The American Churchman: Should Christians Support the Dignity Act?

And welcome to the American Churchman podcast, where we encourage churchmen to take dominion, to honor God in their lives, to obey Christ. And I am joined by my co-host, Matthew Pearson, as always. Hey, Matthew, how are you?

I'm good, John. How are you doing? Good. Good. It's kind of a long day for me. I've been up since actually 2 a .m. because I woke up and I couldn't get back to sleep. So I decided to take an early morning hike and I got to see the sunrise, which is kind of cool.

It doesn't happen much. Very nice. It's a different world. You know, you forget sometimes like really early morning. Let's just say we don't have a shortage of rabbits. I couldn't believe how many rabbits were out.

There's a lot of animals, obviously. But yeah, I'm kind of a I don't know. I thought at least I was a night owl, but I'm realizing because I've talked to other people who are true night owls that actually I'm pretty average.

Like I like going to bed between 10 and 12. I don't know why I got off on this tangent. I just first thing that came to my mind, man, because I'm tired. Right. So are you a night.

Owl? What are you? Either or I get sleepy at night, though, I sleep like an old person. I like to go to bed between, like you said, 10 and 12. Last night I was up late, though. So but, you know, that's just I like both, though.

I like early morning and late night.

I sort of stereotype all zoomers as night owls for some reason, because I think I think they're just watching reels till 1 a .m.. I don't know. That's true. I don't know why I think that I have no evidence.

Yeah, I think I've done that before. I can't even.

Lie to you. I'm like I'm just like all the rest of them.

You're just like the rest of them, all the zoomers, those dysfunctional, not well-adjusted socially zoomers. Yep. So anyway, we do have serious things to talk about today. We're going to talk about the jealousy of God and we're not going to sing you the song.

I asked Matthew about that beforehand. We don't sing that at my church, by the way. I don't even know what the title is. He is jealous for me. I don't remember either. Trees and bending. And yeah, that's a that's I don't know how I even know.

It's how he loves by the David Crowder band. Oh, is it David Crowder? He loves like a hurricane. I am a tree bending. It sounds like he's a weight of wind and mercy. What?

He's whimpering in the song like he's like, oh, and then it's like a big gap. And he's like how he loves me. And then you think like, is he dead? And then he's like, oh, and you're like, oh, he's still alive.

So.

John, you should get less sleep more often. You're funnier.

Am I? Yeah, probably. You're cracking me up, man. Cosmic treason is enjoying this. Oh, cosmic treason called it, I think, before you, David Crowder.

Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. That was like 10 years ago. I'll have to look at the chat more.

That was like when you were born, you know, 10 years ago.

I was born 10 years ago. Yeah. Something like that. I'm 15 years old, everybody.

So we're going to talk about jealousy a little bit. And the Lord is a jealous God. I mean, this is a very serious topic. And then we're going to talk about immigration and this new I'm calling it Amnesty Light, but it's this dignity act.

And that should be fun. I think we'll see what direction this goes. But if you're watching the podcast and you want to weigh in, there is a chat so you can comment if you're on Facebook or YouTube. So please do so.

And we'll have a good discussion. But Matthew, let's take it away on the jealousy of God.

Divine Jealousy as a Relational Attribute

Yeah, absolutely. So this is us continuing our little series where we open up going through a divine attribute, if I don't bail out last minute on John and let him know beforehand that I can't do it or something like that.

But actually, after this one, after we get done with God is jealous, we only have two more attributes after this. So we're going to probably start a new series.

Of things to kick off our podcast. We'll just end the podcast. It's over.

Yeah, no. American Churchmen is coming to an end very soon now. So it's a one year thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. But jokes,.

I think, unless John's firing me. No, no, I'm no, I'm joking. I was. I don't know what we'll do next. Maybe people can weigh in on the comments because, you know, people do different things. Years ago, I know Doug Wilson did this like series on his podcast, How Martiology was all sin.

And I was like, how long could you go with that? And I'm pretty sure he's still doing it. That was like, you know, five, six years ago. He somehow found a way to incorporate that. So, I mean, we could we could start finding sub attributes, but that's actually dangerous.

Let's not do that. Not bad. Yeah, well, we'll figure something out.

We'll figure out. Yeah, we'll do. Yeah. Yeah. But so for our attribute today, it's going to be God as jealous. And as I always like to do, we'll be opening up with two verses, one from the old and one from the New Testament.

