Faith in Prison

Faith, hope and love are rare commodities anywhere. They are much rarer than gold, more scarce than you would imagine. Faith and hope are diminished when you do not believe that you will ever be free again. You have been locked into a living tomb to await your eventual death. Society has judged that you have no value except to exist. Your award is worse than death itself. Instead it is years of a living death.

When I talked with the Emerald Prince, I asked him what percentage of the crimes committed involved drugs and alchohol . He responded 90%. In short, many people are there because of being psychotic or sociopathic through the use of drugs and alcohol. Drugs and alcohol are not an excuse for crime. However, the effect of drugs and alcohol in sending many people to prison should not be ignored by society either.

So to many prisoners real life is outside. And for them they remain in the tombs until it is time for release. They believe only what they can touch and feel. And in that, they are much like many on the outside of the tombs that believe the same. Further many of these same people did not deal with reality when they were outside but instead lived in living hazes of drug and alcohol stupor. Drugs and alcohol were the substance and fabric of their lives.

Hebrews 11:1 says : "Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

You can not touch faith-but faith can touch you. Faith is not seeing and believing. It is believing without seeing. St. Thomas demonstrated lack of faith. He said unless he saw Christ and touched the wounds, he would not believe. God in his mercy met Thomas even in his lack of faith. So Thomas saw the wounds and believed. God even helps our faith sometimes. As one guy in the Bible said: "I believe, help my unbelief."

The essence of faith is believing without seeing. It is a belief in God (i.e. belief that He is) and a belief that he will answer our plea for help. It is belief that Jesus is the son of God and that He came to renew our life. Every Christian funeral involves the belief that God will raise the dead just as He said that He would do and just as He raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

Some prisioners believe that faith is too hard. How interesting that faith would be too tough for some tough guys. These same guys employ faith in other areas of their life everyday and in effect require some measure of faith just to continue to make it each day.

For instance, when their mother or wife or daughter says that she loves him and is coming to visit him, the prisoner believes it in faith. So if I were to go to the prisoner and say: "Well, your wife does not really love you, she really hates you but is just coming to visit you out of obligation. She does not really love you because love does not really exist. It is just atoms. There is no true emotion. You are not really loved. You just want to think that someone loves you when there really is no such thing."

If I were to say these evil things, I can assure you that I would have a bunch of very angry prisoners after me.

Yet, irrationally, they are willing to say the same type of evil thing about the love of God for them.

By confessing such a thing they go a long way toward making it not so. Almost. But the grace of God continues to work on them nonetheless just as it did with St. Thomas. God is still stretching out his hands to them.

Does God care about the prisoner as much as He does about the non-prisoner. I believe that the answer is Yes, He does. Is the soul of a prisoner worth as much as the same as a non-prisoner, I believe the answer is that it is worth the same.

In one sense, we are all captives of sin. He came to set the captives free.

Faith, hope and love grow in the rich soil of belief. The tender shoots of faith are destroyed by the hard rocks of doubt and unbelief. It is my prayer that the seeds of belief will begin to spring forth and the waters of the Holy Spirit will cause them to grow and prosper even in our prison system as well as elsewhere.