“Why don’t people from your church come and help you here? It says it the Bible to visit us…”
A man asked me this question at the end of class.
He was an inmate: a lifer.
Prison is a place of lasting aloneness. A place where you are reminded that you are forgotten.
Trying to overcome it is a big deal.
Volunteer groups are cherished by inmates like fresh air. They thank us each time we come.
I didn’t know how to answer him. I sort of felt crushed.
Not just that he would ask, but that the truth was so simple and unreachable.
He suggested I speak to my church and invite them to participate. I already had.
“It does say that is the Bible. You’re right. I don’t know….
I’m sorry,” I told him.
“What keeps them from coming?” another man asked.
“Maybe because all people know about prison is what they see in movies. Maybe they are afraid.” I said.
That comment incited and 3 page letter the prisoner brought back the next week to help convince people from our church that they were not violent and they were also Christians who love the Lord, were re-paying their debt to society, and wanted the support and Christian brotherhood.
But, nothing like that can be taken out of a prison. (It’s a felony.) He had to keep his correspondence. I thought he was going to cry when he explained that he needed to keep what he wrote. Abandonment? That was probably what I was on his face.
It’s heartbreaking.
But, I also wondered if some of the reasons were really a greater indictment on Christians and human nature.
• Laziness
• Lack of compassion
• Self-centeredness
• Distain for outcasts
Could this be it?
If I asked people from my church, face-to-face this time, what keeps them from being involved, they might say,
“I’m just too busy.”
Or “I’m not really interested in that (in them).”
Or, “I don’t like criminals. They deserve to be where they are and we shouldn’t make things easier for them.”
or maybe,
“I’d rather be doing two million different things than that!”
And whatever the reasons, good or not, they hamper the work of Love.
