September 2024
Hello my Beloved,
So much for things slowing down. I had thought that with the suspension of Prison Fellowship things would be slowing down for me, nope. September has been even more jam packed than August was.
In Carpentry, Lance and I spent an entire week taking our final exams. Each day consisted of naming tools, their parts, and the safety protocols for each tool. We had several written tests that ranged from OSHA rules to proper building codes and techniques. For the final days of testing, we were asked to build 2 walls and join them at right angles. Lance and I both passed. I received very high grades across the board with the exception of one area. I received a ‘below average’ mark on keeping my work area ordered and clean. I know this comes as an utter shock to you. 😊 Now that I have passed my exams, I will be part of a graduation ceremony in October. I have already put yours and Dodah’s names down as my guest to attend the ceremony.
I still have not seen the doctor or the dentist. I was call to medial to see the nurse, though. It was like an episode from the Twilight Zone. They are doing the same thing that they did with my knee. I sat down at the nurse’s station, and she asked me what was wrong. I explained to her that I had lost much of the use of my right shoulder and the pain it caused when I slept. I also told her about the swelling that continues around my left eye and how it affects my vision. She said that she would schedule me to see the doctor. I reminded her that she told me that the last time she saw me for the exact same thing.
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She looked at my chart and smiled. She reported that she would schedule me to see the doctor and expedite the process. They would definitely see me the next week. I am still waiting. ☹ My tooth has chipped again and now the jagged edge keeps cutting my tongue and cheek. I put in another request to see the dentist and was promptly rebuked by them and told that I had to wait my turn.
As more and more drug users are moved into the dorm and non-drug users are moved out, things continue to devolve. As I reported last month, chaos, noise (yelling and ‘gangsta rap’), violence, extortion, and stealing continue to go up. We have gone through several microwaves recently. People use them to make drugs or heat metal to light drugs. This causes them to burn up. Speaking of burning, many of them will purposely burn dry Ramen noodles which produces an awful smell. They do this to cover up the smell of the drugs they are using.
I guess the administration is watching this dorm more closely. I was pulled aside by the lead investigator on the compound after my eye swelled up one time. I think he wanted me to confess that someone had punched me in it. I kept telling him it was not impact trauma, there were no broken capillaries or skin abrasions. After looking closely to see if what I said was true, he finally let me go.
I continue to mentor many different people in the dorm. Some of them are new to the dorm like Adam and Jeff, other have been here a while like Michael. This particular Michael is a tall thin man in his early 70’s. He has a master’s in biomedical engineering. He also leads the Catholic services here at St. Brides.
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He tends to be very aloof. He REALLY dislikes talking to people because as he says, its difficult to find anyone that desires, or is capable of, meaningful intelligent conversation. While I empathize with his struggle, I’m not ready to give up on humanity yet, here or otherwise. I have been mentoring Michael in apologetics and philosophy. I really enjoy engaging him. I have let him read a book I have on Intelligent Design and have let him read Koukl’s Tactics and Moreland’s Love God Will All Your Mind. He took between 10-20 pages of notes on each book. After each book we sit down for several hours and go through the notes he took, including any questions or objections he has. He has begun to take what I taught him and is now teaching it to his fellow Catholics.
