By the Rivers of Babylon

I read Psalm 137 this morning. It’s a Psalm written at the time of Israel’s destruction and captivity in Babylon. It is a sorrowful lament and a cry to God to pay back the captors for the agony the writer experiences in captivity.



Captivity is a difficult experience. For those “law and order” types who believe in “lock em up” (and I was one), I can tell you, in general, prison hardens hearts and makes the criminal feel more like a victim than a contrite, rehabilitated individual who has learned that his behavior was wrong. In other words, prisons make prisoners more attuned to law breaking.


I’m here in a low custody facility. We’re in large (96 men) dorms, double bunks, in space that could reasonably accommodate at most 20 men: four commodes, two urinals, an open shower area with five showerheads. I share “cut space” (the area between my bunk and the next bunk) that is less than 21 square feet (7’ X 2’10”). Measure the floor space of a walk-in closet, a laundry room, a half bath, and you will find more square footage than in here.


I’m sure there are those who read this who will say “that’s what you get for breaking the law.” Fair enough. Problem is, in society’s quest to enforce its laws, Virginia (and every other state and the Federal Government as well) violates the law in its treatment of those incarcerated.


Federal law specifically requires inmates to have a minimum amount of floor space – violated. The law requires a state to provide a safe facility for inmates. Tell that to the three inmates murdered in Virginia DOC facilities so far this year. There is a presumption of innocence for every accused. Explain that to the two Virginians recently released after 15 plus years of incarceration for rape when DNA evidence proved conclusively they were innocent.


When society turns a blind eye to the rule of law to “keep the street’s safe”, when citizens tolerate keeping men and women in conditions that violate not only the law, but basic standards of human decency, society loses the moral foundation for its existence.


I’ve had the honor – and yes, it is an honor – to meet men who have survived the hell that is maximum security and maintain their humanity. Winston Churchill said “when you are going through hell, keep going”.


These men have seen, have experienced violent, forcible rape; the stabbings, the beatings (putting a number of combination locks in a sock has a great ability to split a man’s skull); extortion. An older, very wise inmate from the law library wrote a story he asked me to edit about the smell of tear gas and sound of rubber pellets zipping and bouncing around a cell as understaffed, undertrained officers tried to regain control of a cell block in the midst of a gang fight. This is what $1 billion in spending gets Virginia.


As the Israelites of old learned, captivity breaks a person.


Fortunately, the crime of incarceration, the failure of the system, is not the final word. An individual’s capacity to overcome is miraculous.


I think often of Abraham. God promised an elderly Abraham and his wife Sarah, a child. For 25 years they aged and waited. They strayed, they cried out “when O Lord, if not now, when”? Yet, God only answered “I am God, I have promised”.


Through travels and travails they endured. They doubted, they struggled, and somehow they kept faith. “And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of God.” (Genesis 21.2)


There are times in our captivity, whether imprisoned by the state, or by our addictions, our materialism, our bitterness, that we wait and wonder if God has forgotten us; at those times we trust, trust in the reality that we stand on the promise of a God that does not fail us.


There is a beautiful set of lines from the old Hymn “Standing On The Promises: that goes:


“When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, by the living word of God I shall prevail.”


I trust, I have faith, that no power exerted by the state, in its warped desire to punish a wrongdoer, can destroy an individual’s God-given humanity, if that person truly accepts that God indeed loves him.


It isn’t easy. Prison can make you angry, bitter. You can focus on those who prosecuted you; family and friends who abandoned and betrayed you. You can obsess on the injustice of your sentence, the unfairness of the process. You can become a hunter, taking advantage of those weaker than you. You can run scams, hustles, and learn to be a more ruthless, sophisticated criminal.


Or, you can become – as these honorable “old heads” have shown me – a man of mercy and forgiveness. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s contrary to human nature. We tend to want to attach conditions when we show mercy?


“I’ll forgive you if you apologize satisfactorily.” Or “You must fix the problem before I stop being angry.” Or “You must make restitution before I let this go.”


That may be human nature, but it’s not God nature. God calls us to show mercy and forgiveness without condition. We are to love and forgive, even when we are hurt terribly.


Just as the Israelites experienced after 70 years, God always keeps His word. He always sets the captives free.