Posted by Helen on: 06.25.2008 /
Here’s my latest response in the local newspaper dialog on doubt and faith I’ve been having with Rev. Dean Lueking.
If you want to see the whole dialog (which has been going on for almost two years now) I have links to it here. It began when I wrote about why I don’t go to church anymore for the newspaper. Dean, who I didn’t know at the time, wrote an elegant gracious response. I wrote back and it turned into a dialog.
We’ve continued writing back and forth in the newspaper since then and occasionally meet to chat (when he’s in town - he travels a lot, doing ministry around the world for the Lutheran church).
Dean, I was interested to read your thoughts about The Way as it applies to people inside prisons. ['The Way' reaches behind bars, Viewpoints, May 28]
I appreciated how you brought up Jesus’ statement, “I was in prison and you visited me.” I love the story that comes from! For me it defines The Way.
In the story, I understand Jesus to be saying, “People who help others are the type of people I want in heaven with me.” If I were choosing people to spend a long time with, those are the people I, too, would choose. Maybe that’s why I like this story so much.
In it, Jesus also mentions helping people in five other situations: those who are hungry, thirsty, strangers, unclothed and sick. I’m glad you focused on prisoners because those are the easiest ones to dismiss as “not like me” and “not worthy of help.” The other circumstances Jesus mentioned can happen to “innocent” people, but people (usually) only go to prison if they’ve done something wrong. The temptation is to set myself apart because “I would never do that!”
Yet prisoners are human beings too. And we all make stupid mistakes and bad choices, even if ours didn’t land us in prison. The Way helps expose and break down our prejudices about other people. It challenges us to help people like prisoners who are more convenient to ignore.
When we help, we discover they’re surprisingly like us even though their circumstances are different from ours. We become aware of when we’ve thoughtlessly affirmed unfair stereotypes about them. Instead we start defending them against the stereotypes.
I’ve never visited a prisoner, but I have written to a couple of them whom I met just before they were incarcerated. I was pleased to hear back from each of them. Judging by their responses, those were some of the most appreciated letters I ever wrote.
As you said, it’s a mystery why Jesus equated visiting prisoners with visiting him. Maybe this is one of the things he meant: When we follow The Way, it unexpectedly turns out to be the route to what we’re really looking for in life. I say “unexpected” because we tend to assume happiness comes from making ourselves comfortable. Maybe that helps but it can’t provide the joy and fulfillment we experience when we make a positive difference in someone else’s life.
Comment by: Jason Horton
1 06/25/08 8:25 AM | Comment Link |What is the purpose of a prison? I see it as threefold.
1) Protect society from further harm by the criminal.
2) Provide a means of rehabilitating the criminal so that they no longer pose a threat to society.
3) Punish the criminal for the harm that they have done to society.
I don’t know what prisons were for 2000 years ago but I suspect that the punishment element was more important. Punishing criminals provides the “innocent” members of society with a sense of justice. It’s largely illusory and can be counter productive to rehabilitation.
Seeing past the desire for punishment is really a matter of removing the label of criminal and allowing our empathy to see the person beneath. Re humanising a prisoner may encourage that person to work at reforming behaviour more than reinforcing an idea of low self worth.
I’m surprised that Jesus would claim the mantle of prisoner. It is really a way of giving humanity back to criminals but the risks for a teacher to associate himself with this element could easily backfire. Of course he also associated with prostitutes, the poor and the diseased so it’s hardly that great a shock.
There is also the idea that Jesus was a criminal himself. He was tried, convicted and punished for heresy. A crime he did not deny. It could also be said that the release of Barabbas, a well known bandit, could link the figure of Jesus with a criminal element.
It is certainly worth being reminded that before gender, race, criminality, religion, anything at all, we are first and foremost alike in our humanity.
Comment by: no offense
2 06/25/08 11:10 AM | Comment Link |??
INRI
Sounds more like insurrection
Comment by: Randy
3 06/25/08 9:39 PM | Comment Link |Yeah…I think the record indicates the crime was claiming to be a king…which was a hokey pokey no-no in the time of Ceasar. Insurrection might fit that description. Heresy might have been the crime from the Jewish perspective (actually it would have been blasphemy), but they had no way of executing anyone for that. They went with the civil crime of insurrection to get the job done.
Nice point, Jason, about Jesus being a convicted criminal. Hadn’t thought much about that in this context, but it sure makes that little “when I was in prison you visited me” thing in Matt. 25 richer. And it helps me with that gap that Helen described when it comes to that particular issue.
I have visited people in prison…several times, both in the state prison and the county jail (it was my job as a pastor, so i probably don’t get credit for it). Most of them were people associated with families in our church (and in at least one case, a leader from our church!). I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy those visits much. All of them were deep into denial and justification, and I have little empathy for people like that.
The thought of Jesus being a convict sort of helps, though, in some weird way. Thanks.
Comment by: Helen
4 06/26/08 8:43 AM | Comment Link |Thanks Jason - I like how you put it, that Jesus was giving back humanity to prisoners.
No offense and Randy, that’s what I was taught too.
Randy were the prisoners Christians? Why would Christians need to deny what they did and justify themselves? Isn’t that what Jesus is supposed to have done? That often confuses me about Christians. I thought it a lot when Ted Haggard at first denied what he did then a week later admitted it. He devoted his life to telling people Jesus forgives their sins. If that’s true why did he need to hide his?
Comment by: Randy
5 06/26/08 9:41 AM | Comment Link |Helen,
Yes…in some cases those I visited who were incarcerated were Christians (or at least they referred to themselves as such). In one case it was a former meth addict who became a leader in our church and then fell back into using and got busted for other crimes related to his using. He is a tweaker (that’s what they call hard core meth users) who, like all addicts, lied so much to cover his tracks that he actually didn’t know the truth from a lie anymore. I felt sorry for him, but also betrayed and angry about all the abuse he heaped on his family and friends. He never really took full responsibility for that devastation to others, which always makes me angry. He’s out now and at another church. I don’t know what to think of him, frankly. He gives me the creeps.
I don’t think Christians are exclusively guilty of denying their sins, but those Christians who make a living pointing out other people’s sin (and then cover their own) are just like my addict friends…they know not what they do (at the moment, anyway). Their response is an automated survival reaction, a well embedded habit of deceit and cover up that simply doesn’t work well once you’re busted on CNN. Some of them “come to their senses” eventually, only because of the deluge of evidence that refutes their denial. Some do not…they continue to perpetrate the lies that are now the very fabric of their lives. To not do so would be suicide for them…they simply cannot live with who they really are. They must create and sustain an entire reality where their behavior makes sense, and then they attempt to accuse those who call them on their behavior of not seeing things as they really are (ie, according to the reality where their behavior makes sense).
This is more complicated than “Jesus forgives us our sins” I’m afraid. The emotional and psychological fabric of an addict (of any kind…and I think all of us are addicted to something, at some level, by the way) is so complex that to get to the point of even understanding forgiveness that very fabric must be abruptly penetrated, usually by some unavoidable and horribly painful tragedy.
This is true of all human beings, not just the Christian variety, in my experience anyway. Christians just look more ridiculous when it happens to them because some of them tend to publicly and loudly preach as if they are above and beyond such human frailty.
May God have mercy on us all.
Comment by: Helen
6 06/28/08 1:03 PM | Comment Link |Thanks Randy.