman Empire. We know that. We know Paul spent most of the New Testament in prison. Most of the epistles are written from prison. And yet people use Romans 13, which just as a reminder, it says, you know, to submit to the governing authorities because they've been placed there by God. And so when people bring that up, they bring it up as a kind of clobber passage for immigration, like, oh, I don't have to engage or care about this because people are breaking the law. This verse says that you have to submit to the law.

End of story. And, you know, I don't think Paul would have ever told people, you need to value the principles and the laws of the empire above the commands of God. Paul did not live that way. He didn't die that way either. And yet that's the way that passage gets used with immigration. Interestingly though, it doesn't get used that way with abortion. With abortion, people want to put Supreme Court justices in the right places and they want to protest and block people from entering a clinic even though it's legal. So it's very selective too. So that one, I confess to you, I don't have a lot of patience for. And I really push back a lot. I mostly feel that what people are wanting to do is kind of shirk their responsibility toward their immigrant neighbor with that verse.

And I don't think you can take that and not consider all of the other verses in the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testament, that tell us that we need to love and care for our neighbor and that the laws of God subvert those of humankind, especially when those laws are, are not for life or harming, um, people who bear the image of God. So, so those, those are the two most significant. Um, and yeah, and it's, it's and it's hard. I know it's hard for people. So I try to answer, you know, kindly and patiently. But that second one, I'll admit, it's hard for me. So I still – I ran into Romans 13 a lot with when I talk about nonviolence and nationalism and stuff. And it is a passage that's often appealed to. I mean, there's so many problems with how it's sometimes understood. I mean, the obvious

one is that Romans 13 comes after Romans 12. And Romans 12 is where Paul gives a litany of commands to believers. And Romans 13 is like the opposite of that. Like he even says like, you know, do not avenge yourselves. Leave that for the wrath of God. And then he, in Romans 13, is kind of like, and here's one way in which God might do that. But he's already said, believers, don't you do that. Like our identity is not wrapped up in the performance of Romans 13. It's very much in Romans 12. And Romans 13 is just like God is so sovereign.

He can even use a disastrous empire like the Nero run I mean Nero's on the throne at this time who ends up burning Christians and doing all kinds of horrible things as an outworking of the authority that he has been given and but even that the idea of um and this is something people often, well, you would have to do some research to see it, so I don't necessarily blame them. But the whole idea of Rome is a servant of God, that is a consistent Old Testament motif used to describe pagan nations like Assyria, who used to skin people alive, and Persia and Babylon, they were called the servant of God. Not that they were serving God, but that God is so sovereign, he can even use a pagan nation to carry out his will. So Paul's not sanitizing the actions,

nor even really celebrating them in Romans 13. He's just saying there is a God behind all of this kind of horrible stuff going on. So, in Romans 13, you know, we need to read it in tension with Revelation 13, where the same empire is called a beast that's under demonic control. So, yeah, it is frustrating. And yet I get it like we all do we have as jonathan height says these hive minds right like like we were like bees and a beehive and we have this tribe that we're that our minds are just making sure that we're giving allegiance to this tribe we're in whether we're consciously aware of it or not so when we grow up in an environment that we give our allegiance to, and that environment is constantly talking about Romans 13 to justify its

beliefs or whatever, it's just so embedded in us. All of us have that, you know, and it's hard to think outside of that. So I commend you for your patience and grace because that's the only way people will reconsider their views if they feel attacked or you know if you turn up the temperature on the discussion on the conversation it just it doesn't as hard as it is I feel your pain yeah it's like man it's it's it never gets anywhere when people just start you know entering into a huge debate um what is the issue though so like if it's legal immigration then there's no issue here like the more the merrier right if is the issue when it comes to undocumented immigrants and how christians should care for

that people group is that Is that really where people throw the Romans 13 thing around? The Romans 13 is thrown mostly around, it used to be just at undocumented immigrants, but because President Trump ended up really scapegoating refugees who had always been seen as the, quote, you know, good immigrants because they come the legal way. But because he blocked them and, you know, he had historically low numbers out of any, you know, Republican or Democratic president. Because of that, refugees got lumped in there as well because there were a lot of people advocating for a higher refugee ceiling. And so sort of it was told, well, it's the law. It's the law of the land. The president has decided and that's within the president's power, which is true. And they're saying we shouldn't resist that? We shouldn't seek the change? Right. We should not resist that. We

