PoLiTiCs
Gang Bangers Watching for Sinners
After you’ve been in prison a while and you’ve had a chance to settle in and catch your breath, you notice the strangest thing…..there is an inordinate amount of respect displayed between inmates regardless of race or other affiliations.
Maybe it’s because everybody you meet is a felon and capable of violence. Sort of a cross between mutually assured destruction (if something goes down we’re all going to the hole), and recognition of our mutual predicament (we’re all in this nightmare together). Or maybe it's that you get so little respect from people on the outside, and even less from correctional officers on the inside, that respecting each other is all you have.
But it happened every day and in every circumstance. If somebody walked in front of you while you're watching tv or passed you on the walk, you would always see hands with palms up indicating no offense meant. People didn’t break in the chow line or the phone line and strangely enough, were typically quick to help if you had a problem.
I was in a low security facility so most of the people I knew were like me, primarily just trying to get prison over and get back home. Not looking to make waves or get involved in any extracurricular activities.
But not everybody was like that. In prison slang, some people were said to be, “On something”. Generally they were people who had worked their way down from higher security prisons or had done time in a state prison. They had done hard time in hard places. Places where, when they first arrived, they had to make a quick decision: With whom do they stand? They generally have four options: the whites, the blacks, the Latinos, and the others. And from the moment they choose, they only associate with those people. Someone might not want to join the white supremacists or the norteno’s, but his well-being might depend on it. It’s a survival necessity and part of their new reality. These rules are clear cut and not flexible. At its most basic it's about power and control; making sure your people’s interests overshadow everyone else’s. This attitude becomes so ingrained that even when they move to a lower security prison, where forced segregation is not so prevalent, the habit remains. And the people on something at those lower security prisons continue to enforce rules regarding sex offenders, prison lunch tables, rec yard space, cell assignments, and black markets.
In prisons it's called politics.
That kind of says everything about the political system, right? As election season ramps up, I don’t have to hear much politicking for me to understand why the name of the process we use to elect our officials is also the name used to describe the rules that govern gangs in every prison in America. If you think about it, they have a lot in common:
They’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear before you join(vote).
Fear is the primary motivator they use.
After the dust settles, making a better life is going to fall on you. They generally aren’t going to be much help.
Hearing those stories, I couldn’t help wondering, “What would I do in that situation?” Forced to choose between protection and going it alone in a place where survival isn’t guaranteed. Having someone to watch your back in places like that could be the difference between going home or not. And how did those “others” survive? The ones who chose to go it alone. Turns out the “others” were smaller ethnic groups like Native Americans, whites who refused to join the Aryan Brotherhood, and the Christians.
I remember thinking, what? The Christians? What kind of gang is that? Yep, being a Christian is a legitimate alternative to joining a gang in prison. Who would have guessed it? But like every choice in prison, it comes with a caveat. Unlike the real world, it can’t be a half hearted commitment. God will let you fake it in hopes that you’ll one day make it, but it's not God you have to worry about in prison. It’s all the gang members who watch you day and night to see if your Christian life is real or fake. God graciously doesn’t penalize us immediately for our sin, but if you're in prison and faking being a Christian to get out of joining a gang, the wages of sin are paid immediately.
A Christian doing hard time better be at church when the door opens and be reading their Bible at night. Plus they better not go around cussing and acting contrary to how the Bible says act. Personally, I don’t see how anyone could act Holy without the Holy Spirit living in them. And without the Holy Spirit’s help, I imagine all the fakers eventually end up constricted into the gang they tried so hard to avoid. Maybe the problem in the outside world is there are no gang bangers watching for sinners. Maybe if there were, the world wouldn’t always be pointing church hypocrisy as the reason for their unbelief.
Recently, in a overflowing church service, I asked my sister how many people in the sanctuary she thought left the building and did their best to practice obedience to Jesus. She smirked and said, “Huh, probably not many!”
Politics on the inside may be harsh but you won’t find any hypocrites walking around saying one thing and doing another.
As for me and politics, I’m gonna turn my tv off for the next six months because I really don’t care who’s president. He might have power over the economy, the border, foreign affairs, taxes, and a ton of other things, but he doesn’t control the fortune or future of a follower of Jesus. Whoever wins will just be the president, not the King!
