I set out finish this post today and realized that it’s Father’s day. I’d rather write about dadhood, but on this day, apparently, I’m expected to attend a few things, so there’s not much time to start over. The following rant will have to suffice 🙂

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Recently, according to many who work in US immigration and border control, there has been an unprecedented surge of people at our southern border, posing an equally unprecedented problem for our system of control and its agents.

As you might guess, I’ve gotten myself sucked into myriad debates on social media with folk who don’t feel as I do about immigration.

A friend of mine recently posted that Biden’s border policy will destroy the United States, alleging that 4 million people will cross the border illegally this year. He then declared that a vote for Biden is tantmount to sedition.

I chided him for posting hate speech and off we went.

Turns out that this is complicated issue; fact checking immigration numbers isn’t easy. There’s much emotion to be exploited by the media here. Many of the articles I came across rely more on hearsay and theory than raw data.

While I did make some interesting discoveries, what follows is little more than an armchair analasys. It might even be biased if you can believe that. Either way, I missed much, surely, but hopefully this is helfpul to anyone seeking to get a clearer picture of immigration in the US, especially as it pertains to undocumented folk.

A “Flood” of People

Will millions cross our borders illegally in 2023, and get away with it?

Here, the argument from anti-liberal America is that our country can only handle so many people. Adding illegal immigrants will tip us over the edge. If we let too many people in, the argument goes, we’ll run out of room, resources, etc.

According to Border Patrol Chief Paul Ortiz, (you’ll have to scroll through his feed to get the numbers) an average of 12,500 immigrants per week have snuck in undetected since Feb 2023. The numbers fluxuate, especially when there’s a humanitarian crisis within “walking” distance of our Southern border, but if we go with the above number, about 500K illegal immigrants will sneak in this year.

Customs and Border Patrol reports that 600K “gotaways” entered the country in 2022.

In honor of whatever ignorance I bring to the data, let’s double that: 1 million undocumented immigrants enter the country each year. That’s an increase of ~0.3% to the US population annually.

Is that a flood?

Maybe.

But you can’t answer that question until you’ve also considered the number of people who emigrate from the US (births and deaths tend to cancel each other out). The term “Net Migration Rate” seeks to represent that, i.e., the total number of people who have immigrated minus the number who have emigrated.

The current US net migration rate is estimated to be 2.748 per 1,000 people: for every 1000, we gain ~3, adding about 1 million to our population each year, a growth rate of 0.3%.

That’s not a far cry from poplation growth estimates that put us at ~0.4% growth over the past 5 years, a number that’s projected to decrease.

That certainly isn’t 4 Million a year.

A “Flood” of Criminals

Some media outlets seem convinced that scads of violent criminals are hiding within this current influx of “gotaways.” By lifting title 42, the Biden administration gave an open invitation for even more immigrants to flood our border, inviting an unthinkable number of n’er-do-wells to cross illegally.

If that’s true, my vote for Biden was truly treasonous.

Turns out that undocumented immigrant crime rates in the US are also tricky to research. I found a couple of studies claiming that this group commits crime at lower rates than documented citizens, but the Center for Immigration Studies responded specifically to these, claiming that undocumented folks actually commit more crime than the rest of us. (check these articles here, here, and here).

I couldn’t find much beyond these, so I turned to overall crime rates in the US. If undocumented immigrants are mostly criminal, and Donald Trump throttled immigration like no president before him, overall crime rates in the US should’ve dropped significantly during his presidency.

They didn’t.

Murder and non-neglegent manslaughter cases rose by almost 80% while violent crime, forcible rape and others ticked up slightly.

I didn’t find nearly enough data to prove, much less suggest, that most undocumented immigrants are criminals, or that they add significantly to America’s crime problem.

A “Flood of Taxpayers”

The IRS claims that undocumented immigrants contribute significant tax dollars –  via sales, income, and property taxes – each year.

I initially called BS on that one. How can an illegal immigrant pay taxes? Sure, they’re consumers and must pay sales tax like the rest of us. But how do they buy houses, or pay income tax? Most of the time they’re paid in cash, under the table. And they’re typically not the wealthiest people; why would they give up any portion of their income?

The Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) initiative allows undocumented folk to pay taxes while restricting border patrol and immigration agencies from accessing any personal information that might be used against them. Consider a few key points from the IRS:

• • • ITINs are a tax processing number issued by the IRS for taxpayers who are not eligible to obtain SSNs
    • Individuals eligible for an ITIN include:
      – Unauthorized immigrants,
      – Lawfully present individuals, and
      – U.S. resident aliens/nonresident aliens

Regarding motivation, the IRS asserts that “tax compliance casts a favorable light on an individual seeking a discretionary U.S. immigration benefit.”

How much do they contribute?:

In tax year 2019, the IRS received over two million returns with the primary taxpayer using an ITIN, with total tax computed after credits of approximately $2.8 billion. For the same tax year, the IRS received about 544,000 returns filed by primary taxpayers with an SSN and a secondary taxpayer with an ITIN. These returns reported over $3 billion in tax after credits were applied.

I might be missing something, but in 2019, there were only 148.3 million “legitimate” tax returns filed in the US.

But that’s just income tax, we also have to consider what they pay in sales and property tax. The Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that undocumented immigrants contribute $11.74 billion per year in total taxes.

I’ve heard much from Conservative media about how Biden’s lax immigration policy is draining America of her finances, and how undocumented immigrates are taking and not giving back. Again, I couldn’t find much data to support anything other than the idea that they might be paying their taxes better than we do.

Personally, Biden’s immigration policy doesn’t frighten me. With regard to immigration in general, America’s current trajectory is not pointed anywhere near destruction.

At the same time, immigration is a complicated thing. No reasonable person would push for a completely open-door policy, but what do we do when millions of people park themselves at our southern border because their country has become too dangerous to live in?

Tell them to go away?

I struggle here.

As a Christian, I believe that the plight of any nation hangs on the Almighty’s whim, and said Almighty’s holy book has some things to say to about immigrants, regardless of whatever “status” us mere mortals might confer upon them.

When an immigrant resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The immigrant residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. ~ Lev 19:33-34

Christian history has no shortage of God-fearing Bible-believers being jerks to people who come from somewhere else. So you can imagine why “God’s Word” might offer, from time to time, the “status” that God confers upon immigrants, regardles of their made up, imaginary, DIY status.

Regarding how many people we “should” let in, I have more to think on. Again, i hope what I’ve managed to conjure to this point helps you towards a clearer understanding.

Happy Father’s Day y’all.

For a very, very long time, Christians of all flavors have been talking about heaven and hell; not so much what they might or might not be, but who gets to go there and why. There are so many other things to talk about regarding eternity, or whatever it is that comes next, but “who goes to heaven and hell?” seems to define and consume everything.

Today, even after 2000+ years of discourse, rigorous study, and heated debate, Christendom is divided. To put it simply, one group believes that Heaven must be earned and hell is therefore deserved. Another claims that Heaven is gained by faith only, i.e., that Jesus died to remove any barriers between people and heaven. But you have to believe that to get it. If you don’t, you spend eternity in the other place.

The last group confesses something similar, but without any conditions, i.e., everyone gets in.

Before we go any further, to make this a little easier if you don’t mind, I’ll refer to the “gotta earn it to get it” group as “Catholic,” the “gotta believe it to get it” group as “Evangelical, and the “already got it” group as “Universalist.”

Each of these considers the others’ views to be heretical. The Catholic, for example, sees great danger in the Evangelical perspective: if we fail to emphasize obedience, the argument goes, everyone will simply do whatever they want. The Evangelical, on the other hand condemns anything that smacks of “everyone goes to heaven,” and the Universalist condemns the Catholic and the Evangelical because their system places conditions on the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God.

For most of my Christian life, I embraced the Evangelical view. There are many passages in both the Old and New Testaments that speak of Jesus as “redeemer,” “the final sacrifice,” one whose death removed “the sins of the world.” Along with those come many passages about expressing faith and/or trust in this idea, failure to do so might result in eternal punishment. So, for most of my adult Christian life, I’ve had no problem with the “gotta believe it to get it” perspective.

But there’s an episode from my seminary days that won’t leave my head, one that is now toying with my beliefs.

During a class on the New Testament, I was surprised to hear my very Evangelical professor work through a list of Biblical passages that deal with who is “saved” from the wrath of God and who isn’t. Some supported the Catholic idea, some the Evangelical view, and others, Universalism.

At the time, that didn’t displace my Evangelical beliefs, but I think much about that day, and the many passages in scripture that seem to support all three views.

I’m now asking, with much more frequency, who is right?