shouldn't seek to change it because it's been decided. And so, end of story, we submit to the governing authorities. But, you know, my question was there's all kinds of ways in which we've seen our nation even learn and change. For example, it used to be legal to own human beings and enslave them, right? And we've recognized that this was wrong and we have changed these laws. And there's a whole, if you look at the Constitution, when you're in eighth grade or seventh grade or whatever, there's a whole section that's like yellowed out because this doesn't apply anymore because we don't have slavery, right? And we've changed other laws too. It used to be legal that women couldn't vote. They couldn't own property.

It used to be legal that you could harm your children and your spouse. And that was considered a family problem. And there's no laws to protect families from the abuse of one partner. All of that used to be legal, and we are grateful it's not legal anymore. And because these are places where we saw, no, this is harming. It's not helping, and laws are supposed to guide and protect, and they're not more important than the human beings they're designed for, right? Okay. Yeah. It's just, yeah. And it's, it is, as you said, inconsistent because any Christian, most Christians at least would say Roe v. Wade is not,

that's, that's not a good law. We should get rid of that and would celebrate the change of it. So it just doesn't. So do you think there's a deep down, is it a political allegiance? Is it deep debt, like, like buried xenophobia, um, all of the above? I mean, what's causing this kind of inconsistency where we would protest certain laws that we don't like, but then other ones will like, well, it's the law, you know, we got to submit to it and celebrate it. Like, why the inconsistency? I think some of it is very much fear-based and it's based on, you know, a lot of our political leaders in recent years, not just in the U.S., but in a lot of places, have stoked this fear of immigrants and have communicated this message of, you know, scarcity, of scarcity of resources. And the world has

changed. Technology has made a lot of jobs obsolete. Globalization has made a lot of jobs obsolete. And there are people experiencing economic turmoil and they want someone to blame. And along comes leader X and says, well, it's immigrants. They this person or group of people than it is to blame globalization, right? Technology. What are you going to do, take a hammer to your laptop? Right? It's not as simple. So I think it's a scapegoating that's happening and that leadership is contributing to that by blaming immigrants. But I also think, you know, whenever I speak on immigration, one of the things that people bring up is, you know, what do you think about the fact that we have people in need in our country? You know, we have veterans.

We have people experiencing homelessness. Shouldn't we take care of those people first? And my answer is always like, why do we have to choose? We actually, if we prioritize resources correctly, we can help all of these groups. We don't have to decide, well, it's veterans or immigrants, you know, let's have them fight it out. It's not that way. fight it out. It's not, it's not that way. Uh, we actually, but you know, even before we had more, uh, immigration, um, to this country or more immigration in the news, I should say it's still at a, at a low point at this, you know, historical moment. Um, but we, you know, people want to blame immigrants for this, but immigrants aren't responsible for the way that the world has changed.

And so I try to bring that up. I said, I understand. We've been fed this lie of scarcity. But actually, there's more jobs right now than there are laborers in the U.S. Yeah. there's more jobs right now than there are laborers in the U.S. It is, especially in jobs like agriculture, you know, we're talking about farms like poultry farms, dairy farms. You know, most of our food comes from California, Central Valley. You probably know that being from California. And most of those workers are not American. They are Mexican. They are Central

American. And the fact is there's a lot of jobs. And there have been states that have tried to do things like, I think Washington State a few years ago tried to do this. We're going to hire, you know, U.S. citizens and we're going to pay a lot of money. I think they were offering like $15 an hour, which was unheard of at that point. And you know what happened? Apples rotted in the trees because they couldn't find enough workers for them. So we have a labor need, and then we have immigrants who are looking for refuge. So it used to be very complimentary kind of interest, you know, aging population, lots of needed labor, and then you have neighbors looking for work and looking for refuge. And so it used to work really well, but now we don't have, you know, that anymore because since about, it's not really even recent, but since about the

1970s is the last time the border functioned as a more of a gate. Now it's like militarized, but it used to be more of a gate, you know, kind of swung both ways. And there was a lot of movement, you know, back and forth, but that's not the case anymore. So yeah, I think there's been a lot of movement, you know, back and forth, but that's not the case anymore. So yeah, I think there's been a lot of fear put into people that something's being taken from them. And also that there's scarcity, which we know there's not scarcity. There's only allocation, right? Yeah, that scarcity, I mean, I think the US is the wealthiest by far nation of anything the world has ever seen in civilization. Like we have this really narrow – I don't know if that's true or not. I've heard that.

