Contra Mundum

You’ll have to pardon me some in this piece, but I’ve been thinking a great deal about all that’s taken place the last 5 ½ years; where I was, to where I am, to where I’m headed. And sometimes those thoughts have just rambled on their own, rushing over me with memories. I’ll sit there and think, “that really happened,” and look and see where I am now and wonder how did I not have the trust to believe.

            Believe. I used to roll my eyes when I’d hear someone at church ask to hear another worshiper’s “faith” story. It was always when we’d start with a new class of elders – good old Presbyterian bureaucracy – and I’d listen to someone thirty years my senior drone on about their parents’ church and their first Bible and I’d think “faith stories,” those don’t exist anymore. They ended with Joseph, and Daniel, and Paul. After all, I was master of my own future. Life was good – on the outside anyway – and appearances mattered.

            Early on at the jail, as my life was spinning out of control (as if my former life was ever really in control) I came across Charles Colson’s book, “Who Speaks for God.” Colson was one of the most powerful – and feared – members of Nixon’s inner Whitehouse circle. He was a brilliant lawyer. He was also ruthless, cunning, and not prone to tolerate dissent. Colson met his downfall in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. He was convicted in Federal Court for his role in that scandal and sent to prison. Everything that he had worked for was stripped from him.

            I read Colson’s book feeling hopeless and lost. I was in the initial weeks of the total collapse of my life. I didn’t think I could survive a day, let alone the rest of my life, with the pain and guilt of the past and fear of the future overwhelming me in that dirty cell. And I tried to focus on something Colson wrote in that book, something – a little thread – to help me hang on. You see, Colson found God at his worst moment. God was never lost, he said. It was Colson who had been lost. He wrote these words:

            “I had spent my first 40 years seeking the whole world to the neglect of my soul. But what I couldn’t find in my quest for power and success – that is, true security and meaning – I discovered in prison where all worldly props had been stripped away. And by God’s grace, I lost my life in order that I might find true life in Christ.”

            I couldn’t believe what I was reading. There was no way Colson could mean what he wrote. It made no sense. I knew his story, knew how he left prison and founded “Prison Fellowship” and devoted the remainder of his life to spreading the message of God’s power and love in all circumstances, but there was no way he honestly believed what he wrote.

            A few quick stories. The lawyer.  I have a friend – that word doesn’t begin to describe him – who I called from the jail moments after my arrest. He’s a lawyer and jeopardized his own career by staying by me through those first difficult months. He came to the jail every day for the first three months and then four or five times a week thereafter just to check on me. He asked his minister to visit me at my worst when my own minister refused to “get involved.”

            The minister.  So an Episcopal minister shows up to meet with me and we’re talking through Plexiglas – that’s the way visits are at the jail. And I lose it. I’m a mess, sobbing, wishing I was dead but knowing I can’t be since I’d made a pact with God to “see this through” (whatever that meant. I really hadn’t given it much thought). He listened to me and then didn’t offer me any cookie-cutter prayer or syrupy words of encouragement. He just simply said “God is with you, Larry,” and he asked if he could return for more visits.

            That minister – a man I never would have even met but for my lawyer friend and my own church’s abandonment of me – has become a close friend. He visited me at the receiving center, he’s come out here, and he has led the charge to get me released early.

He is like family which brings me to ...

The relative. My cousin and her husband, a successful couple living in Northern Virginia learn I was arrested. Over Thanksgiving – my first and worst Thanksgiving while locked up – I received a simple “thinking of you” card from them. “We are here for you,” the note said. Two months later, I was called to the visitation room. There again, through the dirty Plexiglas, I saw them. I was as pale as you can be from a lack of sunlight in six months, and I was scared, and lonely, and frankly tired of it all. And yet, after that visit I wrote in my journal something I hadn’t written before that day; I wrote, “I think all this will work out.”

            Five and a half years. I’ve been let down by people in here and out there and I have seen horrendous violence and the waste of many lives. Yet, there are the other moments, like when the big, black kid at the jail bear-hugged me and kept saying over and over “we did it!” when he passed his high school equivalency test. There’s my friendship with DC, a man who forty years ago was as notorious as any inmate in the Virginia prison system. Today, he is one of the kindest, most decent men I’ve ever met. I trust DC. I don’t say that very often in here. And, I feel a kinship to him and a brotherly love I didn’t think possible in the confines of prison.

