September 17, 2023

Hello my Beloved,

Wednesday, the 20^th, I received an interesting offer from one of the gang leaders in our dorm.   He is called ghost and has the bed above me.  As you know, violence seems to be the primary tool people use to get what they want in here.  Much of the average day is spent in singing songs about violence, watching shows that glorify violence, working out so that you can be more effective in violence, engaging in focus pad training and shadow boxing so they can be the best at violence, horseplaying in violent ways with each other, threatening and manipulating others through violence, and actually being violent.

Even when they actually engage in violence, they show how much thought has gone into maintain their violent life styles.  They know where the blind spots in the cameras are.  They also know how to mask their body language when threatening violence (like when their enforcer named ‘Nightmare’ tried to extort me, he kept his body and face oriented away from me so from the camera’s perspective, he wasn’t talking to me.  He only broke from that charade when I stepped up to confront him.).

When someone is ‘hit’ with violence, they have groups of guys that go into ‘clean up’ by cleaning up any blood, including removing blood-stained clothes on the victim and redressing him.  They tend to his wounds and then cover them with masks, hats, or scarves.  The victim is told to stay away from guards until his wounds heal or next time, he will receive worse.

Because of this violent atmosphere, many groups of people tend to be singled out because they are seen as easy targets.  These include gay and trans men, older people, and Christians.  Because of this, I have told many men in the gay and trans community, as well as fellow believers to come and hand out at my bunk if they ever feel threatened.

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This has caused for some interesting friendships in the gay and trans men to develop.  They strongly dislike my Biblical stance on sexual contact, yet they feel safe, loved, and enjoy the conversations they always have with me (mostly).

Since Ghost has been my top bunk mate, he has witnessed my conversations with many of them on how to deescalate situations, how to move through groups of people in a safer manner, and how to handle initial violent contact in order to move to a safer place.  Ghost had taken 1 or 2 classes of martial arts when he was little.  He recognized some of the things I have said to people, so he asked me if I was an instructor and how long I had been training.   I have been purposefully vague with him because I don’t want much of a spotlight on that area of my life.  I find that a little bit of information goes a long way.  This allows their imaginations to do my job for me.

After one such meeting with a fearful Christian brother, Ghost looked over to me and said, ‘You know Mr. Lipscomb, you should teach that to some of the guys here.  As a matter of fact, I could make you the richest guy on the compound if you would teach my homies and others.’  I politely declined saying I don’t think that would be a good idea nor did I think that the prison administration would like me very much if I did that.  He pointed out two individuals that taught boxing to people on the rec yard and told me that they already do what I do.  I told him that what I did was more in the field of self-defense, not sport.  He didn’t seem to understand so I got up and walked over to him and asked him to show me how he would attack me.  He reached his right hand out and started to grab my chest as he drew back with his left hand.

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As he did, I grabbed his right hand as soon as he made contact with my chest.  Raising my elbow to deflect the incoming punch, I placed him in a spiraling z-lock.  His eyes grew wide as he immediately forgot about his incoming punch, and he began to hop up and down while trying to say something but only came out as a string of random consonants.  I eased off the pressure only allowing the weight of my arm to keep the lock in place.

After he stopped hopping around, I asked Ghost what he was feeling in his arm.  He said it felt like the bones in his arm and wrist were about to come apart and explode.  I told Ghost that was exactly what was about to happen.  The pressure he felt was only from the weight of my arm.  I said, imagine if I flexed even a tiny bit.  His eyes got bigger again, and he cried ‘No, no!’  I released Ghost and explained to him the difference between boxing and a self-defense oriented martial art.  I then asked him how popular did he think I would be with the prison administration with a prison full of guards and inmates that has so many broken bones.  He grimaced and said, not very.  I smiled and told him I might as well be teaching them to build Glocks and the ammo to go with it.  I appreciate his offer, but I was going to have to decline.

Friday, the 22^nd, we continued our Apologetics Bible Study.  This time I gave them a primer on Greg Koukl’s book Tactics.  I love this book!  I also loved refining my skills under Greg’s supervision while attending Frank Turek’s Cross Examined Instructor Academy.

Tactics is a way to engage people about the truth of Christianity in a way that’s compelling, clear, clever and easy.  It starts with a tactic called Columbo.  Columbo teaches that when a person makes an assertion (the Bible is false, God is not real, all religions are the same), instead of telling them that they are wrong and burying them under an hour-long lecture as a rebuttal, you instead get into the habit of asking certain questions in response.