The best place to start is by asking, why do we give “our” passages authority over the others? If I embrace a “gotta believe it to get it” passage in the book of John, for example, why does that override Paul’s thought in the book of Romans that every human that ever lived/died has been justified by the death of Jesus and is, by definition, worthy of heaven?

Should I interpret Paul’s thought in light of John’s as the Evangelical does, or vice-versa, like a good Universalist?

The answer is complicated. Consider just a tiny smattering of these passages, each one supporting a different view:

Then [Jesus] will say to those on his left [at “judgment day”], “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” ~ Matthew 25:41-43, “The Sheep and The Goats”

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ~ John 3:16-18

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death came to all people, because all sinned… Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. ~ Romans 5:12-19

Because there are so many more passages like this, you can understand why the Catholic, Evangelical, and Universalist believe as they do.

Personally, as an Evangelical teetering on the edge of Universalism, I’ll admit that I don’t know what to do with the first passage, where Jesus sends a big bunch of ungenerous people straight to hell. And the second passage sure sounds like “belief” plays a key role in the passage to heaven.

But taking a passage that supports one view and building an entire religion around it, while ignoring the other passages will always be shortsighted. Trying to force the “Sheep and Goats” passage into a “believe it to get it” system, for example, leaves us with the belief that we’re somehow exempt from the world’s myriad issues of poverty and injustice.

On the other hand, how can we possibly reconcile three passages that seem so mutually exclusive?

Is this simply one more example of the Bible contradicting itself, or is it one more aspect of God’s world that us humans can’t fully grasp?

When Jesus came to the Jewish people, he tried his best to explain how things worked. Most condemned his as crazy because he uprooted almost every system they could think of.

Like us, they had it all figured out.

On almost every point, they had gotten it wrong. The only thing they had right was that there was only one God, the Hebrew God, and the scriptures were his “word.” Almost everything else was wrong in Jesus’ opinion, and in need of a complete overhaul.

Is it the same with us and our thoughts about Heaven? If Jesus came to earth – the way he did the first time – and unpacked for us with great detail the inner workings of salvation, would we call him crazy?

Maybe the the reason that the bible seems so all over the place is that there’s something deeper than mere Catholicism, or Evangelicalism, or Universalism.

We’re not done thinking here yet. There’s a mystery that still needs to be explored. But in our need to define things, to claim mastery over God’s universe, we declare that our religion is the right one, then take every bible passage we can get our hands on and try to make it fit.

There’s a big difference between a puzzle that’s been put together by a three-year-old who doesn’t have the patience to figure out how the pieces fit, and one that’s been put together correctly.

The biggest difference is that one is much more complicated than the other, taking much longer to complete.

At the same time, because faith and day-to-day life are always hopelessly intertwined, we have to land the plane, even if it’s in the wrong spot. That doesn’t mean that we have to stop thinking, but we can’t forever live in limbo regarding how we think God thinks about us.

And so I submit to you the place that I’ve landed.

If God is real, he is also just, so we should all be concerned about morality, especially about treating others the way we expect to be treated. But we should be motivated by love, not fear, so removing the threat of hell should be part of our system as well.

To that, I rely on one biblical truth that nobody’s arguing: God expects our forgiveness to contain no conditions whatsoever. If someone who has wronged me refuses to repent, or “own” their mistake, or apologize, I still have to forgive them.

According to Jesus, I’m supposed to forgive even my enemies.

If my forgiveness is to be unconditional, shouldn’t I assume that God’s is as well? How can God’s forgiveness be less perfect than mine?

In Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, the biggest sinner a first-century Jewish mind can fathom, a son who is utterly unrepentant, receives unmerited grace and forgiveness from his victim.

I rely heavily on this idea. So should you. We have been undonditionally forgiven by God, regardless of whether or not we are repentant – even aware – of the ways that we have wronged God and others.

Along with unconditional forgiveness comes the unconditional grace and favor of God. Not only are we loved, we can be as close to him as we choose to be. We can live a life that more closesly approximates the one we’re hoping to live simply by playing life by his rules. We can feel his presence and all of the hope that comes with it.

According to Jesus, we can enter his world, now.

But the king of that world demands that we care for the poor and marginalized, regardless of who’s fault it is that they’re the poor and marginalized. If you doubt that, commit to memory the “Sheep and Goats” passage (above) and help me understand why those people don’t take precedence.

