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