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The first question you should ask in the Columbo tactic is, ‘What do you mean by that?’  In asking this question, you are gaining more information about what a person really believes.  It makes you a student of other people’s views.  It helps you to clarify what they are saying and keeps you away from committing the Strawman Fallacy.  Finally, it also helps the other person to think more carefully about their claims.

The second question you should ask in the Columbo tactic is ‘Why do you believe that?’  It can also be asked, ‘How did you come to that conclusion?’  The use of this question gives you a deeper look at the foundations of a person’s claims.  Doing this gives you the opportunity to weigh whether a person has an argument or an explanation.  An argument is a set of statements that claims that one or more of those statements supports another.  It’s offered as proof in support of something.  An explanation seeks to offer a possible cause for something without proof.  In short, an argument shows what’s reasonable, an explanation shows what’s possible.  As Paul did in Acts 17:2-3, 17, and God called His people to do in Isaiah 1:18, Christians should always seek what is reasonable, and not rest in only what is possible.  This question also keeps you in the driver’s seat of a conversation.  By reversing the burden of proof, you keep the other person talking.  By their talking, you continually learn more about them and the positions that they hold.  As you listen and learn what they believe and why, you look for flaws in their reasoning (if there is any.)

One of the first flaws you look for are self-defeating statements.  A self-defeating statement is a statement that refutes itself.  Here are several examples:  I cannot say any words in English.  (That whole sentence is made of words in English.)

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There are no absolute truths.  (Is it absolutely true there are no absolute truths?) People shouldn’t judge others.  (Then why are you judging people that judge?)  Christians shouldn’t try to change other people’s religious beliefs.  (Since my religious belief is to try and change other’s religious beliefs, why are you trying to change my beliefs?)

Another tactic that Koukl’s book teaches is Reductio Ad Absurdum.  This is a powerful tactic because it has both a logical and an emotional aspect to it.  When using RAA, assume for the sake of argument that what a person says in his argument is true.  Then try to apply his argument on a topic that you know the person is passionate about.  See if they continue to support their position when it is applied in this new area.  I used this tactic on Anubian (the other philosopher in our dorm) just the other day.  Anubian told me it was wrong to correct another person’s moral point of view, or to even call their belief wrong. I could have pointed out that his position was self-defeating because his very statement was calling someone else’s moral point of view wrong (in this case, mine.)  Instead, I asked him what he would do if he came across someone beating a toddler to death with a bat, would he intervene.  He said yes.  I asked him why.  He started to say it was wrong but caught himself.  He then smiled.  I asked him if it was wrong to kill the toddler.  He reluctantly said yes.  I never had to point out to Anubian that his position was wrong.  He concluded that himself by me using RAA.

Another tactic Koukl teaches is the Steam Roller.  This tactic is used to stop an aggressive person that keeps interrupting you and/or changing topics.  This tactic involves 3 steps.  First, you stop the person and get a commitment from them to allow you to finish your point, or for them to stay on the original topic.

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After the commitment is made, if they do it again you again stop them and remind them of their commitment.  If they do it a third time you again stop them and tell them that it’s obvious they are not interested in a dialogue, only a monologue.  Allow them to finish and politely leave the engagement.

The Rhodes Scholar tactic is a tactic for use against appeals to ‘science says’ statements.  Ask the person why scientist believe that.  You are not going to blindly believe a bunch of people you don’t know, and you hope they won’t either.  A similar tactic is the ‘Just the Facts Mam’ tactic.  This simple tactic calls out simple false claims.  I used this one on a doctor I debated one time.  He explained to me that as an atheist he believed things based on reason and testing, I as a Christian, believed things on faith.  I asked him what he meant by faith.  He told me faith was believing without evidence.  I knew his definition was wrong, so I asked him where he got that definition from.  He said he didn’t know and said, ‘Isn’t that what the Bible says?’  I told him no; the Biblical definition of faith is an active trust in what you have good reason to believe is true.  He said, ‘Well, that’s what I do.’   I shook his hand, smiled, and said, ‘Well, it looks like we are both men of faith then, Doc.’  He laughed and said, ‘Yes, it seems we are.’

