I really believe we, as the church of
Jesus Christ, need to examine how we treat those in our society that violate
that society’s norms and values. As governments on every level, in an attempt
to find more money to lower their deficits, scale down their financial support
for programmes and activities within our prisons, the church has an unprecedented opportunity to make a difference and
step up. Our prisons are as
legitimate a field for missions as any, and in fact, our commitment to reaching
out with God’s love to the incarcerated says as much about our convictions
around God’s saving grace and His power to transform lives as any mission
endeavour, anywhere in the world.
Prisons
are places of great darkness, fear and emotional pain. They are places where
hopelessness reigns supreme. A
study in 2003 showed that suicide rates in prisons in Canada are 10 times
higher than in the general population. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2003/01/02/prison_suicides030102.html).
When you and I, as ambassadors of Jesus, walk through those gates we are
entering an angry, violent, intensely pressurized world where everyone (staff
and inmate) is “watching his or her back,” almost all the time. In the prison
environment suspicion and distrust predominate. That kind of negative environment can adversely change both
the incarcerated and the men and women who are employed to control them. That is why most people I have talked
to that are involved in prison ministry agree with me when I say that the
hardest part about serving God in our institutions isn’t dealing with the
incarcerated as much as it is having to deal at times with the cynicism, passive-aggressive
opposition and sometimes downright rudeness of some of the prison staff. The men and women who work in our
prisons need our prayers just as much as the prisoners do.
It is into that dark environment that we, as followers of
Jesus are called to bring light and hope. Jesus initiated his ministry by quoting a passage from Isaiah
61. He said:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18,19 NIV)
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18,19 NIV)
Jesus said to his disciples in
John 20:21: “Peace
be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” John MacArthur in
his exposition on this passage sees it like this: “We, the body of Christ, are
the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ.”
Does God love offenders? Jesus answered that question long ago
when He said, “...It is not the healthy who need
a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance” (Luke 5:31-32 NIV).
Jesus
cared about the convicted criminal. The last person he reached out to with his
saving grace during his life here on the earth was a prisoner, a man charged
and found guilty of a capital offense. Jesus cared about him. We, as Jesus’
followers must care too.
In
Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable. Actually he tells a number of parables, each
one encouraging his followers in their behaviour as they wait for His certain
return. In verses 31-46 he touches on the value he places on being kind to, and
meeting the needs of, the people in our world who are suffering deprivation:
the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and
the prisoner. We can
“spiritualize” these characteristics by saying things like: “we are to feed the
spiritually hungry, care for the spiritually sick and minister to those
imprisoned by sin” but I am sure that when we do that we are missing the point
entirely. God’s people are to make a difference. We are to show God’s love in practical ways- that is the
message of the entire Bible. As we
do so, Jesus says, we are truly loving Him. This is a powerful thought- He is the hungry, the sick, and He is the prisoner. If we
say we love Him, we can’t ignore the prisoners. We can’t just lock them up, shut them out of our minds and
hearts.
We may ask: “Offenders, who needs
them?” Well, God certainly seems
to have. Here are some examples: the murderers Moses and David, the sex-worker Rahab,
a violent human rights abuser named Paul, the fraud artist Jacob among others
all illustrate how God uses people who have a rather chequered past to fulfil
His purposes and advance His aims.
He could have used others and did but He also chose to use these flawed
people. Are there others locked
behind prison walls who just need someone to believe in them? The last person
influenced by Jesus before he died on the cross was a criminal. Does God care about the fallen, the
flawed, the “failures,” the “outcasts”, those who kill, who steal, who hurt
others with their behaviour? Yes,
of course He does. And so should
we. We should care because we are
they and they are we. If you don’t believe that then you have a flawed doctrine
of sin and a false view of yourself: …“this
righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by
Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:22-24 NIV). Who am I to feel “more” than someone
else, to feel superior in any way? Not only are you and I capable of the worst
of behaviours in the right (or better said, “wrong”) circumstances, the truth
is that according to Jesus’ standards of behaviour each of us is a murderer, an
adulterer, guilty of idolatry, a liar, covetous, unloving and unworthy of His
grace. Do you truly believe that? Do you live your life conscious of the fact
that were it not for God’s grace and forgiveness none of us would be alive to
take our next breath- that is none of us!