            Chuck Colson kept a diary of his time behind bars. He wrote the following insightful thoughts early in his incarceration:

            “This is no country club … It is a prison and the conditions are really worse than I expected … there is everything here from lifelong, hardened criminals to young drug offenders.

            The reason I am glad to be here, however, is the sudden realization of how many needs there are here … My heart has ached for so many while I am here; more important, when I leave I hope I can do something about the concept of rehabilitation and punishment. All its high sounding names – deterrence, rehabilitation – are untrue. If it is punishment, so be it; but maybe it is more humane to whip a man’s body than destroy his soul slowly.”

            He concluded with these words:

            “I have an obligation to try to improve the fate and circumstances of man in this plight … I am convinced the Lord has planned this for me and will use me for His purpose.”

            There is a simple story in John’s Gospel about Jesus healing a young, blind man. Prior to the healing, the discussion centers on the cause of the man’s blindness. “Is it the result of his parents’ sin or his?” the disciples ask. “Neither,” comes Jesus’s reply. “It was so the works of God might be displayed in him.” And with those words Jesus gave the young man his sight. Those in power didn’t understand who did this; how could it be, they wondered. And they questioned the man about the “healer.” His answer comes to me often: “All I know is once I was blind and now I see.”

            “Contra Mundum” – “against the world” – it was the great Latin rallying cry of the fourth century Christian theologian Athanasius. It means to stand for Christ against the powers of the world and to understand that God’s ways are different. I see now why God has so long spoken through the perspective of the powerless, why He makes special demands on His people to care for the oppressed, sick, and suffering. Justice does not devolve from human institutions and laws but in the righteousness of God and His Word.

            That may sound all fanciful and self-delusional, but it simply means it is wiser to take refuge in the Lord than any earthly prince.

            What does all that mean? It means even when we get off course, God is in control. It means at my worst, God was at His best. It means that there is a reason for all this. As Bob Dylan sang in “My Back Pages,” “I once was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” The visits, the Bible coming from my friend Charlie, being befriended by an Episcopal minister, the cards from “Martha,” and even my divorce, they happened to put me where I am today in relation to my God. Or, as the young man told the Pharisees, “I was blind and now I see.”

            It is the season of Lent, preparation for Easter, and for the first time in six years I didn’t give up something like coffee or chips. Instead, I’m reading a treatise on the 91^st Psalm and a study of the Book of James. It is hard to fathom any sacrifice I could make worthy of what God has done for me.

            What does this have to do with prison? Probably nothing, but nothing happens by coincidence. I look back over these past 5 ½ years and see what Chuck Colson meant. Like Paul being blinded on the road to Damascus and the scales suddenly falling from his eyes and he saw, I see what it means. Or, as Mr. Colson so eloquently put it,

            “It is in God’s timing, not ours. And it is the result of His sovereign will, not of any magic wand we may think we wield.”

            This chapter of my life will someday come to an end and a new one will begin and the lessons of this chapter, the understanding of contra mundum will carry forward. And I don’t think the Circuit Court judge who sentenced me had any idea what God would do for me.

            

In Black and White

As opposed to most white Americans, I live in an integrated world.  Our “learning community” – the “Campus within Walls” is just over 50% white and just under 50% black.  Those percentages are an anomaly in prison where almost 70% of the inmates are African Americans.  One of the eye opening parts of my prison experience has been coming face to face with my preconceptions, my prejudices, about race. I’ve written about it before.  I live it every day.  I’ve learned quite a bit in four years.  First, that for the vast majority of whites, we haven’t a clue what it means to be black in America.  Second, that the vast majority of Black Americans don’t hate us should come as a pleasant surprise.  And third, that race continues to define and damage this country and will do so until we come to grips with it.

I write this as race again rears its ugly head with the news of the shooting of a 17 year-old black teenager by the name of Trayvon Martin (in Sanford, Florida).  His death was senseless.  That the shooter remains free should concern every parent.  When President Obama – a man I don’t often agree with – said “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin”, he spoke from the heart.  Unfortunately, in America, race matters.  Whether “driving while black” or walking back from a convenient market with skittles and an ice tea “while black” it is tough, sometimes deadly to be black in America.