I continued to role play with the group for some time, using Tactics on a variety of apologetic issues.  As we role played, I noticed more and more people hovering around our group, listening in.  Soon someone spoke up and said, ‘Yea, but all religions teach the same thing.’  I asked him why he believed that.  He stuttered, stopped, and gave me a blank stare.  I asked him if he knew what Christianity taught.  He said no.  I asked him if he knew what Islam taught. He said no.

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I then said, ‘If you don’t know what the two largest religions on the planet teach, then how do you know they teach the same thing?’  He smiled sheepishly and conceded.  I briefly explained the general beliefs about Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and atheism and how they contradict one another.  I told him it was important to examine the truth claims of each religion and to weigh them to see which one is true.  I told him we were having our Friday studies to examine the massive amount of evidence that shows that Christianity is the only true religion.  He said he would like that.

Another young man walked up and sat down, by this time we were over 12 people, and we filled the corner of the dorm at Alex’s bunk.  This new guy introduced himself as Chubsway.  He said he was the ‘guru’ of the dorm and was very interested in helping us with our Christianity.  He also let us know he was a ‘genius’ and loved to help people.  I asked him what me meant by ‘helping us with our Christianity.’  He said that as a Christian himself, he wanted to make sure we understood what Christianity was all about.  My ‘cult’ alarm began to increase.  I asked Chubsway why he thought he was a Christian.  He responded, ‘Why do you think I am a Christian?’  Hmmm, I told him I wasn’t sure he was a Christian.  All I had to go off of was his claim to be a Christian.  He just stared at me so I tried another question.  ‘How does a person become a Christian?’  I asked him.  He responded with ‘How do you think a person becomes a Christian?’  I smiled.  Chubsway was using a variation of the ‘professors’ ploy.’  Tactics talks about a counter-tactic that professors use in college sometimes when after you use the Columbo tactic to reverse the burden of proof, the professor may reverse it again on you.

I told Chubsway that I wanted to see if he knew how to become a Christian to see if he was really a Christian.  He reversed the burden again on me and said that he wanted to see if I was really a Chrisitan.  I told him that he came to our Bible study claiming to be one of us.

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I didn’t go to him claiming to be what I thought he was.  I just wanted a little more verification about his claims on who he was.  A simple test would be if he could tell me what the Bible said about how to become a Christian.  He finally got an agitated smirk on his face and said he really wasn’t a Christian and didn’t know what the Bible said.  I told him that was ok.  I would be happy to share with him the Gospel and hear his views about God, the Bible, and the Gospel.  The rest of the discussion was good.

Afterwards, our group had a separate meeting where I walked them through each encounter and what I was trying to do.  Tactics, by Greg Koukl has been at the core of our Berean Light Fellowship since it’s beginning.  I cannot say enough good things about it.  It should form the foundation for anyone engaging in apologetics, and that should be everyone.  Every Church should have a class that teaches Tactics.  It would embolden their congregation and amplify its ability to be salt and light to the world around them.

I love you very much my Beloved.  Thank you so much for helping me to bring light to such a dark place.

Love,

Me

ILYSOOOM!

November 5, 2023

Hello my Beloved,

Sorry I am still behind on my letters.  This one should bring us completely up to date.  November and December have been very busy months for me.  It took me awhile to adjust to my new dorm.  Not only because the guards here enforce different rules than the ones in 340B did, but the men that I mentored in 340B continue to need my help on things.  Thus, I am writing even more personal lessons for people and finding various ways to get these studies to them.

I am still putting the miles in on the rec yard. 95% of the time I walk, I have one or more people with me for a teaching session.  I really enjoy those.  I always seem to think better when I am moving.  (It’s the reason I always walked around the stage while preaching.)  As I teach, I am always learning new things about people.  For instance, I learned in early November from Matthew, that the Bible lies about many things.  I also learned that socialism, and especially communism, was the best form of government.  Not only does he support these, but he also leans in the direction of postmodernism.  This is especially troubling because he is quickly becoming a leader in several sectors of the Christian community here.  I will give him this, he knows how to sell himself.