Michael is not the only religious leader I am teaching. Jeff is in his early 60’s, a Chaplain’s assistant, and dead of the Wiccan group at St. Brides. Jeff is an interesting character. Like Michael, he is pretty intelligent and has been starving for someone to talk with that is on his level. Jeff is wiccan, but he admits that what he follows is a made-up approximation of a religion that ceased to exist long ago. He said that the only reason he follows it is because his ancient ancestors (he found out through 23 and Me) followed it. He took the time to show me their Constitution and beliefs outline. Halfway down his outline was the sentence “We believe that morality is relativistic to each individual and therefore should always be respected.” I couldn’t help myself. I pointed to the line and asked him what that meant. He perked up and gave me a 3-minute lecture about how evil, intolerant, and non-intelligent
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people were that believed their moral code was right and everyone else’s was wrong. He then ended by proudly saying that they don’t judge anyone else’s moral positions as good or bad but respect them all. I put on my best pity face and said, “I’m sorry, that’s so sad.” Jeff suddenly got this confused look on his face and stammered “Why?” I explained to him that by embracing his position he ceded his ability to do so many things. He looked even more confused. I asked him if he thought child abuse was wrong. He said that he definitely did. I told him that I agreed. The problem was that because of his stated moral position of respecting ALL people’s morality, he also had to respect the moral positions of the child abuser. He looked horrified. I then went on to explain that he had to respect the moral positions of racist, slavers, rapist, and even the moral positions of those evil, intolerant, non-intelligent people that think their moral positions were right and everyone else’s was wrong. Jeff’s body looked like it literally deflated. He hunched over and stared at the floor like a whipped puppy.
I explained to Jeff that it was ok to tell people that their moral positions were wrong, as a matter of fact he was already doing that with those that were not moral relativist. Now that we had established that he wasn’t really a moral relativist like he had claimed, I would help him work on how to determine when to label something as good or evil.
My new friend Adam is also interesting. Adam is a 40-year-old rotund plumber from the DC area. He is very amicable and smart, at least when it comes to plumbing. Adam is on the spectrum
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and thus, is very good at seeing patterns in things. This makes the chaos that exists every second of every day in the dorm sheer hell for him. Adam is agnostic. He loves to debate. Because of his bazaar views on a myriad of topics, there is always something to debate about. Adam claims to be a huge libertarian. Yet, he wants the wealth of all the millionaires and billionaires in America to be confiscated by the government and given to those that aren’t rich. He demands that the government make it illegal to pay anyone less than $52,000 a year regardless of the hours they work. Any business that cannot do this doesn’t deserve to be in business. He also demands the same thing for welfare. Adam thinks that all drugs should be legalized as well. It’s very difficult to debate with Adam because he lacks basic critical thinking skills. He also lies, A LOT. Many times in our debates I will show him a study from Harvard, Yale, Princton, the government, even quotes from Hawking or Einstein, and he will dismiss all of them as wrong and make up some bazaar rule of science I have never heard of or he will cite as experience he once had with his ex-wife, cousin’s second uncle’s neighbor’ friend as proof everyone is like that person. The most bazaar proofs he offers are also offered by Jeff sometimes, both will point to various episodes of Star Trek as proof that something can be done, usually pertaining to the way society should be structured and what should be considered virtuous or sinful. Both men claim to embrace moral relativism while simultaneously giving me an ever-growing list of moral absolutes. Continue to keep me in your prayers as I engage both men.
My Friday evening Apologetics class has ended, and I started a new one on Critical Thinking. I wish I had one of my Critical
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Thinking textbooks from school. I have enjoyed the one you guys sent me earlier in the year, ‘Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills.’ I am running into several problems with it though. First, it teaches using a different approach than the one I was taught in college. Second, because it is secular, the section on ethics if full of fallacies. Finally, as I requested, it’s a college level textbook. While some of my students have advanced degrees, most of them never finished high school. One of my biggest struggles has been to create a curriculum that equally feeds everyone in my class. Among my students are 5 Christians, 2 agnostics, a Wiccan, a New Ager, a Muslim, and a member of Nation of Gods and Earths.
My current plan is to teach Critical Thinking using a tier system. Level I is a modified version of Tactics. The Columbo Tactic is just a modified version of the Socratic Method. Not only did I teach them to use it in conversations with others, I also showed them how to use it internally by asking the two questions of the tactic about their own beliefs. I may say that I believe in God but what do I mean by ‘believe’ and what do I mean by ‘God’? Am I just giving an intellectual ascent to His existence or am I actively trusting in my belief about Him? And what do I mean by God? Is He this abstract higher power that I call on whenever I have a need and His moral positions just happen to agree with whatever I feel is correct on any given day? Or is He the sovereign Creator and Upholder of all that exists and whose moral framework is objectively portrayed in Scripture?