So our first verse today will be from Exodus chapter 20, verses four through five, where the scripture reads,. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

And our New Testament verse will be from the epistle to the Hebrews chapter 12, verses 28 through 29, where the author, he writes,. Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire.

Something which the scriptures claim about God numerous times or what it predicates of God is that he is a jealous God. And when we speak of God as a jealous God or of jealousy as an attribute of God, remember like one of the distinctions that we have made many times on the series is that there are some attributes which are relational.

This would be one of them. This attribute is relational. So it's a manner or affection of divine affection, which is specifically relates to how he sees other people, his creation. So it's a relational attribute, and it also intersects heavily with other attributes of God.

And the ones I'll be touching on a bit, the way that they intersect will be love, justice, and faithfulness. But before defining divine jealousy, we must first speak of human jealousy so that we are able to properly distinguish.

Jealousy when applied to men in scripture most often refers to, it usually speaks of this in a negative way. Jealousy applied to men usually refers to something like an envying or desiring after someone's possessions, a particular circumstance, someone's relationship or relationships, or a certain status that another person has and desiring that for oneself.

It's a form of coveting whereby you indulge in a sort of discontentment, feeling as if what another person has or possesses is actually owed to you. You deserve that. You think to yourself, why do they have that?

I should have that, or I wish I had that, or I wish I had that to such a degree that I now feel completely and utterly discontent with my current life circumstance at the moment. Now, this sort of jealousy is not the same for God.

That which God desires is always just because whatsoever God desires is always good and right. Thus, God cannot have disordered desires. Because God cannot have disordered desires, his jealousy is always warranted and it's rooted in his love, justice, and faithfulness.

Divine jealousy thus can be summarized as a relational attribute wherein God, as God, demands worship and obedience from his creatures and expresses displeasure when his creatures render these things to that which is not God.

Divine jealousy essentially, as I said, it's relational, but ultimately it takes root in other attributes of God. The ones I'll be sort of going over is love, justice, and faithfulness. This attribute is rooted in love in that God sets aside a particular affection for those that he is in covenant with.

Those whom he is in covenant with, he loves in a particular manner such that any betrayal of this love from those with whom he's extending love, any betrayal from them is of a much greater degree. It's much worse because they should know better.

They will elicit greater divine displeasure from God. God, in his jealousy, thus punishes his children, yet at the same time he pursues them out of love, knowing that proper worship of him will ultimately lead to our prosperity.

When we read through the Old Testament and we see how God goes after Israel, even though Israel consistently and constantly, without fail, almost always betrays God, yet God still upholds his covenant with her and God still pursues her.

That's why his jealousy here is rooted in love in that despite the fact that they go after these idols, God still pursues after them. Divine jealousy is also rooted in God's justice because God's displeasure brought about by this jealousy occurs because in not worshiping and obeying God, man is performing an injustice against the very God who created them.

All men by nature know that God is to be reverenced and worshiped, but it is through grace that men are enabled to know who this God is and how he ought to be worshiped. And then the final attribute, which we'll discuss in relation to jealousy, would be divine jealousy is rooted in faithfulness in that God's jealousy stems from the closeness which he shares with those with whom he covenants.

God, in being faithful to his people, he expects them to also be faithful to him. Thus he is jealous and he excludes any worship of any other gods for all that which is not God is a creature and thus worship or religious adoration, which would be owed to them, would be wrong and unjust because this religious adoration is exclusive to God alone.

And all that being said, that would basically be divine jealousy in a nutshell.

That was really good, Matthew. Thank you. There was a good comment I saw by Cosmic Trees, and he said, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in the Hebrew the word jealous and zealous are the same and have the same root.

So I looked it up and it's true, actually. So kana is the word, and it's interesting to me that in English we separate these two. Zealous has a generally a positive connotation to be zealous for something.

Jealousy generally has a negative connotation. So we've taken this similar, this idea, and we've created, we have two different words to denote the positive and negative uses of it, but it's essentially the same kind of thing.

And when we talk about the jealousy of God, of course it is a positive thing. God ought to be jealous, and it's not a negative quality. We think of it that way. Maybe that's unfortunate. Like, I don't know if this would take away from it because obviously we have to translate into the English, but you know, I'm wondering, this is thinking out loud on the spot, but could this also be thought of as the zealous, is zealousy a word, or the zealotry of God?