The Christian groups here continue to be fractured.  Prison Fellowship is moving from 350B to 330B and A as well.  I have already submitted my application to join when they start their new class in February.  I pray I am one of the ones chosen from the many applicants.  Chuck Colson, the man who started Prison Fellowship, taught several of my classes in seminary.  I have followed him for decades.  His focus in ministries was the same as mine, to equip Christians everywhere to

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develop a strong Christian worldview through the study of Theology, Apologetics, and Philosophy.  He passed away just a few years ago.  Since I never dreamed I would ever be in prison, I never spent much time studying what Prison Fellowship taught, only what Chuck Coulson taught.  I am still unsure of how close Prison Fellowships beliefs are to its founder’s beliefs.  If they are close, then I will be of great benefit to them.  My ministry background and training will be tailor made for them.  If they have somehow drifted from their founder’s beliefs, then I hope to be an instrument to call them back to their ‘first loves’.  I do feel a sense of urgency in the matter.  Matthew is really selling himself to be the next leader of Prison Fellowship.  Since he is already in 330B, he has much more access to their leaders than I do.  He has already done a great job of wooing them with his background in the Episcopalian Church and degree in psychology. It would be sad if Prison Fellowship embraced in leadership the very type of person Chuck Colson warned against in his book ‘How Now Should We Live.’

The Protestant group at St. Brides continues in a hit and miss fashion. The leadership decided to expand from two to five.  They brought John on as one of their leaders and pastors.  I thought that was a good idea.  After a week or so, Matthew began to have private meetings with the two original leaders.  Shortly afterward they made a public announcement that the leadership now consisted of only three members, the two of them and Matthew.  This really hurt John.  Especially after they had a big pre-church ceremony to sing Matthew’s praises as a scholar and a great Christian leader.  I often wonder if they ever took the time to question his worldview.

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In Celebrate Recovery, things continue to go well.  The chaplain just moved John to the top leadership role in that program.  One of the Protestant Church leaders who was unofficially acting in that capacity, reportedly got so mad at not getting that position he refused to come to the meetings for weeks.

Meanwhile, I keep working in the background.  Our numbers in Feeding His Sheep continue to grow.  I mentor people in all three major Christian groups, even many of their mentors.  My prayer is that I will reach enough people and leaders in each group, that all three will stop their prideful fighting and begin to work together. Thank you for your continued prayers.

Carpentry classes going really well. My instructor, Thorne, has now given me several little titles.  I am his Wishing Well Wizard, because of my, outside of the box thinking on future designs.  He also announced to the class that I had designed the focus of the class for 2024.  I took Dodah’s idea about custom mailboxes and pitched it to him.  He was super excited about it.  I have been attending both classes each day.  Not only do I build many of the special projects (like the two end tables I designed and built for a staff member), he has me teaching a lot of the newer students.  The first of the year, Thorne is going to have us tear down the two partially built houses in the shop and rebuild them.  I am really looking forward to that.  Thorne has also asked me to help him redesign his office and the shop.  I really enjoy being able to help in so many ways.

Ray asked me to teach the Wednesday Bible study for the 15th.  I chose my lesson on Veritology.  Bizarrely, the lesson got off to a very rocky start.  If you remember, the question I always lead with is, ’What is the most important pursuit in life?’  People usually say either love, happiness, or God.  I usually explain that while

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those are all important pursuits; the pursuit of truth is the most important. John immediately lit into me for it not being God.  I tried to explain to him that God is truth, so any honest pursuit of the truth will lead you to God.  He kept saying that truth was secondary to God.  I tried to get him to see his error by asking him if the Jehovah’s Witnesses were pursuing God.  He said no.  I asked him what they were pursuing.  He started to say ‘a false god’ but caught himself.  Knowing that I would point out that they were not pursuing the ‘truth’ about God, he opted instead to say they were not following God.  I asked him if they were following a false god.  He said no, they are not following God.  I know it’s a fine line, but I think it’s an important point.  Most people today rarely think in terms of true or false.  They often validate their feelings by attaching the term God to them and voila, they are following God.  It becomes difficult to explain how a person can know whether they are pursuing God or not by explaining critical thinking skills, but do not talk about the concept of truth.  Then, something even stranger happened.  When everyone agreed with me, John said that he agreed with me.  I asked him what made him change his mind.  He said he never disagreed with me.  Everyone stared at him awkwardly.  He had just spent 10 angry minutes telling me how wrong I was.  So, I moved to my next point about Satan being a liar.  I started out with Genesis 3:1-5 to show the first recorded lie, by Satan.  John quickly objected that Satan never lied in anything he said.  I pointed out that Satan said in verse four that they wouldn’t die, this contradicted what God said in Genesis 2:17 that they would die.  I also pointed to what Jesus said about Satan being the father of lies in John 8:44.