That even your lower middle class, even people that are, you know, maybe even at the poverty line in Americaica historically speaking right i mean to still have access to way more quote-unquote wealth than most human civilizations ever i think um is it am i missing something that it just seems odd that any non-native american has any moral ground to to say like no no more immigrants like is that it might mean i mean we're all immigrants unless you're native american yeah like how can i like i can't my family's from i'm part armenian russian european i'm a whole mutt or whatever and i think we've been here maybe 100 years for me you know like i don't yeah and okay it's several generations ago for me at least but still it's like if you widen your

lens out somebody welcomed me my my my lineage at one point um what's the point i mean when you i'm sure you is what's the pushback to that yeah Yeah. Honestly, it's hard to have that conversation because if you say, let's talk about what this is really about, it's racial. As well as not just the fact that these people are foreign, but they're of a different race, brown or black people, Asian people. Actually, the most migration is coming out of Asia. But all the attention and media is on the U.S. southern border. But that's actually where most migration is coming from at the moment. So yeah, I think it's very hard to have that conversation and to say this is, you know, from the beginning of this country, we have struggled with non-Northern European immigrants.

There was a time even Eastern Europeans and people from Southern Europe were not as welcome as Northern Europeans. There was a cap on Italians and Greeks and Jewish people from Eastern Europe. And that's just continued. It's just shifted to other groups as those groups quote became white, right? They, um, other groups were added to that mix. And so some of it is that people have a fear of, you know, a changing country, right? Uh, at the face of the country is going to look different. I think that's something that is hard for a lot of people to accept. I've had people say things to me when, you know, they have a Q&A, they'll say things. But, you know, I had this one man say to me, you know, my grandparents came from Hungary, it was Eastern Europe. But they came here, they learned English

and blah, blah, blah, you know. And before I had a chance to respond to him, his wife, you know, jumped in and she's like, Grandma did not speak English. She did not speak English. What are you talking about? You know, she never learned English well. And because, you know, my grandma never learned English well either. Neither of my grandmas, you know, learned it well because of course they're coming here to work. They come as older adults and it's very difficult. Only 24% of first generation immigrants learn English well, but by the second generation, it's 88%. And then after that, they lose the first language. And that's always happened. It happened with Italians, Germans, anybody that came along. And so, but there's still that fear that people have, you know, there was a fear that the Irish, you know, immigrants wouldn't assimilate into the wider culture, that the Italians wouldn't because they were Catholic, that the Greeks wouldn't because they were Orthodox, you know, that Eastern Europeans wouldn't because they were Jewish. So many of them were Jewish. So it's always been a fear. It's always been unfounded.

And yet, even people in the church who are not called to live out of fear, who are called to trust in the sort of abundance, the abundant economy of their God, still sort of default to these fears and to these narratives that are in the culture. And it's really difficult to get people out of them. And, you know, they say you have to have just conversations that are gentle and offer people facts to counteract all the myths they have. And one of their biggest myths is that their ancestors are different than the immigrants coming today. But all the research shows they're exactly the same. They have the same needs and the same humanity. Nobody came here because things were really great in Ireland or things were really great in Hungary or whatever they were.