Is that also the same kind of concept, perhaps? And that does feel different in English, saying it that way. God is zealous for himself, and he should be. So a lot of comments coming in. Let's see, we got Sam who says, after the attributes of God, maybe do a brief summary on church fathers, theologians, or even one of the prophets of the Old Testament.

That's not a bad idea. We'll consider that.

It'd be fun.

Yeah, church fathers would be cool, actually. That would be, you know, as Protestants, especially, to do the early church because—.

Because they're all Catholic and Orthodox.

They're, yeah, Protestants don't know anything about the early church. Like, we don't even know what you're talking about, actually. I've never heard of the early church.

If we did know, we'd convert.

We'd have to explain what the early church is to us first so that we can know. And a father, no man is supposed to be called father. So I don't even, like, that's heresy right there.

It went from Jesus to Paul to Augustine to Luther to Billy Graham. That's my church history.

Yeah, and maybe Augustine and Luther, maybe. Like, it's really more, I'm pretty sure it was probably a direct jump from the Apostle Paul to Russell Moore. Or maybe Beth Moore. Russell Moore, that's a little too patriarchal.

Cosmic Treason is really, man, you're putting a lot of good comments out there, Cos. Maybe you should join us on the podcast next time and it would save the work here. So Cosmic Treason says, Reductively, my understanding of the definition of jealousy is a prophetic desire towards something that belongs to you and anger towards anything that threatens to harm or take it away.

Mm-hmm. I would say that's like a pause. That would be like jealousy in like the virtuous sense, which is not like the sort of jealousy that scripture prohibits in regard to man. So when I was defining jealousy for men, I was sort of being like, it was a bit more simplistic, like pop level.

But I was speaking specifically of how scripture defines it in relation to sinful jealousy with man. Yeah. I agree with your summary, Cosmic Treason. That's good.

It's not even just, so I guess the only thought I have is it's not just that it belongs to you. It's that you actually have a duty to defend it. Like it's if someone tried to violate my wife, right? It's not, there's nothing preferential about me taking a stand against it.

I'm required to do so, right? Yeah. I'm compelled. And I think that's, when God's jealous, this is, it's just logical. It makes sense. It's part of his attributes as being, yeah, he can't do otherwise.

And that's not a limitation on him. That's just who he is. Let's see. Cosmic Treason also says, what we often mean when we say jealousy in modern day is really envy. Okay. That's a good point. Wanting to be someone else, occupy their position, receive the benefits, do them.

Yeah. I don't know how that happened. So that'd be an interesting.

Study. The etymology of the word. Well, I would also say that his definition that he gave there is like how scripture would speak of jealousy in the negative sense. I mean, you go to scripture and you'll see like instances where it prohibits jealousy, specifically like in the New Testament.

I can't remember the verse off the top of my head, but yeah, like in Romans 13, 13, let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.

So I think that definition would be how scripture refers to jealousy in the negative sense.

Yeah. And there's a James 13, 3, 14 through 16. I just went over this in the Bible study that I lead. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and against the truth.

That wisdom is not which comes down from above, but is earthly natural demonic, where there is jealousy and selfish ambition. There is disorder and every evil thing that's become such a big verse for me lately, just or passage because it mentions selfish ambition twice and connects it to the devil.

It's not pulling any punches. And jealousy is obviously part of this. And that kind of, you know, that greed, I guess, makes the world go around, so to speak. I mean, a lot of people are motivated to do better because they're trying to outclass someone else or they're trying to compete, but it's not a healthy competition.

It's a trying to take for themselves something that someone else has as maybe a status or it's not like ambition is not wrong, but selfish ambition is right. And these things seem so similar, but they're really not.

It's like the difference between wisdom from above wisdom from below.

It makes a great deal of difference. It's also similar, like trying to parse a distinction between contentment versus or like, you know, discontentment. I always get that word mixed up. This is where you see my English bad, but not being content.

It's like the difference between that but also being driven and wanting to pursue higher things while still being like, Lord, the circumstance I'm in right now, even if I'm not the most favorable to it, you know, I'm still thankful for everything you've given me.

So it can just be hard to parse.

Things that scripture says sometimes. Yeah, because if you keep reading in James chapter four and then into five, he says he makes some category. He brings you some categories. For example, God's sovereignty over time, you should say if the Lord wills that we will go to this town.