I taught them that as they exam their own beliefs using the Columbo tactic, run the answers through the same filters we taught them to do with others and look for flaws in their own reasoning.
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Level I of our Critical Thinking class has been so successful. I moved the entire class to Level II. Level II is a lot more in depth than level I. I have greatly increased the amount of terms that need to be memorized. We are also delving into formal and informal logic and various types of reasoning. Each lesson is accompanied by copious amounts of roleplaying.
As I fill up the dorm’s 6’x4’ white board with diagrams, definitions, and quotes, some in the prison staff have taken notice. I have had several good meetings with a couple of them. They were super excited to hear about the Critical Thinking class and offered to help in any way I needed. So far, I have politely declined including them because of my distrust towards the Department of Corrections as a whole. I am still sorting through my own emotions because of what I have experienced and continue to experience at their hands. Nevertheless, I was encouraged by their outreach. They laughed and told me during one of our meetings that I seemed to be a magnet for those on the autism spectrum. They told me that many of the people they had talked with mentioned my name as someone who had really helped them. I’m not sure what to do with that information, but I am glad I am helping people of all types. Please continue to pray for my Critical thinking class as well as my mentoring of others.
Speaking of prayer, please continue to also keep the Protestant Church group in your prayers. First, Nelson, one off the outside pastors (Mennonite) announced that he has throat cancer. He told us he would continue to preach as long as he could but knows his time may be limited. Please pray for God’s hand in this particular valley and that he will be granted strength and healing.
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Many people have been struggling with some of the other pastor’s sermons. We use a rotating schedule of pastors that include the chaplain, inmate pastors, and outside pastors. Some of the pastors are pretty good, others, not so much. Several of the pastors do not seem to engage in any sort of sermon preparation, one even brags about it. These type of pastors brag that it’s not them speaking on Sunday, but God speaking through them. I find this an incredibly bold and dangerous claim. Especially since many of their sermons are incoherent or flat out unbiblical. There also seems to be a definite correlation between how bad the sermon is and how much the pastor screams and stomps.
It has become very difficult to keep many of the guys that I mentor interested in the Protestant service. Brian decided he couldn’t take it anymore and quit. I talked him into joining The Messianic Jewish service led by Mr. Allen. I may not agree with everything they teach, but at least they have a solid Christian foundation.
Ironically, just a short time later, the heads of the Protestant group asked me to preach. After praying about it I accepted their invitation. I was told that I would be preaching at the Sunday morning service. I had already decided to draw from my Prolegomena lesson for my sermon. I offered to submit my sermon beforehand for their approval, but they told me there was no need, I could preach whatever God laid on my heart. In retrospect, I’m sure they wished they had seen it first.
I won’t lie, when I walked up to the mike to preach that morning, I was a little nervous. Not only had it been 2 years since I had preached, I knew what I was about to say would ruffle
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some feathers. But my job as a pastor is to equip people with the truth, not coddle their emotions with feel good platitudes.
I started my sermon (titled ‘If the Foundations be Destroyed, What Can the Righteous Do?’ from Psalm 11:3) with a question, ‘What is the most important pursuit in life?’ Many people would say that the most important pursuit is the pursuit of happiness. What this pursuit really means is the pursuit of pleasure (Hedonism). It’s seeking that which makes me feel good or gives me the easiest life. This type of pursuit has driven individuals to see other people as just a means to what makes them happy. Another person’s value is primarily based on how happy that person can make them feel. This leads to wrecked lives, ruined families, and atrocities like slavery and the sex trade. Many people are in prison because their most important pursuit was the pursuit of happiness/pleasure.
