August 2024

Hello my Beloved,

Wow!  Things just really seemed to have piled up during the last half of the summer!  One of the biggest things to happen was that we were all drug tested.  Predictably, many people in the compound failed, especially our dorm.  This has caused there to be a mass movement of inmates into and out of our dorm.  Many of those that tested ‘clean’ have been moved out to other dorms and those that failed the test have been moved in.  This has made the dorm louder, more chaotic, more violent, and more locked down.  Extortions and stealing are up because of the new arrivals.  I have seen almost a half dozen fights in the past 2 months.  They almost always revolve around non-payment of drugs used.  The rumor is that everyone who was clean on their test will eventually be moved out and this dorm will be turned into some kind of special treatment dorm for substance abusers.  It’s sad to see some of the people who failed and were relocated here.  The head aid to Prison Fellowship is one of them as is Ira, one of the Deacons in the Protestant Church here.  Keep both men in your prayers.  I was told that Bear was denied parole and that plus the loss of Prison Fellowship caused him to sink into old habits.  Ira had made tremendous progress as a Christian since we were in 340B together.  He started to develop bad headaches after I left.  They eventually found out that it is because he has lesions on his brain from repeated head trauma and drug use.

Cody was one of the ones moved out of our dorm and into 330A.  I was sad to see him leave our dorm and thus our Bible

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study.  Before he left, though, he knitted me a thermal wrap for my 22 oz coffee cup.  It is blue with a gold cross on it.  Michael was also moved.

Manu, my Romanian friend, also left.  He was shipped of the compound, though.  No one is sure what happened.  He was a very devout Christian, and I had also begun to train him to lead some of our studies.  An issue arose between him and the administration here about his court case.  According to him, the court denied a review of his case because he missed the deadline to file by a few days.  He claims that he didn’t and that he handed it over to the administration to mail with plenty of time.  The administration claims he didn’t and denied his charge against them.  He then showed me a receipt that they had given him showing that they took postage from his account to mail the papers to the court, several days before it was due and before the administration claims he asked them to mail anything.  The administration called him into a private meeting (he asked me to pray for him at the meeting) and he was suddenly packed up.  Some people said they saw him in the infirmary because of a foot infection, others said he threatened the administration with violence.  Either way, he is off the compound.  Please continue to pray for him.  I have caught guards and staff members here in so many lies that it makes my head spin.  I don’t think Manu would do something like that, but I have been wrong about people’s character before.

Kenny left from the veteran’s dorm to go to Lawrenceville.  He had requested the move months earlier.  The assumption is that Prison Fellowship might not ever come back, and Lawrenceville is a new prison made primarily for veterans (like Kenny) that would be a great place for him to minister to fellow veterans.

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I wrote him an encouraging going away letter.  I know he will do a great job.  We have equipped him with many good books, and I have spent countless hours training him.  Though his self-taught Greek is far superior to the semester of Greek I took, he still needs to engage people more and soften his intellectual approach.  I have great confidence he is going to serve God in amazing ways there.  I have already received work from him that he has taken on several proteges.  I don’t know if you remember the pastor here named Jason that told me I was demon possessed because I used Tactics, evidently, he went to Lawrenceville as well and has now started his own cult.  He has proclaimed himself as God’s primary prophet on earth today.  His message consists of the ‘corrected’ list of books that should have been in the Bible and his ‘gospel’ or how to attain sinless perfection here on earth so you can then be saved.  Needless to say, keep Kenny in your prayers as he counters the ‘prophet.’

Even though I lost several members of our Bible study, we also gained several more.  A handful of the new guys moved in were not there because they failed the drug test.  Adam is a 40-year-old plumber and agnostic.  Jeff is in his early 60s, one of the chaplain’s aids, and the head of the Wiccan group at St. Brides.

My Friday evening apologetics class really took off.  We covered many different arguments for God, Jesus, the Resurrection, the Bible, and proper hermeneutics.  As popular as that class was, my class size doubled when I started teaching critical thinking.  I have struggled for several months to design a critical thinking program that would be appropriate to the low education level of the average inmate and yet still be challenging enough to keep those with college degrees active and involved.

