GOD WHO CHANGES WHAT MEN CANNOT
There has been a debate this week about the effectiveness of prison. Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, has indicated that he wants to reduce the prison population because he believes that for some crimes community sentences are more effective. Michael Howard, however, who was once Home Secretary, coined the phrase “prison works” and has defended that idea against Mr. Clarke.
This is, of course, a long-standing debate that has not only raged within political circles but also in both the academic world and among professionals in the field of criminal justice. The real issue is how men and women who commit crime can be prevented from reoffending. Many different ideas have been advanced and no clear agreement has been reached. There are schemes that have had remarkable impact in changing people’s lives but they tend to get down-played. The reason is that the most successful schemes have generally been associated with the introduction of offenders to the Christian Gospel which has then produced a whole change of attitude and values in the criminals.
Despite the strong evidence these facts provide, politicians and theorists and many professionals in the world of criminal justice still struggle for solutions. It would be wrong to dismiss entirely the excellent work that is done, and to discount the hard work and effort that is put into helping people live crime free lives. However, there appears to be no reliable way of preventing someone who goes to prison from reoffending and ending back in jail in a fairly short time. It is a tragic waste of life and potential. It is also, and this is what often concerns politicians, a very expensive business.
The problem is, of course, that many repeat offenders come from a certain culture and way of thinking that makes returning to crime almost inevitable. The influence of drugs, the problems of low income and deprivation, and the pressure of friends are very powerful forces to overcome. Good counselling and rehabilitative measures can only do so much. The change that is needed is more dramatic and deep-rooted than the normal measures can effectively address.
But that is also true of people who don’t do things that will bring them into prison. All of us have habits and values that make us do things that are unhelpful to others and damaging to ourselves. We try to change, but it is generally beyond us. We can make small changes – giving up cigarettes or applying anger management techniques. But there are in every one of us attitudes and ways of thinking that we wish were not the case. And then there are those values and attitudes which we do not see as wrong but which are in fact seriously harmful and ultimately the most destructive. We do not love the one true God, nor do we seek to do the things that please Him. We consider ourselves the masters of our lives and fates, and we will not accept an external authority even though He is far greater than we are.
In the end we are all faced with aspects of our personality and being that we wish we could change, and elements of thinking that we really ought to change, but we cannot do it. All of us are on the same level of impotence to make ourselves the sort of people God created mankind to be.
But that is where the schemes that have been so successful in prisons are so interesting. They demonstrate by their effectiveness what Christians are always saying – it is God who must change us, otherwise there is no hope. And, of course, the Bible is very clear on that. So we read, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”1
What that verse is saying is that God really does change people. Jesus explained it by saying – “you must be born again.”2 Jesus went on to speak about the fact that He would die on the cross. The reality of our condition as normal men and women is that we fail to meet God’s standards in the way we live and indeed we break His commandments constantly. That is what it means to sin. We do that because we are all sinners by nature. All of us are born to do the things that will displease God. So we need a fundamental change to take place.
When Jesus spoke about being ‘born again’ He was speaking about the change that God makes in a person’s life when they trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. It is a remarkable teaching and yet central to all that the Christian Gospel has to say. God makes this change because Jesus has acted on our behalf and paid the punishment that was due to us for our sins. We know that Jesus has satisfied God’s justice in His death because He rose from the dead. His resurrection tells us that there is forgiveness of sins and also that as He has life so we can know His new life for ourselves.
When we recognise that we are sinners, determine that we will turn away from that way of life, and accept what Jesus has done for us, then God puts a new principle of life in us. He gives us new values and motivation. We have a new life – this resurrection life. So joy, hope and meaning become ours. This is the only way any person (criminal or most upright citizen) can be changed. God must do it.
Roger Hitchings
18 July 2010
Notes:
1 2 Corinthians 5:17
2 John 3:7