They came here because there was a need, right? Sometimes a need for refuge, sometimes a need for economic opportunity. Yeah. And, you know, that fear of change, as much as, and maybe it's a personality thing. I like change, you know? So I don't personally understand that. But if I, again, give grace and everything, I would think that that would be a common fear regardless of the country. I mean, if a bunch of white Europeans started moving into Uganda and bringing Western values and all this stuff and all of a sudden now it's 20%, 30% white Western,

you know, McDonald's are popping up over there. I don't know, like I could see native Ugandans. I'm just making up Uganda. I've never even been there. But I mean, I would understand any kind of immigration into a country that introduces change to the way things have always been, the values, the culture, whatever. I would assume most humans would be uncomfortable with that. So would you agree with that? Like this isn't necessarily unique to america or even white americans whatever um although we do have i mean we do have a unique

history here that maybe i might be hard to compare um i i have a well do you have any thoughts on that real quick i have another question that just came my mind that i want to forget yeah no i think right i mean i agree with you i think it is not unique because you've seen it in other places around the world. You know, I saw it when I was in the former Soviet Union, you know, in Kazakhstan, Stalin displaced a lot of ethnic Russians there. So that created a rift between the Kazakhs, whose country this, whose fairly homogenous country it had been, to now all these newcomers, all these people that were apart. So yeah, I think it is very human to be suspicious, right, of a different tribe with different

practices, religions, whatever it may be. And this is difficult, and I want to resist it. this is difficult and I want to resist it. What's the perspective from, and I know there's not one perspective, but immigrants who came to America legally, took a long time, money, all this stuff. What is the documented immigrants perspective on undocumented immigrants? Not that there's, again, not that there's one monolithic perspective, but because I've heard that documented immigrants sometimes are like, they're the ones that maybe would be

more against undocumented immigrants. Or is that not true? No, that is a narrative that is true, unfortunately. Yeah, I think that there's, you know, honestly, the reason my family was able to be, you know, we weren't documented the first three years we were in the U.S., but we were in line to wait for our immigrant visa because my uncle was a U.S. citizen. He sponsored my dad, who's his brother, and my dad, who are his derivatives. But there are a lot of people who don't have access to a legal pathway. And many of them are people that have worked here for a long time.

They've given their gifts, their family, their work to this country. But there's no legal pathway because unless you have, you know, you're brought here by, they say the four ways to get into the U.S. are blood, sweat, tears, and luck, right? So, blood, family relationships, sweat, work visas, but those work visas, they don't go to people in slaughterhouses or agriculture. They go to like software engineers. They go to PhDs and, you know, uh, in fields that are coveted in the U S um, then you have your, um, tears, people who come here. Uh, we, we take in a percentage of 1% of the world's refugees. Only 4% of the world's refugees are ever resettled. So asylum seekers and refugees are the tears category, and we take in a small number.

And then there's a diversity visa lottery, which is like a chance of one in 300, but only for certain countries. So those are the only ways in. So there are a lot of people who have been here who don't qualify under any of these categories. I mean, you think about somebody like an agricultural worker. They've been here, they've been working, they're literally putting food on our tables, but don't have a way to earn citizenship legally. I mean, it's immoral that we depend on their labor, but we don't want their face. We just want their hands, you know, to produce and create for us. And so I always tell people, if I'm speaking around Thanksgiving at different places, I always tell them, you know, take time to pray and thank the immigrant labor represented at your dinner table. Because there's a lot, I guarantee you, that's represented there.

And yet many of them don't have any way to have legal status in the U.S. So it's immoral. It's wrong because it's really an exploitation of people in need for our benefit. And then we have the nerve to say, well, we don't want you here, you know, after you gave us your labor and produced for us. And so I think it's very, it's very difficult for people to quantify how much, because how much we are, the labor of immigrants benefits our economy, documented or not. And all of these people have sought to research this. And this research has been done for over 100 years. They've tried to find links between migration and criminality,

between how harmful immigration is for the country. And it's not. It's good for the country. Even undocumented migration is good for the country. Really? I'm sure that's disputed, right? Yeah. It's shocking, but undocumented immigrants,

on the average, pay in $80,000 more into the system than they ever take out. They're not eligible for public benefits, and they can't file taxes. So they pay taxes, but can't receive a refund ever if they overpay, like most of us do. So yeah, even like libertarian think tanks have researched this. Excuse me. And that's what they've they've come up with i've i've i heard that years ago when i back in the 2007 when i taught a class on uh ethics we dealt with immigration i remember coming across that i i didn't look too deeply

in in it but um that it's actually good for the economy, has been historically good for the economy to have a certain percentage of undocumented immigrants. I mean, unfortunately, because like you said, they're paying in more than they're getting out. It's not good in a sense for them. I don't even know if we should celebrate it, but it does counter the argument that undocumented immigrants are harming the economy, which again, that's not even, I mean, I don't even like that from a Christian perspective. Even if it were true as a Christian, I'm like, okay, certain people came into Babylon without the right documentation that Babylon said they should have.

