Tangent Part 2

Now, as prison chaplain, we want to bring them “inner peace.” An interesting goal, and I wonder if this person is just really talking about something like death row inmates, but they really make it seem like these prisoners are so far gone, the only thing we can do is assure them that if they repent they can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. That seems hopeless. 

I want to bring up something completely unrelated but it might help me get my point across. The Gospel of John is my favorite of the four. Why? Because it portrays a Jesus who cares about the issues of society. The other three were writing and thinking that the Second Coming was soon and didn’t really care about that stuff; John, on the other hand, was the latest Gospel written and had some more perspective---the perspective that life on Earth ultimately matters even though we can achieve eternal salvation. God made this world and humans not only for us to love Him, but each other, and part of loving each other is working towards a world that achieves that vision the most.

Ok so that’s what my criticism is I guess. I agree that we want everyone to know God has a place for them in Heaven. But that’s not the only thing that matters. We don’t want to view marginalized groups of society as “too far gone” for this world. Did you do something really bad to end up in prison? You have a life sentence? Well, there’s always the next world? No, no, no. That either reflects a flawed view of what we are supposed to do on Earth, that we still can’t do good in unique places of society (or maybe that we should get rid of life sentences, or reflects an idea that what we did on Earth never really mattered that much in the first place. And that someone can throw theirs away and we can let that possibility remain in a system we created because ultimately there is another goal. Honey, there was one more Gospel you forgot to read.

Maybe I’m completely wrong in views. I probably am, but I wanted to share them because that paper really stirred some things up in me and I was just thinking about all this and I forgot to do research on prison chaplains. Oh well. Hope this helped at all.