A few weeks ago during a visit, a relative leaned in and whispered to me “Obama hates white people”.  How do you know that?  I asked, realizing the President’s own mother is white.  “It was on the internet”, came the reply.

And it made me think of my own upbringing.  I grew up in an upper-middle income family in upstate New York who had zero black neighbors or friends.  My high school had one black student.  Our church, a 400 member Presbyterian congregation had one black couple.  I still remember cringing as a middle-schooler in the late ’60’s when my mom remarked once that Shirley “is a credit to her race.”  I wonder what that makes me, now a member of the tribe of felons?

My family moved to Raleigh in the 80’s when I was in law school.  They have no black neighbors, no black friends, no black church families.  They have never voted for a black candidate.  The only contact they have with Black America is when they go to the mall.  And if my mom sees young black men she instinctively clutches her purse and car keys. 

And I wonder, thinking about all that, why no young black man in prison has ever suggested to me “your family hates black people”.  White America, I am convinced, doesn’t understand what it means to be black in this country.

Here are some facts to ponder.  Roughly three out of four black children are born out of wedlock.  60% of all black males between 17 and 25 have a criminal record.  80% of black students don’t go beyond high school.  Four in ten don’t even graduate high school.  The dropout rate, the incarceration rate, the mortality rate, the poverty rate for black Americans is dramatically worse than for the white community. 

Those are just facts.  That doesn’t quantify the number of times blacks are stopped by the police for random pat downs, or the fact that while drug use is proportional in both the black and white communities, a young black caught with drugs will almost always end up in prison.  And the white?  Rehab and probation.

America is not a color-blind society, and it’s a shame, a national shame.  Trayvon Martins lies dead for one simple reason; he was a black teenager walking at night.  I hate saying that, but the truth sometimes isn’t pretty.

Prison is an amalgam of gang bangers, white supremacists, and the rest of us.  I thought when I was first locked up how wasteful and inane the entire gang culture was.  Then, I looked myself in the mirror.  Gangs are a reflection of the sick, pervasive race issues this nation still suffers from.  And it will get worse.  The N.O.I. – Nation of Islam, with their call for race separation and their revisionist history and illogical conclusions passing as “knowledge” grows by leaps and bounds each week behind these walls.  I hear the young black guys discussing their “elements of wisdom” and my heart breaks.  They are being fed falsehood upon falsehood.

Dr. King understood the dangers that lurked for America if we didn’t grasp our race problem.  We are not to judge “by the color of our skin”, but “by the content of our character”.  Those of us who believe in the Gospel of Jesus know well that “in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, free nor slave”.

Trayvon Martin’s tragic death can be a chance for America to be something different, a nation not separated or defined by color.  Surely any parent can feel the pain his family must feel.  And that is as plain as black and white.

"58"

I read a fascinating essay about a recently launched evangelical campaign called “58”.  It’s built around the words of Isaiah 58:

“You will call, and the Lord will answer,

You will cry, and He will say ‘Here I am’.
If you give yourself to the hungry
And satisfy the desire of the afflicted
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday.”

As mainline churches see their numbers dwindling, evangelical Christians have found a voice and an enthusiastic following among young people who desire to make a difference, yet see church as full of self-promoting hypocrites.  Poverty, homelessness, you name it can be ended, these 58ers believe, because the power of God is greater than any social problem.

And what of the passage where Jesus remarks “the poor will always be with you?”  He said that to Judas – pre-betrayal knowing Judas was already stealing from the money bags.  It was a sarcastic rebuke.  “Of course the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, will always be with you.  Because your hearts are closed to doing what God requires.”

I’m turned off right now by the moralism of the church I was raised in and attended every week.  Oh, we said “we’re all God’s children”, we shook hands with strangers when they arrived and did our once a quarter packing bags of food at the local pantry.  But that is touchy-feely stuff.  It’s easy and you do it and head home and say “I care”. 

God requires more.  I’m part of a leper colony.  People, good church going middle class, whites (yes race plays a role) don’t know the first thing about what goes on inside here.  Worse, they don’t care.  I’m here to tell you, God’s children are inside these walls.  They may have done horrendous things, but they are children of God and He expects each of us to be treated with dignity, and respect, and mercy.