Right. And then he talks about riches and how the rich man treats the poor man. So God's sovereignty over wealth. He talks about God's sovereignty over time. You shouldn't make oaths. You shouldn't. So all these things, I think, press a limitation upon us that we have a duty to God and we need to work within the boundaries of that duty, always relying on God to direct us and to help us see what we ought to be doing.

But it's not the end is to glorify God and to fulfill our duty to him. The end is not to make ourselves in a I guess a smaller sense, in a sense of like only self-satisfaction without God in mind, feel fulfillment.

That's the I think the difference. And it's hard. It is because you slip into one. You can often I know I do. I slip in thinking sometimes that you're doing the one and then realizing your motives are actually out of whack and you need to correct them.

So anyway, good discussion. And I really man, we're already 20 minutes in, so this is good. We haven't even talked about immigration. So speaking of being jealous for things, we have a duty to our families and to our country.

And we have obviously a situation on the border that's been in place for years. It's hopefully getting a little better, but we've talked about this many times on the American Churchman podcast. And we're going to talk about this again.

And we might go over some information we've already gone over, but this is a new situation. So I think that's why we're doing it. We asked David about it, too, beforehand at Truth Script. And he said this was the fresh hot off the press.

I think he's just like pushing his articles to us. He's like, do another one of my articles. But he wrote this, my brother. And oh, I don't have it queued up. Hold on a minute here. I got to queue it up here.

I didn't have it queued up either. Don't worry. We're both behind.

Oh, no. Oh, no. All right. Here it is. Oh, that's not it. That's the video. Here it is. It's the Dignity Bill or the Dignity Act of 2025. And then here's the

I like the images with Home Depot right there.

Well, I mean, I didn't come up with that. Yeah, here so people can see it. Yeah, that's I don't know what to say. You know exactly what this is, right? Being in Florida and working in the fields that you've worked in.

Oh, yeah.

I think it's worse in California. I was a contractor in California for a bit. And you go to Home Depot and it was like even navigating the parking lot, depending on which Home Depot you went to is difficult because there are so many day laborers outside.

But all right. So for those listening, it's just a picture of some migrants, day laborers outside of Home Depot next to the sign. And there's another picture of Maria Salazar, who's the Republican Congresswoman.

By the way, is she your district in Florida? She's Floridian.

I saw that. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know, but I might have to check.

I think she represents. Well, I could probably look it up real quick. I think I thought she represented Miami, but.

Yeah, probably not that I'm in central Florida, so.

OK, let's see if I can find it. Let's see. The district 27 is what it says, and that is Miami. So, yeah, over half of it's in the ocean. It's like the southern tip of Key Biscayne. So Key Biscayne is part of it.

And the Miami Beach, like the southern part of it. So I think that's a heavily. Oh, I mean, like all of Miami, I think is pretty heavily. Cuban, right? Am I getting that right? Or I mean, it's a mix, but isn't it known for being primarily Cubans in that area?

You're speaking of Miami, right?

Yeah, Miami. Yeah, definitely. Mostly Cubans. Yeah.

And she's the daughter of Cuban immigrant. So, yeah, I think her parents immigrated here from Cuba. So, OK, that's which explains why she's Republican, then it explains why she's Republican. That's exactly right.

Yeah, they're because that's a weird dynamic, I suppose, because the parents are or the people who came here escaping Fidel Castro were Republican, but their children and especially their grandchildren have kind of veered from that.

So as I understand it. So anyway, the article for a true script dot com, by the way, plug for truth script. Check it out if you want to donate. We are five on C3 and you can also submit articles. I just scroll to the bottom.

But David talks about this act that was introduced on July 15th and the bill is defended as being definitely not amnesty. And it would essentially levy a small fine, seven thousand over seven years to all those living in the U .S. who enter before January 1st, 2021.

Representative Salazar leaned heavily on Christian rhetoric. So she said, President Trump, sir, the same God who saved you from death in Pennsylvania one year ago is the same God who millions and millions are begging you for some kind of dignity.

And then he gets in. Yeah, well, and that's I think the crux of some of this is the messaging. So he gets into what dignity is and why it was invoked. Let me see if I can find that portion. Maybe it's slower.

OK, so the Old Testament, there's a word HADAR in Hebrew translated as dignity and the James King James calls it beauty, comeliness, excellency, glorious glory, goodly honor and majesty. But the English word is from two Latin words meaning to accept or take worth.

