Once for All, Again and Again, and More and More

Part 1, Justification and Sanctification in Prison

Out at the prison we constantly struggle with how to balance justification and sanctification. 

Justification is easy. Grace is the main sermon I preach out at the unit. Christ came and died for us "while we were yet sinners." (Rom. 5.8). 

Sanctification is the harder message, and the most contentious. 

Most of the men have been "saved," in the way an evangelical would understand "accepting Jesus into your heart." Or as a Church of Christ person, like myself, understands baptism as the moment when our sins are washed away.

But what happens after you've "been saved"? We should grow into spiritual maturity, conforming more closely to the image of Jesus. And that's where the tensions start to show up. Many of the men in our study are "saved" but they are not "walking the walk." This frustrates the other men in the study who are "putting in the work." Feeling this frustration, they are prone to call out the hypocrisies in others. And as you might expect, when this judgmental tone enters the room emotions get hot.

This is the most delicate pastoral issue that I have to navigate week in and week out in the study. It's a bit of a minefield.

On the one hand, I do want lean into sanctification. It is true that we are called to conform to the image of Jesus, that we are to display the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. So I want to agree with the men who call us to that work.

But at the same time, this call, as I said, can tip very quickly into judgmentalism and a works-based, performance-based religiosity. This eclipses the message of grace. 

Of course, this tension between justification and sanctification isn't new. But there are social dynamics out at the prison that militate against treating this as a purely theological issue. 

For example, most of us can hide our hypocrisies from each other. You see me once a week at church. And in that space, I look golden. But what might you see if you lived with me 24/7? In a world where there is absolutely zero privacy? Where you could see through the door of my house where I live and sleep? Where every toilet and shower is exposed to public view? What would I see about you in that world?

Basically, the men in prison are exposed to a degree of moral scrutiny most of us would find unimaginable. To say nothing about the gossip such a world creates. Nothing is hidden. When the men in my study come to class, they have dirt on each other. A lot of dirt. And it pushes them toward a judgmentalism that most of us aren't tempted by, simply because we're so ignorant of each other. 

I hope you can see the tension here. I want to affirm the message of sanctification, we should walk the walk, but I don't want to lean too heavily in this direction for fear of fanning the flames of judgmentalism and moral finger-pointing. 

Something else that escalates this judgmentalism are the powerplays among the Christian leaders out at the unit. Socially, humans tend toward dominance hierarchies. Men especially. Consequently, many men (and women) chaff when they are placed or forced into submissive roles. This is, in fact, what prison does to men. It places them under the boot. As you can predict, this doesn't go over well among competitive, dominant, testosterone-driven males. Consequently, a leadership role of any kind in prison, the smallest bit of power and authority, is highly coveted and becomes a location of competition. 

One of the main places where this competition happens is in the faith-based programing. A lot of the programing in a prison is done by the inmates, often with teams, formally and informally, in support. These leadership teams can become very competitive and political, with shifting alliances that I find hard to keep up with month to month. One month I'm dealing with a particular member of the class who is assisting with its coordination, only to find this inmate expelled from leadership a month later. Most often, this happens when a leader is caught in some moral indiscretion, typically homosexual behavior. The sexual codes of conduct among the inmates is very conservative and traditional, so any homosexual activity is immediately disqualifying for leadership. And yet, these are men with sex drives in an all male prison. The temptations here are beyond what most heterosexual men can even contemplate. Some men struggle to maintain strict celibacy, decade after decade, in this environment. And again, any failure here will be exposed to public view and gossiped about widely. It's an impossible situation. 

The point here is that the judgmentalism that emerges in the study is often associated with one of these powerplays, to call out a leader "in sin" so as to remove him and gain that leadership role for yourself. This makes studying certain New Testament texts a minefield. On the one hand, the gospel does call us to sexual purity and integrity. This is the sanctification of our sexuality. So this should be talked about. And yet, to raise this issue creates space and opportunity for the men in the study to call each other out sexually and to take opportunity to challenge leaders. Like I said, they have the dirt on each other.

Stepping back, as I shared, this the most pastorally complex issue I deal with week in and week out. If you ever want to know what it's like to teach a Bible study in a maximum security prison, well, this is what it's like. It is very difficult to strike a pastorally sensitive balance between justification and sanctification.