I talked to a new jail inmate who came on strong as a confident in-your-face opposer to Jesus and the Scripture. Interestingly, I found out at the end of our conversation that he was a preacher’s kid, and he even lived in a church as a kid. After spending some time on the upper level of the Pod talking through the steel doors to the men who were locked down, I went downstairs. I was immediately greeted by four inmates, all of which were strong opposers to the Gospel. I am guessing they heard me yelling through the steel doors, echoing through the pod, and they were angry at the hope and joy they were hearing, so they wanted to confront me. I have been doing jail ministry for ten years, so most of their oppositions were easy to deal with, all situations I have been in many times before, all objections I have heard 10 years ago. While we were all having a good time discussing these deep topics, one of the opposers, a young fellow, 21 years old, was sitting on the steel table about four feet to my left, and he got my attention to ask me privately while the other guys talked, a question aggressively and condescendingly:
“Why would GOD allow all this suffering? I mean, what kind of a [expletives] GOD would not stop all this! How terrible! What a stupid [expletive] idiot He must be!”
This is a question I get almost weekly in the jail ministry. Comes up constantly. I have about six answers I give to this question, and I usually do a flash prayer to see where GOD leads me as to which answer I will give. And this time, the LORD led me directly to my favorite answer: suffering = ecstasy. This is the one that Medieval theologians were often concerned with. I said this to the inmate:
“It happens because we are created corrupted, and pain is inevitable. He created us in corruption (1 Cor 15:42) because He is the one uncorrupted, and there can only be one of those; He is the one infinite, and there can be only one of those. If there were two of each of those, they would be identical. That uncorrupt is GOD, the infinite is GOD, and anything He creates distinct from Him is corrupted and not infinite. So, this life, this world, can only be of corruption, of sin, of trouble (John 16:33), pain and sickness (1 Kings 8:38). Hard to explain bro, but the darkness = the spiritual high. Last year we my wife and I had a time of incredible stress and terror, we prayed like crazy, cried out to GOD like never before! All-out full surrender and laser-focused on crying out to Him all the time, and He showed us miracles and joy and He brought us out of it! When it was done, when we were out of it, my wife said:
‘We just got off a spiritual high, we can’t fall off! We gotta stay red hot!’
“I remember saying to my wife:
‘Woman! Do you realize what you just said!? Our time of greatest terror was a spiritual high!’
“And I knew what she meant; I was feeling that too. I became a Christian because I made the decisions to kill myself, almost 14 years ago now. In that moment, of all moments, He spoke to me, and I could see His light—all alone in a room. I immediately prayed, and in my life I immediately turned to Him, and now I know that the time of greatest terror and darkness was actually not that at all, but was a time of the infinite light of Christ.
“We are told that the life of pleasure and entertainment and escapism is the good life. Nope! Why are all those people addicted to their internet screens? Why are their marriages broken? Why are their souls empty?! Why are they addicts to all sorts of things? Why do they have no meaning. That life is not where GOD is! That’s not where we find GOD. He is in the darkness. GOD’s people in the Bible did not live lives of comfort and ease. The lepers knew Him and the church people did not. In the darkness there is meaning, mission, purpose, clarity and love. In the life of pleasure culture, there is emptiness. I choose poverty over riches. I choose pain over ease. The LORD came for the sick. That’s me. I feel Him, I love Him, and He is my drug. I am high on Him now. When I am close to the LORD, doing what He does (serving, preaching, repenting), I get to the point where I don’t care about the pain and misery, because the spiritual high, the light of GOD, overtakes it all, outshines it all. You get to the point where you are just drunk on the Wine; you become a new wineskin with New Wine in you. I don’t know how to explain it bro, but somehow there is joy in it all in the darkness. Hebrews 12:2 says the Cross of Christ was for joy. A Christian woman named Nicole Valery, who was imprisoned in a torture-prison in the 1950s in Communist Romania under no charge, and because she was a Christian, author of Prisoner Rejoice,[1] she said that in all her life, in the torture-prison she felt closest to GOD[2]. She also said her first night in the gulag: ‘The cell door closed behind me, [and] I felt that another door was opening within me.’[3] [I had these quotes memorized from years of jail ministry, so I was able to cite them to the inmate.]
“Jesus is there, in the suffering, He uses that to break us down so we can reach out to Him
“In the darkest times, the times of terror, horror, maximum fear, in sickness, devastation, and so on, people feel GOD, they hear Him, they hear His voice, see His angels, they find incredible and even ecstatic peace. Some, like Francis of Assisi, for example, have lived lives to make sure they stay suffering, so that they can feel GOD better. The Bible is filled with people who are lost and destroyed but who are feeling GOD’s power and presence. The prophets and disciples of GOD lived in poverty, with nothing, and completely uninterested in comfort and riches, while the Bible says it’s almost (but not quite) impossible for the rich man to find the Kingdom (Matt 19:24). Jesus, we are told, was so poor, that He had nowhere to put His head. So, I hear what you are saying brother, but you’ve been taught a lie, and the truth is that GOD is in the darkness, the Light shineth in darkness: that’s where we exist, so we look for Him there. And in the heights of the world is deception (mark verse about wealth), emptiness, confusion, sin, and the devil. It says if we believe in Him, we will suffer also. And it’s seemingly as if GOD will create the suffering for us, so we can be like Him, and know Him, feel Him, and be one with Him.
“In all that darkness, and all the sadness, all that tragedy, all that hurt pain, there’s Jesus, somehow there’s this massive joy in it all this tragedy all around, more joy than out in the world. How does this work!? Because the light shineth in darkness? This is what it’s all about, this is where we get our fill up, serving those who are absolutely lost, like Jesus, reaching out to the lepers. This is why Jesus walked to the cross, the worst possible situation, because of the love and joy was just too huge, that love for others and service to them.”
[Note: I did cite these verses while we were talking, as indicated.]
The outcome was completely miraculous—as is often the case with jail ministry, a ministry to the poorest. Right at this point where I left off in part a., the inmate completely shifted his entire demeanor toward me. He was suddenly totally with me in the conversation, like my buddy. And immediately I could sense that the inmate seemed to be fighting back tears, through the remainder of our talk.
Now amazingly, the next day, which was this past Tuesday, I had to go back to that pod to bring pencils, paper, Bibles, and so forth. I saw this same inmate. He seemed very happy when I saw him. He said:
“Chaplain, I get out of jail tomorrow,” with a huge smile.
I actually had no idea if that was good news, as I did not know his situation, what he was in for, how much time he was expected to do, and so forth, but apparently this was completely unexpected. Then he continued:
“Yes. After we talked, I went to my room, and I was praying and praying. And GOD answered.”
[1] Nichole Valery, Prisoner, Rejoice! (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1976).
[2] This was stated 1:24:16 into the film, and I believe it is a quote from her book, Prisoner, Rejoice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6iCQ2fFx3c&list=LL&index=219
[3] This was stated at the very start of the film, and I believe it is a quote from her book, Prisoner, Rejoice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6iCQ2fFx3c&list=LL&index=219
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