So as we look at those men and women sitting in our prisons or those
being released from prison back into our communities we must remember that we
are no different- it isn’t so much: “But for the grace of God there go I”
(although that too is true) it is more accurately: “that should be me.” Can we not echo Paul’s words in 1
Tim.1:16- “…in me, the worst of sinners.”
If I don’t believe I am the worst of sinners then that does put me in
the position of judge of others- not a healthy place to be.
If anyone had the “right” to be
judgemental and to condemn it may be a man named Yehiel Dinur. He was a concentration camp survivor
who testified against Adolph Eichmann, one of the architects of the evil Nazi
“Final Solution” for what they called the “Jewish problem.” When he entered the
courtroom and saw Eichmann he collapsed on the floor. Many years later, in an interview with Mike Wallace of the
news programme 60 Minutes, he was asked why he had responded that way. This is what he said: "I was afraid about myself." He went on ". . . I saw that I am
capable to do this. I am . . . exactly like he." As Chuck Colson
describes it: Wallace's subsequent summation of Dinur's terrible discovery–"Eichmann
is in all of us." Charles
Colson sees this as “a horrifying statement; but it indeed captures the central
truth about man's nature.” (Charles Colson, Who Speaks for God, Chapter
Thirty-Two.)
Every person in prison or
involved with the criminal justice system in any way is a product of a sinful
world, a place where people aren’t loved and don’t love as they should. You and
I live in that world and because of our own disobedience and selfishness, we contribute
to it. Don’t get me wrong, I do
believe in personal responsibility for sin. Prisons are full of people who have made bad choices and
have violated society’s standards, many violently so. They may be necessary evil, a recognition that we live in a
fallen world. In any civil society there must be ways of dealing with offenders
and separating them from the society they are damaging. But I do also believe that prisons
as a reflection of a broken society are a call to action for the church of
Jesus Christ. I wonder if we as
disciples of Jesus were more faithful to our Master’s instructions and example there
might be fewer men and women running afoul of the justice system. What do you think?
We affirm that God loves the
sinner. We believe that God is
glorified when one sinner turns to Him in repentance. We firmly believe that
God wants all to be saved and that His love extends to each of us regardless of
our behaviour. We can’t believe He has given up on the prisoner. If we have God’s heart in us, we won’t give
up on them either. God is working
and changing lives in the prisons[1]:
His church should care about that.
At the risk
of being flippant and undercutting my previous thoughts, I do want to add one
more reason for caring about prisoners and support ministries dedicated to
working with them. My wife
drove by a prison a while ago and came home with this observation: a parking
lot full of hundreds of cars owned by people whose work is to keep people in
prison. Each one receives a
healthy wage with generous benefits and solid pension plan. For purely economic reasons it just
makes sense that we, the church, get involved in sharing God’s truth and
showing His love to those in our prisons.
According to statistics, see: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/121011/dq121011c-eng.htm,
spending on adult corrections in Canada, including salaries and operating
costs, totalled about $4.1 billion in 2010/2011. See: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2008006/article/10593-eng.htm.
The annual average cost of keeping a federal inmate behind bars has increased from $88,000 in 2005-06 to more than $113,000 in 2009-10.
The annual average cost to keep an offender in the community is about $29,500.
It costs $578 per day to incarcerate a federally sentenced woman inmate and just over $300 per day to maintain a male inmate.$260 per prisoner/per day to keep someone in custody in the Federal system. If you add to that amount is the cost
of policing, the court system and probation and parole supervision and you can
see that it is to our society’s economic and social benefit that those who call
themselves Christians invest in preventing crime from ever happening and
dedicate time and resources to changing the behaviour of the individuals who
get involved in it. Both as
prevention and cure, prison ministries can be part of the solution both for
crime and for the men and women who break the law. The church should care about that too. 