And it's making the wealthiest country in the face of human history a little bit less wealthy i'm an alien and sojourner like in a sense i'm like there's plenty to go around like as a christian why would i be that concerned with how how they got in. And again, okay, there's a tension of like, no, we should, like you said, you know, obey the laws and not, whatever. Like, I get that, but shouldn't the human need trump that? I mean... Yeah, life should trump that. Should trump an unjust law that keeps people from accessing resources that would save their lives or their families' lives, you know. Now, is it – so here's – I guess the pushback would be, I mean, every country on the planet has legal ways to get in. Like, I can't just wander into Guatemala, right?

I mean, do you have a do you have a passport do you have a window no i'm just you can for six months oh you can't okay you can but you can't but like i in it like i can't um europe i can't just wander around europe without you know a passport or without you know a visa and like so it's it's not i'm thinking out loud here, so help me out. I don't think it would be unjust to have certain laws of citizenship. From a political national standpoint, I would simply say from a Christian standpoint, living as an alien and sojourner in whatever country we're in, we have a moral obligation to live out the Good Samaritan and to love our neighbor and our enemy. And whatever laws are in the country that we live in, we should abide by

those laws unless there's a biblical value that is at odds maybe, what's in front of us. So I don't know. It is a tension, right? I mean. Yeah. And I don't think that anyone is saying, oh, we want people just break the law. Well, there is somebody saying that, but there is a context for it. There's a context for it. But what we want is to make these laws more just because the fact is we do have a lot more labor needs that we can't meet ourselves with our aging population. So that is a reality, an economic reality.

So we can let in more people than we currently do. Do you know that back when people were coming through Ellis Island, the Baltimore port, sometimes 5,000 people came through in one day. Today, there are 5,000 work visas for one year, for one year. And so all those other people don't get visas, right? So the fact is, there is a lot of need that we have, and there's a need that our neighbors have as well. So we can let in a lot more people than we do. The other thing I think that, you know, there's a Christian ethicist, Miguel de la Torre, who says something really interesting. You know, a lot of us have been working for, to change these laws, to make them more welcoming and to more robust, right? Let in more people, increase the refugee ceiling, all of those things.

And there's a kind of hope, he says, that can be oppressive because change never comes. You keep working for it and meeting with this congressman and that congressman and attending advocacy dinners and presentations and nothing ever changes. And so he says that there is a way that we can mess with the system of unjust laws. And he would liken it, for example, to the way that Rahab messed with the Canaanites, right? She lied and misrepresented what was going on. And the way Tamar received justice, you know, from her father-in-law, if you might remember. She lied, pretended to be a prostitute. So he says in line with that kind of ethic, the idea that there is a just end.

And when these laws are unjust and harm God's children, There is a duty almost to subvert them. And so, for example, there are people in the UK when there were deportation flights to the Caribbean and Africa, all these British citizens got on the plane and stood up and refused to sit down so that the plane couldn't take off. And everybody had to get off the plane. And so they kept their neighbors from getting deported by doing that. There are people who will, even though it's illegal in Arizona, they will go to the desert and drop off gallons of water for migrants and other people so that they don't, you know, die of dehydration in the desert. There are people who will hide, you know, immigrants in their homes, protect them from border patrol. There are people who surround ICE trucks, refusing to let them take their neighbors away.

So this, he would say, is just and good work because the system is corrupt. It's not changing. There's been very little change since 1965. And the change that there has been has been more restrictive, not helpful to the cause in any way. And so that's one way. Karen, real quick, when you say unjust law, what is the law and what is unjust about it?