Another possibility is the pursuit of love. On the surface this sounds good. But scratch that surface and you will find a mass of confusion underneath. I love my wife and children, surely that’s a good and noble thing. But I also love pizza and fighting. Should I pursue those with equal fervor? How about those in here that love drugs or belittling other people? Should that love be pursued? Surely not. I think that we as a society have lost a proper understanding of what love really is, if it’s really anything at all.
How about the pursuit of God? Surely this is the most important pursuit. But which God? The God of the Bible? The God of Islam? Molech? One of the Norse Gods? Maybe even the flying Spaghetti Monster! Like the word love, the word ‘God’ has come to mean a lot of contradictory things to a lot of people. Does it matter which ‘God’ I pursue?
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Yes, of course it does. I must pursue the true God and the Truth about Him. I must also pursue the truth about love as well as the truth about happiness. I should be pursuing the truth about everything. Truth is the most important pursuit in life. The pursuit of truth is so important that Jesus tied it to His incarnation in John 18:37, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
How important is truth to Christianity? We are saved by our love for the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10). We are sanctified by the truth (John 17:17). Our faith is in vain and futile if it’s not in a true belief (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). We worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23). We are commanded to love in deed and in truth (1 John 3:18). Love rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). We are commanded to speak the truth (Ephesians 4:15, 25). We are commanded to have true interpretations of Bible verses (2 Timothy 2:15). The entirety of God’s word is true (Psalm 119:160). Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6). The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, guides us into truth (John 16:13). And finally, we are set free by the truth (John 8:32).
Pilate asked a follow up question upon Jesus’ ‘good confession’ in John 18:37. In verse 38 Pilate asked Jesus “What is truth?” When I say that Christianity is ‘true’ or the Bible is ‘True’, what am I saying? So, what is truth?
To help with a proper definition of truth, I am also going to give definitions of several other words that are important to a proper understanding of truth. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. Reality is what exists, what is. Belief is what I think reality is.
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Therefore, my belief is only true when it corresponds to reality. My belief is false when it does not correspond to reality.
So, when I say that Christianity is true, I’m not making a statement about personal preference, I’m saying that the God of the Bible actually exists, and He has communicated to us through the Bible. The Bible itself infers this definition of truth in 1 Corinthians 15:12-34 when it says that if the Resurrection of Christ was not a real historical event, then Christianity should be rejected and what Paul and the other apostles have been saying is not true about God.
There is another word that is integral to proper understanding of the word ‘truth’, that word is ‘knowledge’. Knowledge is justified true belief. Like truth, the Bible also has a lot to say about knowledge. John the Baptist came to give knowledge of salvation (Luke 1:77). Our new self is being renewed in knowledge (Colossians 3:10). Desire without knowledge is not good (Proverbs 19:2). Some people have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge (Romans 10:2). Solomon himself chided, “How lone inexperienced ones will you love ignorance (lacking knowledge)? How long will you mockers enjoy mocking and you fools hate knowledge (Proverbs 1:22)?
As you reread each of these verses, substitute the words ‘true belief’ every time you see the word knowledge. Now read Hosea 4:6 as it says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (true belief); because you have rejected knowledge (true belief), I reject you from being a priest to me.”
God’s people perish not because of a lack of belief, but for a lack of true belief (knowledge). The percentage of Americans that attend church each continues its decades long
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plunge while those that identify their religious beliefs as ‘none’ (none of the organized religions) is at an all-time high. God’s people are indeed being destroyed for a lack of knowledge.