This quickly spiraled into whether God could lie or not.  I told John it was

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impossible for God to lie, which he again objected to.  This time I got him to read aloud Hebrews 6:18 which says, ‘it is impossible for God to lie.’  Yet again, he told me he agreed with me and never thought otherwise.  I could see he was very angry.  The others stared at him wearily.  I moved on with the rest of the lesson while he remained quiet.

I tell you all this as a warning about how pride can blind us in strange ways.  John is a great guy.  He is also very smart and well educated.  He should never have made the basic theological mistakes that he did.  I say these things not to bash John, I just want to point out how badly pride can blind a person. In the social circles that John comes from on the outside, he is by far the most educated person in the group.  He is used to being right and not being challenged on a Biblical topic.  To have someone say something new and to have his challenge shot down in front of others was not a pleasant thing for him.  I should know, I have been there.  I very clearly remember a time in the early 1990s, after my education in theology, apologetics, and philosophy really began to expand, where I concluded that I knew approximately 98% of everything there was to know in these areas.  The only reason that I didn’t say 100% is because I was too ‘humble’ to claim that. I was not open to being wrong, therefore, I became unteachable.  That was a horrible place to be in my walk with Christ.  Yes, I was teaching people and winning debates, but I felt far away from God.  A good friend once taught me that learning was a change in behavior due to new information.  The only way for me to become teachable and grow again, was to humble myself and let go of my pride.  Pride can be defined as an

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undo sense of your abilities in a given area.  Paul cautions us in Romans 12:3 do not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.  We must examine ourselves with ‘sober judgment.’  The best way to have a ‘sober judgment’ about any area in your life is to 1st, surround yourself with mentors.  People that can regularly examine your current abilities and growth.  I keep myself surrounded by many mentors in various fields.  In self-defense I have Grand Masters Kim, Blake, and Wright.  And theology, apologetics, and philosophy I have Southern Evangelical Seminary. In life, I have my Dad.  Each mentor in their respectful fields have proven themselves to be trustworthy and far beyond my skill level.  I seek their feedback on each respective area and give great weight to what they tell me, good or bad.  I then changed my behavior, when warranted, due to the new information.  This way, I never stop learning.  Pray that I will always be humble enough to learn.  Pray also that I can ignite that same passion to learn in those around me, especially John.

Well, Thanksgiving and Christmas have come and gone.  This is the second time I have celebrated them apart from those I love the most.  I won’t lie, I do struggle with anger towards those that put me here, more during this time of the year than any other.  I am getting better though as I continue to learn to forgive them.

I continue to be humbled by God’s provision during that time (and every other time).  I was very thankful to be able to call home on Thanksgiving Day and talk with everyone.  I am also thankful that you all got to be together.  I am also thankful to be able to read the Christmas story from the Gospels with you and the children.  I was thankful that I could call early Christmas morning after presents were opened.  I was also thankful of the many pictures you and so many others sent over the

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holidays.  As incredible as our past Thanksgivings and Christmases have been, God continues to remind me that the best is yet to come. 😊

In the meantime, I focus at bringing the ‘spirit’ of both holidays to those around me here.  Ephesians 5:20 tells us to give thanks to God always and for everything.  Learning to do that requires practice and a change of focus.  As Philippians 4:8 says, I have to train myself to focus on ‘good’ things, not bad.  What I focus on I amplify.  The more I focus on the many ‘good’ things in my life, the more good things I begin to see.  Of course, the opposite is also true.  The more I focus on the ‘bad’ things in my life, the more bad things I will notice.

I am glad I was able to put together a brief Christmas devotion to everyone incarcerated.  I pray that it helped them see the many good things God continues to give them in everyday life.  I also pray they keep their focus this Christmas on the greatest good mankind has ever received, God himself, taking on human form so that He could come to earth, live among us, suffer with us, testify to the truth about who He is and how much He loves us, and then to offer up Himself as payment for our sins.

Merry Christmas my Beloved. Thank you for being such a great example of God’s love and light to me and so many others. Not only for Christmas, but all year long!

Love always,

Me

Ilysoooom, GELPOY, SCRAP, LAAF