March 2024
Hello my Beloved,
March has been a frustrating but productive month for me. They continue to move workers out of this dorm and into dorms that hold other workers. They replace them with more gang guys. The dorm gets wilder and louder each week. The music they play is what I struggle with the most. It’s the same message over and over. Kill your enemies, your close friend gets killed, you have to get revenge, you could die at any moment, have as much dominating sex as possible, prove that you are better than anyone else. The only thing that changes between songs is the beat. It’s hedonism at its worst.
I said a long time ago that to get to this place, you have to travel through the gates of Hell and continue to the farthest points beyond the Gates. The place where Satan keeps his shock troops, those that have fully embraced his lies, deceptions, and demonic philosophies. The darkness and evil here is tangible. It permeates not only the inmates, but the staff and guards as well.
It’s easy to paint everyone here with that same broad, hedonistic brush. That’s what Satan wants me to do. Embracing that lie though, will blind me to the truth that there are still those here that have no fully embraced Satan’s lies, at least not completely. The Bible talks about a certain type of person in 2 Peter 2. Though the people listed in 2 Peter chapter 2 are people that come into the Church in order to lead people astray, you can find the same type of people everywhere, especially here. Peter characterizes them as unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed. They blaspheme about matters that they are ignorant about. They take great pleasure in drunken partying all day long.
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They love deceiving people. They have an insatiable desire for sin, especially sexual sin. They are always loudly boasting about their folly. They prey on weaker people in order to drag them into the same sinful lifestyles that they celebrate.
But 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 also talks about people that were sexually immoral, adulterers, idolaters, practicing homosexuals, thieves, greedy, drunkards, revilers, and swindlers. It says that these people used to be these things. Now they are washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God.
Here, far behind the Gates of Hell, you find both types of people. Since both come from the same sinful background, Satan’s lie that all sinful people here fall into the 2 Peter 2 category is easy to embrace. But like the rest of his lies, it blinds us to the real world around us. That includes the truth of Acts 3:10-18 which says, ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.’
This is the way all of us are without the work of the Holy Spirit. God has constantly amazed me with His ability to create amazingly beautiful lives out of people there were living in utter darkness. Moses has severe anger issues. His anger caused him to murder a man, smash the original 10 Commandments, and dishonor God before the people of Israel by striking the rock in the wilderness of Zin.
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Not only did God still use Moses to lead the people of Israel, He used him to write the first 5 books of the Bible. Likewise, God used Paul to write 13 books in the New Testament, even though he hunted men, women, and children solely because they were Christian and was responsible for their murders. Even King David, a serial adulterer and a murderer was used by God to be one of Israel’s greatest Kings and is also responsible for a book in the Bible.
Since I have been incarcerated, I have watched God follow this same paradigm over and over again. He has used one of this nation’s worst political hatchet men to create this planet’s largest Christian Prison Ministry. He has used murderers, drug dealers, and people from every conceivable category of crime to accomplish amazing things for His Kingdom in here.
In John 7:24, Jesus tells us not to judge by appearances but to judge with right judgement. That’s easier said than done when you find certain people’s sins or lifestyles so offensive. It’s also scary when there are so many people in this world continually searching for better ways to take advantage of people, especially in here. The temptation is to withdraw from society. Circle the wagons and just stay with people that are safe. That’s exactly what Satan wants us to do. We can be ‘safe and comfortable’ he whispers. Just stay on our little islands, surrounded by people just like us. If God wants someone to become a Christian, He will send that person to your little island after He makes them just like you. Meanwhile, we can leave the rest of the world to burn.
The temptation to follow this pattern is very strong. Much of Christianity seems to be following it in America. I struggle with it every day.
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On the 13th, Ray was in the atrium early in the morning getting the mop bucket to do his job. The guard in the booth yelled something disparaging to him. Ray calmly walked to the booth door and told the guard she didn’t need to talk that way to him. She immediately gave him a charge for crossing the red line to get to the door (even though scored of inmates do this each day to yell at or cuss out the guards in the booth). This is the first charge Ray has had in the almost 10 years he has been incarcerated. The he tried to fight the charge at the Watch Office, the officer lied. Conveniently her camera was off. Now Ray may lose the job in Medical that he is supposed to start soon. Over and over, I have seen this play out where different officers have favorites. On the 24th, my neighbor was playing his ‘gansta’ rap so loud it made my ears hurt. Playing audio out loud from your TV is punishable by having your TV confiscated by the guards. Yet, 5 times guards walked by him and did nothing. Some of them seems to sing with it. One did stop and warn him to watch the door to make sure he wasn’t caught by a non-regular guard. These are all the same guards that continually talk down to me and many others. These are also the same guards I am called to share the love of Christ with by word or action. The same thing goes for my neighbor. That’s why when he asked for tea later in the day, I gave him double what he asked for (much to my other neighbor’s consternation, he thought I should cut him off).
I used to ask the congregation of the Berean Light Fellowship how many lgbtqt, atheist, Muslim, or liberal friends they had that they talked with on a regular basis. If the answer is none, then why? 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 says that we have been given the ministry of reconciliation as ambassadors for Christ. Is there anyone alive today that has sinned so greatly that Christ’s blood is not enough to cover it?
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My answer is no, so is God’s. John 3:16 doesn’t say that God loved ‘most’ of the world. It said He loved the world. This would include the worst sinner in the world, this would include the worst guards here at St. Brides, this would include the worst inmates, this would include me. I am called to love my neighbor because God loved them as well.
One final note before I end this letter, Yaaaah! I received my notice on the 20th to start Prison Fellowship! The next week I had my first 3 classes. We meet for regular classes Monday – Thursday from 7:50 to 10:50 am. We also have secondary leven classes Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as well as Friday mornings. If we miss 3 classes, we are removed from the program.
I like their creed – ‘Better than yesterday. Not done yet.’ Coach is the director of our program. As far as I know, he and Lenny are the only two full time pain leaders. There are also part-time volunteers from the outside as well. On tip of this, there are several inmate aids here at St. Brides that assist the staff that comes to teach. Coach himself used to be a federal inmate. Before that he was a well-known college basketball coach, hence the nickname ‘Coach’. He is in his late 60s or early 70s and has a very dynamic personality. He seems like a great leader.
I have been given our first textbook, it’s one of four. There are several things about this curriculum that stands out to me. I have followed and learned from Chuck Colson since the 1990s. I have personally been at two of his lectures. Colson started Prison Fellowship after doing time in a federal prison for his role as Nixon’s hatchet man in the Watergate scandal. Colson’s degree as a lawyer
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And his subsequent training in theology and apologetics made him well equipped to create a program to put people back on the right track in life. Sadly, I remember during the Clinton administration there was a big push back against Prison Fellowship because of it’s Christianity. Inmates could be offended by its claims about God and the Bible. I heard Prison Fellowship retooled its curriculum to make it more secular to stop the progressive pushback. I can see this in my textbook. The curriculum is very well designed but it’s still relativistic. Several of the secondary classes fill this gap to a degree. I am really looking forward to going through it and helping to refine some of the curriculum and make it a lot closer to what Colson has in his book, How Now Should We live.
Thank you again for all that you do my Beloved. Every day I get someone coming to me to thank me for the Bible and other resourced we give them as well as the emails you and others send. For some of them, that email is the only contact they have with the outside world.
I love your very much!
Love,
Me
SCRAP!
GELPOY!
LAAF!!!
ILYSOOOOM!