How does this happen? 2 Timothy 2:24-26 talks about helping people come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. There are many ways Satan takes us captive. 2 Timothy 11:14-15 says “for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So, it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.” Hebrews 3:13 says that we may be hardened by the deceitfulness on sin. Romans 1:18 talks about men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Colossians 2:8 warns, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”
In John 8:44, Jesus says that Satan was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with truth. He also says that there is no truth in Satan and that he is a liar and the father of lies. Those lies take many forms. Sometimes he dresses his lies up in good things like in Romans Genesis 3:1-7. Sometimes he appeals to our sinful desires like in Romans 7:15-25. Still other times he uses more insidious things to capture people, thinks like the hollow and deceptive philosophies which depend on human traditions and the elemental spiritual forces of this world (demons). Philosophies like post-modernism, naturalism, fideism, and monism ore used by him to redefine core words (truth, reality, human, faith, ethics, etc.) used in the making of a person’s worldview. This makes understanding another person’s worldview difficult sometimes because even though two people may be using the same words to describe what they
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believe, they may mean very different things. Thus, they can be blinded to what the other person really believes. And that is one of the primary dangers of a lie, it blinds the believer to the truth of the world around them. That’s why the lie is Satan’s most used and most powerful weapon. He used it in Genesis 3:1-7 to capture Adam and Eve by blinding them to the truth God had given them about Himself, them, and the world around them. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 that Satan continues to blind people in the same way today.
How effective are Satan’s lies at capturing people? John says in 1 John 5:19 that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Could you, me, or the rest of our brothers or sisters in Christ be held captive by Satan today? How would we know? How would we know if we had embraced a hollow and deceptive philosophy rather than a philosophy that is true? How do we know our beliefs about what our favorite Bible verses mean are true beliefs? How do we know if we have knowledge and not just a zeal for God (Romans 10:2)?
Proverbs 8:12 says, “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion.” So, wisdom finds knowledge. What wisdom? Websters defines wisdom as the power or faculty of forming a sound judgement (accurate determination) in any matter. The ability to discern inner qualities and relationships. Websters also defines a wise person as one characterized by wisdom. A person marked by deep understanding. Keen discernment and capacity for sound judgement.
Wisdom is a skill. Like any skill, it needs to be taught and practiced. That’s why Hebrews 5:13-14, when distinguishing between mature and immature Christians, says that it is the mature that has had their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good
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from evil. It’s a skill that involves actively linking thoughts together in orderly rational ways in order to validly form true conclusions. Actively linking thoughts together in this fashion is called reason. The science that deals with the principles and criteria of correct reasoning is called logic.
Therefore, if someone wants to be able to make accurate judgements (discernment), he must use correct reasoning. For someone to know the difference between correct reasoning and incorrect reasoning he must learn logic. At the core of wisdom is the ability to critically think. The ability to correctly link thoughts together in order to come to a true conclusion. That is how wisdom finds knowledge and discretion.
Wisdom is essential to the success of every area of life. A good mechanic will use it when rebuilding an engine. Good doctor’s use it when treating their patients. Good theologians use it when engaging in a well-reasoned analysis of Scripture vie proper hermeneutics. Good Christians should acquire it even if it cost all that you have, according to Proverbs 4:7. Proverbs goes on to say that wisdom is more precious than rubies and nothing you desire can compare to it (8:11), the one who gets wisdom loves life (19:8), the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (9:10), and do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; lover her and she will watch over you (4:6). James 1:5 says, “If any of you lack wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously.”
God does give wisdom generously to those that ask. He, of course, has filled many pages of Scripture with wisdom by giving supernaturally to men like Solomon (1 Kings 4:29-34). He has also given us teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:11-16).
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Part of this equipping is instruction in wisdom. Teachers like Norman Geisler, J.P. Moreland, Greg Koukl, and many others offer great teaching on Godly Critical Thinking which is at the core of wisdom.
There is no area of life and thought where knowledge and wisdom are not important. Indeed, Proverbs 24:3-7 says “By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. A wise man is full of strength and a man of knowledge enhances his might, for by wise guidance you can wage war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory. Wisdom is too high for a fool; in the gate he does not open his mouth” (meaning he is not capable of serious analysis).
The ‘house’ of Christianity revolves around two simple and profoundly deep commandments. Mark 12:28-31 records them this way; “Hear, O Isreal: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Love God and love our neighbor. ‘Love’ is yet another word we use a lot in day-to-day life and rarely pause long enough to ask ourselves what we mean when we use the word love. Better yet, what does the word love mean in the passage in Mark?
