Can Anything Good Come Out Of Prison?

The prison industry is the fastest growing business in America. This nation prides itself for being known as “The land of the free.” But for more than 2 million men and women, those words are just another line from a very old song. In many of our penal institutions, there is no such thing as rehabilitation. They have simply become cheap labor camps.

But in many cases, it is not the fault of those who are in charge of the prisons. They are just doing their jobs, so we can’t really blame them. Neither can we blame the parole boards for keeping these men and women locked away longer than necessary. We can’t blame the prosecutors who will do whatever it takes to win a conviction, even if he knows that the defendant is not guilty. We cannot blame the judges for handing out all of those ridicules sentences. We can’t even blame police officers that will lie and plant evidence on someone so he can make an arrest.

Then who can we blame? Whose fault is it that this nation has become so cold-hearted, blood thirsty and unforgiving? This might come as a shock to you, but I blame the church. I blame the church because there are too many of us that do not care what happens in this country as long as it doesn’t affect us. We don’t care how unfair this justice system is, as long as our families are not caught up in it.
It doesn’t bother us that so many of our sons and daughters have become victims of the crack epidemic, just as long as our children are not strung out. Some of us can even sit in our nice, warm cars while on our way to church, and see a homeless person that is obviously cold and hungry, and just turn our heads as it they didn’t exist. We can look at an entire generation of young people being drug off to prison and not even care.

More than 10% of our young black men between the ages of 25 and 29 are in prison right now, and nobody cares. The church has lost its compassion for those who are lost, and has bought into societies philosophy of, “Lock em up and throw away the key.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be any jails or prisons; That's where some people need to be. But prison should not the solution to every problem that we don’t have an answer to. We can’t keep throwing all of these men and women, and now even little children, into these deep, dark, dungeons of despair with no hope of ever seeing the light of day again. I don’t care what anybody says. It’s just wrong.

Thousands of men and women are being released from prison every year with no money, no home to go to, and no one to turn to for help. Many of them are trying their best to do what’s right, but no one will give then a chance. Not even some of our churches. They are afraid of them. They don’t trust them. They don’t want them in their churches. They are asking themselves, “Can anything good come out of prison.”

All of us are not ex-offenders, but we are all ex-somethings. Some of us are ex-alcoholics. Some are ex-adulterers. Some are ex-gamblers. Before we look down our sanctified noses at someone else, we must remember the kind of lives that we lived before God delivered us. If God can change me, He can change anyone. I know that He can, because He changed me when I was in prison.


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