A minister friend asked me one day “what can my church do to help the incarcerated?”  I told him what churches typically do.  They come in here and tell you “God loves you; repent”.  There’s singing and hands raised in praise.  Then the inmate is released.  Where’s the church?  Does anyone offer the inmate a bed, a meal, a job?  That’s what “58” means.

There was an old, crazy woman that came to worship at our family’s church.  She was dirty, loud, undignified and didn’t fit in with the well-heeled Presbyterians she came in contact with.  Frankly, she annoyed the hell out of me.  We did a ceremonial handwashing for a Good Friday service one year and she sat beside me.  She reeked and when I washed her hands the water turned brown.  I swore I’d never attend another service like that again.

And then it came to me one evening as I sat in receiving on a sweltering August night.  “You never fed me when I was hungry; you never visited me in prison.”  It was Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25.  As you treat the least of my children, so shall you be treated.

There’s a reason the lepers, and possessed, and filthy, and whores and tax collectors flocked to Jesus and the well-heeled ignored Him.  He carried a message of freedom unlike anything in the world.  God loves you and forgives.  You are free of your sins, and poverty, and self-loathing.  How ironic that such a beautiful empowering message has been lost on so many of us “modern” American Christians.

Isaiah 58 is a call to action and a reminder that God hears.  He will answer.  He tells us all, no matter what our circumstances, that a child of His is in need.  That child may be in a homeless shelter or even a prison.

As James reminds us, faith without works is not really faith.  Read Isaiah 58.  God’s calling us to action.

Response to Karen

Dear Karen - I received your blog comments and wanted to respond. First, thank you for reading my ramblings and taking the time to write. Your comments reached me during a particularly difficult week. They made a real difference to me and I truly appreciate them.



A little about my “faith journey” – I was raised in a Presbyterian home, married in a Methodist church (they had the prettiest sanctuary for a wedding!), then returned to my Calvinist roots. Our family was active in our church – I was ordained as an elder and deacon and even taught Sunday school. My lies came crashing down and my life with it and I suddenly realized how little I understand about God.


At a very dark point while at the jail, a young black drug dealer whom I had befriended gave me a book by Dr. Charles Stanley. In the first chapter he wrote honestly about his feelings over his own divorce. As I read the book I began to get a totally new perspective on God’s relationship with me. Now, every Sunday morning I watch Dr. Stanley’s service from the First Baptist Church in Atlanta and tithe ten percent of my monthly wages to his church’s ministry.


Prior to my arrest I would have told you I knew all I needed to know about faith. Each day since, I learn something new. Some of the lessons are quite painful. It’s not easy looking at yourself honestly. But, I also realize in many ways I’m not going through anything people haven’t gone through for thousands of years. We may have the best of intentions, but we stray, we sin, we hurt others and ourselves. Still God loves us and forgives us.


I am very interested in your work at the jail. A couple of things I’ve come to realize while in here: First, there are a good number of folks who “suddenly find religion” in here. At first, I wanted to believe everyone was sincere. I gradually realized some people see religion as a tool to get a lighter sentence or to run “hustles” on well-intentioned folks. I’m not suggesting you be untrusting, just cautious. Just as it is out there, some folks will try and use God for their own advancement.


Second, a good number of people in here want to say “I’m saved” without dealing honestly with what that means. Dealing with the aftermath of the messes we make is tough and a long, difficult process. There are days I feel forgiven and hopeful. Then, other days I just wonder why I did all this and when and how will it end.


I still remember what the chaplain at the jail told me a few days after my arrival. He quietly and sympathetically listened as I poured my heart out. When I was completely spent he simply said “I can’t tell you things will work out the way you want them to right now. But, God hears you, He loves you and if you trust Him, He’ll see you through.” No sugar coating, no easy solution.


Finally, be yourself and let your faith come out by your actions. I don’t spend a great deal of time talking about my personal relationship to God unless asked. Guys now regularly ask me about Bible verses, parables and things like if I think God really does forgive. I also try to treat everyone in here with respect.


I’d love to hear back from you on your ministry. Feel free to write back anytime. My “blog manager” gets mail to me every week.


I really do want to thank you again for your words to me. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve had a tough couple of weeks. Your statement about forgiveness especially hit home with me.


I truly believe God sends angels when we need them most to remind us. He hears and He cares. Your kind of note reminded me of that.


Larry