America leads the West in the incarceration of its populace. According to the US Department of Justice (as of June 30, 1999) 468 out of every 100,000 people in the country sit behind bars. That’s dramatically up in the last decade (292 per 100,000 in 1990). This doesn’t include those on parole, those wanted by police, or those guilty of unsolved crimes.
The number is staggering. It approximates one out of every 200. If you add to that family members affected by these incarcerations, and the victims of the crimes committed, you begin to recognize what a mission field of needy, hurting people there is, directly affected by the prison system in this country.
Over the centuries, men have expressed their hopes that incarceration can effect change by the words they have used for their jails (jail is from a Middle English word for “cage”). Young offenders were sent to reformatories. Older criminals were kept in penitentaries. Now they are called correctional institutes.
But it is a rare thing to see slaves of sin reformed from their debilitating habits by man-sized techniques. The penal experts have tried. But with all the research dollars spent and endless self-help experiments, the only long-term, surefire answer is found in the offer made two thousand years ago: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36).
I recollect clearly my first encounter with God’s prison reform. It was the fall of 1974. I was inside the Richmond County Correctional Institute, Tobacco Road, Augusta, Georgia, with brother Sydney Temple.
The clang of the great steel doors behind me was met with a response in the pit of my stomach. The guard stood aloof; his face had known few smiles. I was ushered down a narrow hallway to another steel door where I waited for the turnkey. Whoever said, “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage,” had never been inside, I thought to myself. It was October, but the day had been borrowed from summer. I felt awkward standing there sweltering in the Georgia heat.
Eventually I was admitted to a room twenty feet by forty, perhaps. Concrete block walls. Benches without backs were the only furniture except for the ornate pulpit that seemed incongruous. Instead of stained glass windows, there were cold steel bars.
I sat on the edge of one of the benches. Almost immediately the door reopened to admit twenty-seven rugged-looking customers. They were all dressed in prison garb. Prison garb with one addition–they all had smiles.
My collar cut my neck and my tie kept yelling at me. I felt so out of place–until I was introduced. Smiles flashed, handshakes were extended, and I heard, “Praise the Lord, brother,” more than once.
Then as the service began, I took a good look at God’s prison reform.
Ralph, who led in prayer, was in for armed robbery. He also prayed for the warden every day since the Lord had changed his heart.
The young man at the pulpit, who was waving his arms to the rhythm of thirty voices almost on key, smiled at me. I wondered what that handsome, happy inmate was in for.
I was later to learn that by the time he was twenty-four, Herb had been expelled from school and the army, was an alcoholic and a heavy drug addict, and was serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife and both of her parents. Satan is a cruel master. But I heard Herb lift his voice to God and sing,
“I’ve found a Friend who is all to me,
His love is ever true;
I love to tell how He lifted me,
And what His grace can do for you.”
That’s God’s prison reform system. He doesn’t change the prison; He changes the prisoners. God takes poor sinners and turns them into saints–not perfect, but learning. He sets them free. He gives them hope. He turns their prison cells into a palace. It’s still noisy and dirty and hard to take, but the King is there.
The fellows listened as I talked about freedom in Christ. They didn’t seem to mind that I could leave and they had to go back to their cells. God had changed their hearts. They were more free in their Georgia cells than thousands who walk city streets but are still enslaved to sin.