So it's to accept worth. And so here's the thing that's weird to me. We're not weird, but it's just it seems like a sleight of hand. They're saying that in order to ensure that these people who let's just be honest, they're technically criminals, they're violating the law being here to extend dignity to them, to give them dignity.

It's like they don't have it, but we can give it to them. We just have to provide them a temporary worker status for seven years, which after that seven years, they will be then considered for renewal.

And there was a clip of Salazar. I saw it maybe two days ago where she's saying, well, at the end of the seven years, she implies that maybe then someone could figure out how to make them citizens. So I which is kind of what I suspected about this whole thing from the beginning.

But it's just weird that it's like if you don't go for this act, you must be against dignity and you don't want to extend dignity to these these poor people who need it like as if we owe them something.

We don't we owe them dignity. Don't like we're not, I guess, giving them worth. If we don't do this, we need we're denying the Imago Dei or something. So it's just a very manipulative way to frame the whole thing, which plays into the Christian kind of angle because Christians will.

I think they respond to that. They like, oh, of course, I'm for dignity.

Yeah, well, it's just we're really weird to see like how the same people who will talk about don't, you know, make religion overly political or don't let your politics become your religion. These same people have this very odd liberalizing tendency with Christianity to say, OK, if America is a liberal democracy with open borders, we have some border security, but a free right for all peoples of the world to immigrate here at will, however many they want to, doesn't matter.

If that is the case, that must mean that part of the Imago Dei, part of being made in God's image entails a certain set of human rights. And one of these human rights is the right to reside within the United States of America and to not be deported.

It's a very strange conclusion. And when it would, yeah, it's you notice how it's tied in with dignity there because it's like somebody what is someone's do the ability to have citizenship in the United States?

The idea that part of somebody's inherent worth is tied into their propensity for dignity in a nation state is absurd. It's silly. But notice how people when they speak of this, they'll tie it to dignity.

They'll tie it to the Imago Dei. They'll tie it to being compassionate. Oh, Jesus was a refugee. Jesus was a brown skinned socialist refugee. And if you don't agree with me on this, you're not a real Christian or something like that.

And obviously she's not going to say all those things because she's in the Republican Party. She wouldn't be a leftist, I guess you could say, but it's just, there is this strange tendency to liberalize Christianity instead of Christianizing liberalism.

And it's just, it's odd. It's very strange, but you see this happen a lot such that when you go into different forms of politics, people automatically assume, oh wow, you're drifting from the faith, man, or something weird like that.

When I can talk to somebody who's of a more liberal persuasion and still say, yes, you are my brother or sister in Christ, even if I think what you're doing is silly. And it oftentimes doesn't go the other way around.

Oftentimes they'll just say, you're denying someone their dignity. You're depriving.

Them of justice. And because of this, you hate God. So good points, all of that. And you said something that made me have a thought that I did not have before about this, that I think should be put out there because it's actually, it's super interesting.

So the idea that human rights, universal human rights entail the ability to become a resident in the United States of America and perhaps a citizen. What does that say about your view of the United States?

All I'm saying is you must have a view of this country that it's some kind of a special, like, I don't know. I don't know if I go so far as to say it's like Israel, but there's definitely some kind of a covenantal relationship with God or a special mission.

From God that the United States has. It's almost like globalist American exceptionalism, you know, where there's a certain, because of how great America is, it is now a fundamental.

Human right for anybody to live here. Right. And there's no Bible verse, obviously, that supports this about any country. But to make that exception for the United States, to say the United States is the country that everyone should, if they are made in the image of God, be allowed to come to must imply that you think the United States is some kind of a theocracy or something.

I mean, it's in that family. It's on a mission. It's on a divine mission. And this is what oftentimes conservatives are often castigated for or broad-brushed as, that there are a bunch of theocrats who believe in American exceptionalism and think God's divinely favored the United States.

And how could you do that? Because what about all the other countries, but this kind of a, of a bill actually implies that very thing is my point, which is I find kind of rich. So anyway, more about the act.

I don't know if David went into like great detail. I do. I read the summary of it on the website, this, that website here, the national immigration forum, which is more of a, I think, conservative kind of a immigration website.

But my understanding is, so if you came here before 2021 and you're an illegal migrant, you automatically qualify to pursue this. If you are a dreamer you automatically, you have to take, I think it's three different, there's three different options for you.