The Bible has a lot to say about the word love. Ephesians 5:25-33 speaks of love as the nourishing and cherishing of another. Another way to say that is love is placing someone else’s physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual good before my own. Philippians 1:9-10 adds even more depth to this definition by having Paul say, “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with
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knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent (good), and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”
This shows that love is also a skill. As with any skill, a constant growth in knowledge and wisdom is encourages. Love also requires constant practice, as John reminds us when he says to love in deed and in truth (1 John 3:18).
So, what does it mean to love God? John 14:15 says if you love God then keep His commandments. This requires a knowledge of His commandments and the wisdom to know how to obey them. In John 15:10, He also says that if you keep His commands you will remain in His love. This means that the more I live according to God’s word the better I will be physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.
So, what does it mean to love my neighbor? To love my neighbor, I need to know what is good for them physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. The term ‘good’ in the definition of love is rooted in the source of good, God Himself (Mark 10:18, James 1:17). Therefore, I need to be constantly growing in my knowledge of what the Bible says is good as well as the wisdom of how to use that knowledge.
If the foundations be destroyed, what will the righteous do? I would assert that a large part of the foundations of Christianity have been destroyed because of Satan’s blinding the church about a correct understanding of truth, knowledge, wisdom, and love. We have already seen what the righteous will do because of that destruction, we will fail in our mandate to be salt and light to the world around us (Matthew 5:13-16).
But there is another thing that we can do. Just as the Temple was rebuild (Ezra 1-6), we can rebuild our foundations here. The first thing we must do is pray. Because, unless the Lord builds the house, those
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who build it labor in vain. Second, make the pursuit of truth your highest priority. Third, examine your beliefs about everything, especially your beliefs about God and love. Get in the habit of asking yourself 2 questions about your beliefs: What do I mean by …? And why do I believe that? Forth, take a class on Critical Thinking by a good Christian instructor. Learn the Laws of Logic and how to reason well. Finally, use the knowledge and wisdom you acquire to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.
I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea after my sermon. Over the next week about half the congregation (including people I didn’t know) would stop me wherever they saw me and tell me how much they absolutely loved my sermon, and they learned more that they had in a long time. Sadly, during the evening service, the head inmate pastor called me out during his sermon and said I was bad because I used a sermon I wrote in Seminary. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. His second in command told several people that they had decided that I would never preach again because I relied on truth rather than the Spirit. Also, I needed to understand that people come to church to have their emotions fixed, not their intellect.
I was very proud of Richard. He is in the same dorm as both of the pastors and stood up to defend me during their week-long tirade against me. Many people came to me from that dorm and told me how funny it was to see this curly haired young man take on two pastors at once on deep theological (and philosophical) disagreements and push them back. One of the issues was their
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claim that you cannot argue someone into the Kingdom. Richard showed them in 2 Corinthians 5:11, Acts 17:4; 18:4; and 19:26. It looks like I have a long battle ahead of me now that the battle lines are clearly drawn. Please pray that we (me and those I mentor) continue to speak the truth in love to the heads of the Protestant Church here and that our actions will show as much love as it does the truth. On a side note, Matthew, who is 3rd in line in Church leadership seems to really like my sermon, even though he is very liberal and a self-styled post-modernist.
On a final note, keep James in your prayers. One of the gang guys started to beat up an older man in a wheelchair in James’s dorm. James stepped in to stop the beating of the helpless man and got beaten himself. Like I have said so many times in the past, there is almost no justice in here, at least from the Department of Corrections. At least we know ultimate justice will one day be done (Matthew 25:31-46).
I love you very much My Beloved. Thank you for your continued love, encouragement, and support. Please thank the others for me as well. Love you!!!
Love,
Me
SCRAP!
GELPOY!
ILYSOOOM!
LAAF!
😊