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I started our Friday studies in Apologetics by giving them the reasons why all Christians should study and develop this skill.  The very word apologetics comes from the Greek word ‘apologia’ which means ‘to give a well thought out defense’ for something.  The word can be found in 1 Peter 3:15 which says, “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense (apologia) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you yet do it with gentleness and respect.”  Peter’s command to us is to first, keep Christ the Lord honored in our hearts as holy.  The Greek word for heart is ‘kardia.’  The heart is the seat of the thought and emotion.  It primarily consists of the intellect, will, and emotion.  These three aspects work together to produce what we do in our bodies.  As part of honoring Christ, the Lord as holy in our hearts, Peter says that we are to always be ready to give a defense/apologia for why we have our hope in Christ.  He cautions us though to do this with gentleness and respect.

We see a similar command by Jude in verses 3 and 4 of his letter where he explains that though he wanted to write to the church about their common salvation, he instead found it necessary to write and appeal to them to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”  This was because there were people that had ‘crept in unnoticed’ among the Believers that were capturing people with their lies, deceptions, and demonic philosophies.

Paul also says the same thing in 2 Corinthians 10:5 stating, “We destroy arguments, and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”  At its core, apologetics is about ‘destroying arguments and every

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lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.’  It is done with ‘gentleness and respect’ because the primary reason we engage in apologetic dialogue or debate is because we love our neighbor (Mark 12:28-31) enough to share the truth with him/her in an understanding way while working to free them from whatever lies, deceptions, or demonic philosophies hold the captive (2 Timothy 2:24-26, Colossians 2:8, 2 Corinthians 4:3-4.)

I started the class with an outline drawn from Greg Koukl’s book, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions.  I had told the guys a few weeks before to make sure they had read the copies we had provided for them.  We spent a lot of time on the first two questions of the ‘Colombo Tactic.’  They learned to ask, ‘What do you mean by that?’ because it gathers information about what a person really believes.  It also clarifies vague terms people use.  This is especially helpful in protecting the person from committing the ‘Strawman Fallacy.’  Finally, it forces the person being engaged to think more clearly about their claims.

The second question in the Columbo Tactic is ‘Why do you believe that/How did you come to that conclusion?’  Asking this question gives a deeper look into the foundations of a person’s truth claims.  You can then weigh whether a person has an argument or and assertion.  This is a very important distinction to make.  An argument is a group of statements (truth claims) that are arranged in such a way that they are supposed to support a particular conclusion.  An argument can be examined for its validity and its truthfulness.  In contrast, an assertion is a stand-alone statement about reality.  It offers no evidence in support of its truthfulness.

The second question in the Columbo Tactic also reverses the burden of truth on a truth claim.  Many times, a Christian is buried under

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a mountain of truth claims:  God doesn’t exist, the Bible is false, Jesus never rose from the dead.  It’s not the job of the Christian to shoot down every assertion thrown at them.  If an assertion is made, including by the Christian, there should also be reason given in support of the assertion, thus, making it an argument.

Using these two questions will keep you in control of the discussion.  As you control the discussion, think about where you would like, or ought, to take the dialogue and how to get there.  Remember the admonition of Colossians 4:6, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer each person.”

As you gather information using the Columbo Tactic, look for flaws in a person’s reasoning.  One of the flaws that you will look for is various types of self-defeating statements.  Statements like: “The Bible was written by humans and humans make mistakes so you can’t trust it.  (Since a human is making that assertion against the Bible then I guess I shouldn’t trust that objection.)’ ‘You shouldn’t tell someone that their moral point of view is wrong.  (Then why are you telling me that my moral point of view about needing to correct others is wrong?)’  ‘You shouldn’t judge other people!  (Then why are you judging me for judging others?)’

Koukl gives many other tactics in his book.  Steam Roller tactic is designed to stop the person that keeps interrupting to throw another objection at you.  You stop the person (politely) and get a commitment to stay with the original topic until it is satisfied.  If after they agree, they interrupt again, you again stop the and remind them of their previous agreement.  If they do it a third time you stop them again and explain to them that you mistakenly thought this was a

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dialogue, not a monologue.  Ask them to finish their point and leave.  (You are likely in a ‘pearl among swine’ scenario.)

One of the more powerful tactics I taught the class was Taking the Roof Off.  This tactic is a form of Reductio Ad Absurdum or Reducing to the Absurd.  This tactic takes a person’s view or argument and reduces it to its basic principles.  These principles are then reapplied in a similar scenario in such a way as to show the person the absurdity of their view.  For example: if a person says that you should never correct someone’s morality (never mind that they are trying to correct yours), ask if that means they would never try to stop someone from beating a child because their skin color or sex.  Hopefully the person would immediately stop someone from engaging in what they felt was morally correct if it involved such a heinous action.  This tactic is particularly effective because it uses strong emotional appeal to show the unreasonableness of a view.