Sure. So, for example, under the current immigration system that we have, where, well, we have essentially two signs at the borderlands. We have one sign that says keep out and we have another one that says help wanted. Because the fact is people cross the border and they're able to get jobs. And do you think that there's a very strict punishment for Americans who give jobs to undocumented immigrants? There isn't. In fact, the government probably doesn't even know because they're not required to be part of an electronic verification system unless they receive government grants or something like that. So we have this system where the governments basically don't ask, don't tell. The other thing is you have DHS saying these people shouldn't be here at all, right? And now we're

going to try to deport them. And then you have social security and the IRS taking money from them. So the IRS has actually said on the record, if you do not have a social security number, we're going to give you this taxpayer identification number for you to file your taxes because we want our money. And social security said the same thing. We want our money. So you have this kind of duplicitous response from the government.

You have these agencies saying, yes, give us your money, your taxes. And this one's saying, no, you don't belong here. So what is the message? There's no consistency in the way that our government is acting. People are able to come and get jobs because there's no employment system that everyone is required to do. employment system that everyone is required to do. So it's very duplicitous. And that's what we mean by unjust, because people still want the labor. They're still wanting people to come in here and work. But on the other hand, they're going around trying to deport them as well, while other people are saying, well, we want their tax money. So yes, the system isn't working because it's not letting in enough people. It only has four ways. When people tell me, we just want people to get in line, I want to say to them, there is no line for so many people. There is no line to get into. no line to get into. So the assumption that people have like, oh no, the system is good and just,

you just have to go and wait in your line. That's not true. It's simply not true. It's a misunderstanding of the way that the system works. There's only four ways in. Someone like Ruth, none of those four ways would have worked for her if she were coming into the US today. She doesn't have any blood ties because Naomi's her U.S. today. She doesn't have any blood ties because Naomi's her mother-in-law. She doesn't have any higher level job skills. She's probably illiterate. She doesn't have any kind of refugee status because she's really an economic immigrant. She's just coming as a family-based immigrant. So to be a refugee, you have to be fleeing persecution. She's not fleeing persecution. And to be part of the diversity visa lottery, you have to have a high school education. And she doesn't qualify for any of those. So today, if Ruth were coming

with Naomi and it were like the U.S. border, you know, coming into Bethlehem, she'd be turned away. She wouldn't be able to come in. And Naomi would have to journey on alone. And how different that story would be without Ruth and Naomi able to support one another in that. And I tell people that, you know, that's part of what I tell them when I talk about it is, yes, we have this beautiful story of migration. But if that story were happening today, it wouldn't work. You know, it wouldn't happen. She would be seen as a drain on the system, right?

Like she's not bringing – she's bringing more needs than she's, you know, theoretically, you know, going to be giving out. you know, theoretically, you know, going to be given out. So what, so would you, I mean, I would assume that again, any country is going to have legal ways to get in the country. Like nobody just has a fence list, you know, um, where anybody can wander in and there's no even citizenship required. You just come in and do whatever like that doesn't seem reasonable. So would you be, uh, would you advocate for just the number? Well, obviously, so you've addressed the systems just kind of broke it. We're like, don't come in, but if you're in, we're going to benefit from you. Yeah. And that does seem very inconsistent. Would you also say that the number, the processes of getting in legally should be radically reshaped and the number

should go way up of how many are allowed. And where is that? Like, where should there be a cap? At what point does, you know, too many refugees or immigrants actually end up hurting the country or whatever, if that's even should be a concern. That's a great question to ask Native Americans. At what point does all these immigrants coming in here start hurting the environment? Oh, love it.

So, you know, I don't know what that number would be. I just know that it's a lot more. There are a lot, a lot more jobs. And then there's also the fact that a lot of the economic problems, for example, in Guatemala, the reason that my family fled is because the U.S. funded a civil war in Guatemala, destabilized the entire economy. 200,000 indigenous people were murdered as a result and many more persecuted. Lots of Catholic priests were murdered. It was a really, you know, I was just in Guatemala in December and there's like this, we went

to this town where they had a, you know, a kind of honor, a place of honor for these priests and people who were murdered during the war for protecting indigenous people. So there's that aspect of if I go to your house and burn it down and you try to find refuge in my house and I say, no, you need to go find your own house, Preston. Well, I just burned down your house. How is it just for me to tell you you can't come here now? You know, you can't come in.