In short, because I have been reconciled to God, I am free to play by a different set rules, one that is governed by love, mercy, forgiveness, patience, generosity, hope, and peace than any system I’ve operated under. I am also forced to consider the idea that I matter, that the very creator of the universe is not encumbered by my frailties, that he sees the best.

How can I refuse to look at others the same way?

Again, this is little more than my personal take on the tension between heaven and hell, so please take this with a grain of salt while you consider how it might fit into your system.

I have much work to do here and will probably revisit this many times in the coming weeks. For now, I’m sitting on a porch by the beach in Mexico with some good friends who are in the kitchen cooking breakfast for 2 families. I’ll sign off for now, hopefully leaving you a little more open to how God’s world works.

In Jesus’ day, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel represented two major “houses” of thought on Jewish law, both rendering near opposite interpretations of Moses’ divorce commandment. Recorded in Mishnah – the earliest written collection of Jewish oral traditions – Hillel taught that a man could divorce his wife under any circumstance, including “burning his dinner,” while Shammai taught that divorce was only permissible in cases of “sexual immorality.”

This bit of history clarifies an episode in Matthew’s gospel where a group of Pharisees – experts on Jewish law – tested Jesus on the matter, hoping to expose him as a fraud and dampen his growing popularity. Jesus’ take on Jewish law in general was characteristically deranged, often leaving his audience in dismay. “If you are angry with your brother or sister,” he jabbed in his Sermon on the Mount, “you are guilty of murder,” and, “If you look lustfully at a woman, you’re guilty of adultery.” Murder and adultery were two of the biggest sins a first-century Jewish person could fathom, “abominations” as the Old Testament categorizes them.

Matthew’s Jesus seemed to condemn everyone.

Or was he simply trying to level the playing field? If everyone’s guilty, nobody is more or less righteous than anyone else, all in need of the unconditional mercy and forgiveness that lay at the core of Jesus’ teaching. That would have deeply assaulted the spiritual caste system so prevalent in ancient Judaism, as well as the one that infests just about every expression of Christianity since.

With regards to divorce and remarriage, it’s no surprise that Jesus condemned the perspectives of Hillel, Shamai, and Moses himself.

Recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and referenced in Paul’s writings, Jesus taught that marriage was a permanent bond, indissoluble by humans. “Therefore,” he jabbed again, “whoever divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery.”

That left even his closest followers scratching their heads.

But Jesus didn’t share his perspective because he wanted everyone to run around condemning the divorced/remarried crowd. That’s certainly not why I bring it up.

Not only was he aware of how lethal divorce could be for a woman in his world, he knew that the Pharisees were intimately familiar – many of them would have been on their 2nd+ marriage, in ardent support of Hillel’s “any reason” interpretation. But instead of attaching himself to one perspective or the other, or anywhere in between, Jesus condemned the most influential sect in ancient Israel of adultery on multiple counts.

This was simply one of many swipes that Jesus took at people of influence who believed that they were cleaner, holier, and more acceptable than everyone else.

It’s a similar swipe at today’s self-righteousness, but the early church in America didn’t see it that way. Up until the sexual revolution, bible-believers condemned divorce with great passion, rejecting anyone who sought to remarry. In the late 60’s, however, we began to realize that divorce was becoming a way of life for many: if we continued our campaign there wouldn’t be much left of the church. And who wants to harass people who’ve been through the hell of divorce, now seeking a fresh start?

Ultimately, we adopted a concession that put the church on a more human trajectory, welcoming remarried folk with open arms and treating them with the equality and dignity that they deserve.

But we’ve still got some work to do.

Today, gay marriage sits in our crosshairs and the queer community in the place once occupied by divorced folk.

According to mainstream interpretations of the bible, same-sex relationships are considered “abominations;” sins of the highest order, detestable to God, etc. This of course has driven many Christians to embark on the now infamous anti-gay campaigns that characterize much of the global church. If the bible is the “Word of God,” we say, and it slaps such a harsh label on something, shouldn’t bible-believing Christians oppose it?

But if we use the same interpretive utensils for 2nd + marriage that we use for Gay marriage, we run into the kind of problem that we always run into when we use the bible to fight culture. In this case, the Old Testament considers adultery to be the same kind of “abomination” as same sex relationships, and Jesus equated remarriage with adultery.

In other words, if Gay AND 2nd+ marriages are abominations, and we’re charged with the oppostion of all things abominable, why do we oppose one and make concessions for the other?

