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I’m sure we all remember a few times when we were children being sent to our rooms or made to stand in a corner as punishment for being bad. The idea was to restrict our freedom of playing wherever and however we wanted and to give us some time to ponder what we had done and whether we would do it again. Thus, we have the rudimentary reasons for the incarceration of criminals: retribution or punishment, incapacitation or removal of freedom, to deter criminal behaviour, and rehabilitation.
The temporary removal or restriction of a child’s freedoms usually works for the typical kid from a stable family to get them back on track. When my kids were young, “timeouts” were popular. All they needed to get back on track was a short break of sitting alone for one minute per year of age and they checked back in. Too bad it’s not that easy in the adult world. When we look at mass incarceration being used as a society’s means of dealing with criminals, we find it doesn’t work so well. If rehabilitation is the ultimate goal, which is our society’s claim, mass incarceration is a miserable failure.
Please don’t read into what I’m saying that I think criminals don’t need to suffer the consequences of their actions. There will be crimes committed because we humans have a disease of the mind called Sin. But high crime rates are an indicator that something is wrong with society in general that if dealt with would likely reduce the crime rate. Things like wealth disparity, poverty, racism, childhood trauma, etc., feed crime. Reduce or eliminate them and crime will drastically disappear.
Sending people to prison doesn’t solve much. More than often, it makes things worse because life in prison is a game that is soul destructive - dehumanizing. The majority of people who leave incarceration have a high likelihood of suffering anxiety, panic, depression, hypervigilance, PTSD, and a loss of identity and sense of autonomy. While in prison, they have likely been assaulted, manipulated by fear, humiliated by other inmates and even by the guards and have found that the only way to survive the game is to play it – Do or threaten to do onto others what that evil SOB did to me or enlist yourself in helping an evil SOB bully the populace. When released, inmates usually do not have a support network and have a difficult time trusting others. They face stigma and barriers to employment. Because life outside is so stacked against them, they are likely to return to crime. If this is rehabilitation, we fail miserably.
I had some exposure to prison ministry when I was in seminary. I was a chaplain intern in the prison unit at a hospital. I visited the prisoners twice a week inside their little caged ward. I saw the game firsthand. The only prisoners that I met that truly seemed to be surviving the game without playing it were men who had come to faith in Jesus. Unlike most convicts, they admitted and accepted what they had done and when possible sought forgiveness, attended church and prayer meetings, read their Bibles, and sought to be faithful disciples. They stuck together with other Christians.
Paul was such a man. He regularly suffered brief jailing and being stoned or whipped for proclaiming that Jesus was Lord and Saviour and would be returning to establish the Kingdom of God and that the Holy Spirit is present now as a foretaste and the evidence. His message was proved through healings and exorcisms, and a couple of times he raised the dead. But there were at least two times that he suffered an extended long-term incarceration. There is a strong likelihood that Paul wrote Philippians while he was briefly imprisoned in the early ‘50’s in Ephesus and he may have fought a lion there. But that is anecdotal, undocumented. Regardless, he did spend most of the last ten years of his life unjustly imprisoned because of Jesus and never got a fair trial.
If I were to venture a guess, our passage today sounds a whole lot like how Paul dealt with the dehumanizing effects of prison, especially wrongful incarceration. At the center of it was his awareness that the Lord is near. He was not alone there in the cold, damp, hungry, solitary, darkness. He felt the peaceful presence of the Lord. Even there in prison, the threat of execution looming, he found the joy of the Lord in his heart and instead of bitterness and grumbling, he rejoiced. He found reason to praise. He tapped into that song that the whole creation sings in praise of God. He found within himself that instead of being grumpy and snippy with others, he was able to be gentle and gracious with others, even the jailors. He says “with everyone”. He also had learned that worry was not necessary because God hears and answers our prayers. Instead of worrying about things, pray about them. He wraps up by guiding us that we need to focus our minds on good things. Choose to dwell on the good. When you find yourself “Stinking Thinking”, choose to rejoice, pray, be gentle, dwell on the good. Do these things and the peaceful presence of God will be evidently with you. This was his remedy for life in prison.
None of us is likely to go prison, but there are times when life can become like a prison – living paycheck to paycheck, a meaningless job with a bad boss but you have no choice but to work it, unemployment, debt, a chronic illness, chronic pain, mental illness, a detached if not abusive partner, an addiction, having to live with someone with an addiction. Some would say that old age is the one prison we all have to endure. Grief tops the list of the worst prison of all. There are so many situations that just come up in life that make us feel like we’ve been imprisoned, that rob us of our vitality, that make us feel punished for no reason, that make us feel alone and isolated, that can make us become and be a person we don’t want to be.
Life can become a prison. In that prison it is very easy to lose faith and get bitter, anxious, and depressed; hopeless. Paul’s remedy is the cure. It’s during these times that it’s most important that we just sit in the presence of the Lord for he is indeed present with us with peace to give. Pray and pray and pray some more. What we need the most, God will provide. Choose to dwell on good things rather than ruminating on the bad. Make it a point to be gentle and gracious with others. Above all, stop ruminating on our situation. Many people would see a life of prison as pointless and dehumanizing, but for a beloved child of God it is a time to grow closer to him and grow more human. It won’t last forever. Amen.