After taking the class through the rest of Tactics, we engaged in many hours of roleplaying.  As we role played, I began to teach them multiple arguments for God, the Bible, and the Resurrection.  We began with a simple Horizontal Cosmological Argument for God, the Kalam Cosmological Argument:

1. Everything that had a beginning had to have a cause.
2. The universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore, the universe had to have a cause.

This cause had to be spaceless, timeless, and all powerful (more power than can be found in the universe.)  Further reasoning along this line show that the cause must also be personal and intelligent.

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1. The universe had a First Cause.
2. This First Cause’s act to create was either determined, undetermined, or self-determined.
3. But it cannot be determined, since there is nothing before the First Cause.
4. Neither can it be undetermined, since this is contrary to the principle of causality
5. Hence, the act to create must have been self-determined.
6. But self-determined acts are free acts, for this is what is meant by a free act.
7. Therefore, the act by which the First Cause created the world must have been a free act of an intelligent, personal being.

This leaves us with a First Cause that is very much like the God of the Bible (as well as Islam and Judaism.)  There is a lot of evidence to support the premises of the Kalam Cosmological argument.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics, expanding universe, the radiation afterglow, the great galaxy seeds, and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity all support the claim that the universe had a beginning.  Time itself also supports a beginning:

1. If an infinite number of moments occurred before today, then today would never have come, since it is impossible to traverse an infinite number of moments.
2. But today has come.
3. Hence, there was a finite number of moments before today; the universe had a beginning.

This point also negates the idea of the oscillating or the multiverse disproving the Kalam.

We also took a look at the Teleological Argument:

1. All complex design implies a designer
2. There is complex design in the universe
3. Therefore, there must be a Designer of the universe

We spent time looking at many different examples of design,

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even the ones found in the Anthropic Principle.  One of the most amazing examples of design that we looked at was the DNA found in a single human cell.  A single strand of DNA has terabytes of information (specified complexity) stored in it using its 4-letter alphabet (A, C, D, T.)

I even took the class through several philosophical arguments for God, including this Vertical Cosmological Argument:

1. Every contingent thing that exists has a cause.
2. No contingent thing can cause itself to exist.
3. So, every contingent thing must be caused by something else.
4. The series of contingent causes and effects is itself contingent.
5. The series of contingent causes must be caused by something else.
6. The thing that causes the series of contingent causes must be a necessary being
7. This necessary being is God.

This argument also produces a God similar to the God produced by the Kalam Cosmological argument.  There are additional forms of this argument that also adds Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.  It is more difficult to use the arguments though because they require an understanding of the classical definitions of words like contingent, non-contingent, potency, actuality, and being.

We spent many hours studying other arguments as well.  We looked at arguments for the trustworthiness of the Bible (and several categories of objections) and arguments for the Resurrection, specifically Gary Habermas’s Minimalist Facts argument.  I would love to write all of these arguments out in this letter, but I don’t want it to be 100 pages long.  We ended our study in apologetics by engaging in several deep studies in hermeneutics.  Teaching the guys the Historical Grammatical method of interpretation

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Gives them the skills needed to defend core doctrines against those that twist scripture.  I was surprised by how much they enjoyed it.

Well, I guess I should bring this letter to a close.  Please continue to pray for the return of Prison Fellowship soon.  Continue to pray for Carpentry.  I should take my final exam next month.  Meanwhile, I continue to train new students and make various things to sell in the wood show in November.  And please continue to pray for this dorm as they dump more and more inmates in here that are active drug users.  The chaos, noise, violence, stealing, and extortion continues to grow.  Though people here respect me enough to not harass me, others aren’t so fortunate.  Finally, continue to pray for my health.  My knees still hurt because of my shoes.  I put in a request to see the dentist and the doctor way back in June and I am still waiting.  I have already chipped a tooth twice now while sleeping.  Until I see the dentist to get a night guard like the one I had at home, I fear I will lose more and more of the tooth until I have to have it removed.  I still have only a very limited amount of mobility in my right arm and shoulder.  It continues to make it difficult to sleep because of the pain.  My swelling around my left eye still seems to be sporadic.  The vision in that eye also becomes very unfocused as it drains.  It is maddening to think they still haven’t addressed any of my health concerns yet.

I love you so very much my Beloved.  Please tell everyone back home that I miss them, I love them, and I’m praying for them.  Love you!!

Love, Me

 

SCRAP!

GELPOY!

ILYSOOOOM!

LAAF!

😊