According to the majority of contemporary New Testament scholars, that’s easy: Matthew’s Jesus threw in a loophole (in bold type below):

Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, not upon sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery. ~ Matthew 19:8-9

It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. ~ Matthew 5:31-32

Few will mention the mountain of interpretive issues involved with these passages. For example, the key words/phrases in their loopholes were rarely used in the ancient world, and they only appear once in the gospel of Matthew. Limiting them to one interpretation is problematic. Furthermore, a great many early Christian writers and thinkers (commonly referred to as the “Church Fathers”), as well as the earliest church councils didn’t read any loopholes into Jesus’ divorce perspective. That stands in sharp contrast to the majority of contemporary New Testament scholars who do. Why is there such a big interpretive gap? It certainly isn’t because we know more about Koine Greek and its parent culture than the people who knew it better than we do.

And why were Jesus’ closest followers so aghast at his teaching? They were familiar with Hillel’s “anything goes” perspective as well as Shammai’s much more narrow “sexual immorality” view – these were hotly debated in their time. How is it that Jesus could elicit such a response?

The disciples said to him, ‘If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.’ ~ Matthew 19:10

Jesus’ words went so far outside the boundaries of popular thought that they seemed to condemn marriage itself.

The most glaring problem comes when we consider Moses’ teaching on divorce, the passage referenced by Jesus and the Pharisees in their debate. I’ll admit that I only recently read it; in my 20 years of studying scripture, including 4 years of Master’s-level theological study, I didn’t know this passage existed. It was never mentioned in class, nor in the hundreds of Sunday morning sermons that I’ve sat through over the years. I always assumed that, when the Pharisees questioned Jesus, they referenced some unwritten oral tradition, not a Mosaic commandment clearly outlined in Torah:

If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds in her a matter of sexual immorality, he can write her a certificate of divorce, give it to her, and send her from his house ~ Deuteronomy 24:1

Jesus can’t possibly be saying anything akin to, “Moses said that you can divorce your wives in cases of sexual immorality, but I tell you that Moses had it wrong; you can only divorce your wives in cases of sexual immorality.”

Reading a loophole into Jesus’ teaching simply doesn’t work.

Whatever Matthew’s Jesus meant by παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας and μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ, he was offering no outs. No conditions. Perhaps that’s why there is no mention of a loophole in the Gospels of Mark and Luke. Paul references Jesus’ divorce perspective in his letter to the ancient Church in Corinth, but no “sexual immorality” concession is mentioned there, either.

Therefore, I’ll reiterate that, according to the way that many Christians read the Old Testament as an anti-gay magna carta, the New Testament condemns remarriage with the same language. So, to anti-Gay Christianity – to my theological alma mater that won’t consider queer applicants, or my former church that once kicked a woman off of the music team because she likes girls, or to the many donors of a Christian school who recently pulled their funding because of that school’s newly-adopted inclusion policy, or my pastor friend who wants to tell his two gay congregants that they can stay married but sex between them is forbidden – I ask: why give such concession to one “biblical” sin but so vehemently oppose the other?

Why is remarriage OK and Gay marriage one of the biggest sins on the list?

To this Evangelical, bible-believing Christian of many years, it seems that the anti-Gay church is engaged in a very old brand of hypocrisy, one that has long been part of our ethos as “people of the book.” Our history is full of bible-believing God followers who set their face against a large group of humans, only to be exposed thereafter as people who got it wrong, to put it mildly.

Christians who fueled the Antebellum South, Nazi Germany, and the Crusader campaigns will forever serve as clear examples, as will the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.

Don’t get suckered into this ~ Matthew 16:6 (my paraphrase)

Twenty years from now – whether we find a pro-gay loophole in our holy writ, or put a massive rethink on the bible’s alleged anti-queer passages, and/or accept the tension between scripture, faith, praxis, and culture – the majority of us will come to embrace the queer community, ordain them as ministers, officiate their weddings, bake their cakes, call them “us,” and consider them just as holy as we believe ourselves to be. The rest of us will calve away, as we always do in these moments, convinced that we’re fighting for God while becoming ever more irrelevant – if you can imagine such a thing.

Between now and then, as in our anti-remarriage era, many will be turned away, all in the name of a Jewish carpenter whose perspective on who is holy and who is not still leaves us scratching our heads.