So that's, you know, in ancient Israel, there were these oppressive empires. You had Babylon, right? Rome. But for many places in the world, the oppressive empire is the United States. You know, there's a graph that you can find easily online of all the civil wars funded in Latin America alone, all the government coups, you know, that which the CIA was behind. And it's, you know, our countries aren't poor, our countries are looted. They're being looted by a Western empire. In Guatemala, the war was because of

United Fruit Company, which is now Chiquita Brands International. The war can be traced all the way back to those people wanting to control the land, this small group of wealthy Americans wanting to control the land for the production of bananas and other things, where the government of Guatemala wanted to give it back to the indigenous people, give that same land back to indigenous people. So there's a lot of sort of macro level things at work. And then there's other things, right? There's other things that are more micro level, like people seeing people just coming across the border. But the fact is, I don't know how many more we can take, but we can take in more. And the way that people talk

about the borderlands, so I had a chance to go to the borderlands when there was the migrant caravan and, you know, and you would have thought it was like, you know, half a million people or something. I don't know. The way that it was portrayed in the media, I thought it was going to be some ginormous, you know, crisis situation. And what it really was is a lot of poor migrants in need. And certainly there were in the thousands, but it did not approach, you know, the numbers that you would have thought.

It wasn't as high as you would have expected. Um, and like I said, most migration is coming from Asia, not from Latin America, not through the Southern border. Um, so most migration to have undocumented people, they fly in, they get a tourist visa and overstay. So that's about 50 percent of undocumented immigrants. So you can build a wall down there if you want. But if it's high, if it's not high enough to prevent planes from flying in, then people are still going to come in undocumented. So we have these a lot of processes that just aren't working. And the fact that we have 50% of people overstay visas

means that they're finding jobs here, right? Who is employing them? Who? And why aren't those people being punished, you know, uh, for giving jobs to people who are undocumented, you know, why is there no penalty for that? Um, because it's going to keep happening as long as people are able to get jobs. So, yes, that's why I'm telling you the system is so outdated and it really does not meet our current labor needs or our immigrant neighbors' needs. And this is why everybody's just subverting the system. Everybody's just subverting the system. Everybody's just going around it. If you want to stop illegal migration, then one, we need to elect leaders who are going to have better foreign policy because that's what's creating migration out of countries.

But also, we have to create conditions to make it easier for people to enter legally and be able to work here and perhaps return back. You know, we used to have this Bracero program where people went, you know, back and forth. Right. And then there was a lot of animosity against that program. So, yes, there's no simple solutions, but we can let in more people than we do. And the fact is, as Christians, we're not supposed to be trusting in scarcity. We're not supposed to be trusting in this leader or that leader, whether they're Democratic or Republican. We're not supposed to be trusting in them. We're supposed to be trusting in,

well, what does our God command us to do? And how can we show, you know, our trust in God? Just like, you know, with Sabbath, something like Sabbath, right? We know that people who rest one day a week are actually more productive the rest of the week. It's better than working seven days straight and trying to keep up this burnout situation, right? But it requires trust in God in a world, the ancient world where nobody took a Sabbath, nobody rested, everybody worked seven days a week. It took a lot of trust in God for people to observe Sabbath and to trust in God's economy that working for six days and resting for seven was the right way to live. It's the same thing with immigration.

Yes, you can look around and you can think, I don't know how this is going to work. We have, you know, the economy and inflation and all these things happening. And these leaders are telling me this thing and that thing. And I hear the news media about the borderlands. You can trust in that. Or you can look at these verses in the scriptures, all these places where God tells you, this is how you treat an immigrant in your community. This is how you care for them. This is how you do justice for them. And you just trust that God's economy is big enough, you know, to provide for all of us. And that's what you see in the book of Ruth. That's the, the model, you know,

that's laid out for us in that story. Karen, I've taken you past the hour that you promised me, but I do have one more question. Really important question. Who do you think the Dodgers should go for in the off season with, they have a lot of money. They got rid of two. I hated seeing Seager go. Scherzer, I hated to see go too. I kind of thought I wasn't surprised at that. I was really shocked at Seager going. But who are we going to get? Are we going to get Freddie Freeman? I don't really want Freddie Freeman. I really think we need to go after pitchers. And I think

I don't really want Freddie Freeman. I really think we need to go after pitchers. And I think we need to go for other teams like farm system because that's what we're going to need. I mean, good pitching is what wins October. So we need to go for a strong rotation because Buehler is still developing as a pitcher. When he's good, he's good. Yeah. But he's still inconsistent. Yeah. So we need a good – some good, like, backups for him. Scherzer and him were great as a team. But, yeah, they were – I knew they weren't going to pay Scherzer. So that's what I think we need. We need to go get good pitching. And I saw the Angels were able to get some good pitching in the offseason. So I'm hoping that – Dustin May still is out for the first half, I think. Right. Yeah. Yeah, he is. He is because of the Tommy John and he's still kind of wild though.