You can go in the military, you can go to college, or you can prove that you are, you've been in the workforce for a certain amount of time in order to qualify for, I'm trying to think, I think it's actually citizenship for the dreamers.

So the dreamers get extra stuff. So it's actually kind of a complex bill. There's some good things in there we would agree with. There's some enhanced border security stuff. There's also a employer system that they set up to monitor.

And there's these different timeframes that employers in different fields, especially agriculture, have where they have to comply with the act. But everything should be traceable. When someone comes into the country seeking asylum, we can now match them with their family members using DNA tests.

I actually didn't know that that wasn't happening. That was a little shock to me. I was like, what? You need a bill for this? We're not already doing that? That's crazy. Shouldn't we be doing that? That was in the bill.

And I don't know, on the scale that this is happening, I just don't know how practical it is. They're going to give raises to border guards. They're going to hire more border guards. Obviously the big, beautiful bill already allowed for that.

The other thing they're going to do is they're going to hire more, I forget how they phrase it, but it's those who would process the asylum seekers. And they're going to have these ports of entry. And if you don't come through a port of entry and you do it twice, you're disqualified from coming in.

So they have to catch you obviously for that to happen. But the idea is that there'll be these centers where you'll have medical care. You'll have access to all these services while you're in the process of seeking asylum and waiting for a judge to rule on your case, which I'm not a big fan of.

But supposedly this is going to all pay for itself because that $7 ,000 over the course of seven years. And I'm so skeptical about this. Being from Los Angeles originally, I know you're in Florida, which also is kind of a hot immigration state.

I know the strain on healthcare is great. And it's not like hospitals can just refuse you if you show up at the emergency room. They're going to treat you. How it gets paid for and stuff, that's a question that oftentimes the government's left hand holding the bag or the hospital is left holding the bag.

But that's who we are as Americans. And I know several hospitals in Los Angeles have shut down because of this kind of strain. I don't buy that a thousand bucks a year is compensating for that kind of a strain.

Supposedly they're not going to be using our goods and services. And I'm like, but how do you enforce that? That's the big question is like, practically, how do you enforce all the things that the bill talks about that are supposed to be red for conservatives?

It seems like really what's going on here is whatever the number is, 30 million people, let's say, who entered the country before 2021. How would you even know, by the way, when they entered? I mean, that's the thing too.

How do you even determine these things? But they would all be qualified to stay here, essentially. That's really the long and short of it. And who do you think they're voting for? That's one of the other provision, by the way, the bill.

And I'll stop after this because I'm giving you all these details about the bill. But I think there's penalties in the bill for voting if you're an illegal migrant. But again, how do you, I mean, aren't there already, isn't that already illegal?

It's like employers already aren't supposed to be hiring illegal migrants, right? There's already laws on the books on these things. So we're going to add more laws. I think experience should be our guide, which means we should look at the last 50 years, see how none of this has worked.

See how these laws have been disregarded and act accordingly, which means we got to have an aggressive deportation program. And we can't, we have to have a no nonsense policies about all of this and enforce the laws we already have rather than these pipe dreams that end up just pushing the needle left.

So that was my opinion on the bill. I don't know if you have anything that.

Caught your interest as I was talking there, Matthew. No, I like what you said near the end about how we were at a point now where we kind of need to crack down. And your brother said something in the article as well, right before the why this matters section, where it says the dignity act advocates claim that the bill would provide accountability for illegal immigrants at the very least doing out a, or doling out a slap on the wrist.

But the path laid out by the bill appears to be much closer to a gentle tap while giving a shoulder massage. And it's like, that's so true. And when you think about the nature of immigration in this country and the amount of people coming in legally or illegally, it's just, it's insane.

It's unstable and it's, you know, it's doing more harm than good at the end of the day. And so right now we're at a crisis point where we need to actually take this seriously. Even a slap on the wrist, no more.

We can't even do that. And obviously, you know, when we speak about dignity and the overuse of dignity, there are of course, all human beings by virtue of being created in the image of God, no matter how marred that image is, of course, all people have a sort of dignity or value intrinsic to them by virtue of their creation in God and being endowed with this image.

Nevertheless, you can still act justly in times of crises. And part of the way you do that right now with the immigration is you need to crack down. You need to make sure that the problem is actually taken care of.