I mean, he's, he's strong, you know, he could throw hard, but he's still kind of wild because he's so young. He's like Kershaw was when Kershaw came up. If you remember that. He used to have these outings where you'd be like, dude, you can throw 100 miles per hour, but you don't know where you're throwing. You have no control. So I'm hoping this for Dustin May. That two-seamer he has, sometimes he'll throw it and I swear it moves 12 inches in. It's insane. Insane. 99 miles an hour and it starts on like the mid part of the

plate and busts him in and they just they can't do anything with it um but yeah he is yeah he's when he gets his placement down i think i mean he's gonna be incredible i mean he already is really good but yeah we do need a veteran that's not over the hill but somebody that's gonna be a steady um so no on freeman uh i mean i wouldn't mind a good pitcher and i don't know he's one of these guys too that's like atlanta you know made and i don't know it's really hard for those guys yeah those guys to leave we need yeah we need somebody um who's a veteran not too old but who can sort of mentor some of these younger guys and help them to we also need to get walker bueller some pants that

fit him his pants are so small and they ride up little high waters some pants that fit oh that's awesome um do you know, is this a season? We still, nobody really knows. I mean, I know they're in deliberation. Lockout. Yeah. They were supposed to report yesterday, pitchers and catchers, but because the lockout is still happening. Yeah.

It looks like we might get a season that starts in June or July. We'll probably only get half a season this year anyway. So we might get May just in time. Yeah. I mean, I got i gotta admit during baseball season i get less done so that might be good for my life but um and my marriage but um oh man i got season i got uh spring training tickets to go see the dodgers in late march which i've never been to spring training before me and my son and we And we're all excited, but I'm like, buddy, I don't know if this is happening.

Yeah, Camelback. Yeah, I've gone there to see them too in Glendale, Arizona. Yeah, it's really cool. I love it. I mean, they're right in front of you. It's super cool to go. But yeah, when I was at Fuller, I used to go when the Dodgers were in town, I would go like once a week down because you could just take the Metro down to Union Station and get in there.

And if you go the same day, sometimes I got tickets for $7. Yeah, yeah. It's magical. Some midweek games. My son. Yeah, and it's such a great stadium. It's gorgeous. It's gorgeous.

And the weather is – whenever I've been there, the weather is just beautiful. Yes. And there's just – I took my son. My son is a huge Dodger fan. He's 12 about to turn 13. And I took him to Dodger Stadium for the first time this year. And, you know, you walk in. It's just bigger than life.

The parking lot is huge. You go in. And it was on Mookie Betts' bobblehead night actually. Oh, man. It was just Mookie Betts' bobblehead night, actually. Oh, man. It was just so magical. Yeah. It is. It's a great, great stadium with perfect weather.

Yeah. I know. Believe me. I've been in Baltimore where it's so hot and humid, you can't even stay through five innings. Oh, wow. So I really, really miss Starter Stadium. My son really wants to go to Camden Yards, actually.

That's a cool park. Yeah. It's a beautiful park. Come in April or May. Okay. Because even early June is good. But man, July, August, September, it's so humid. It's like unbearable.

And there's these like black biting flies too. And so you have to wear long sleeves and it's just, yeah. So it is a beautiful park. There's really great food. It's in the middle of the city. You can see the whole Baltimore skyline. But it is really hot and humid during, you know, July and August. Okay. All right. So's all coming late spring.

Well, Karen is great talking to you. Many blessings on you, your life, your ministry and finishing this, this book. Congratulations on your second one. That's awesome. Thanks a lot, Preston. It was great to talk with you. Yeah, you too.