“No part of me is original. I am the combined efforts of everyone I have ever met.”

I have met a great many people in my 20 years and I intend to meet a great many more. If each of them has a say in who I become, it means that who I am today and who I will be in ___ years are very different people. I promise I’m not about to turn this into some cliché “Better each day” bull-#!@^ that nobody wants to read; but if I look back at who I was even 4 years, I see a very different face than the one I saw in the mirror this morning. Honestly there are parts of my younger self that I would love to see resurrected. It could certainly be labeled as youthful ignorance but younger me really knew how to Hope. That guy had some childlike faith, let me tell you. So what brought me from there to now? It’s simple. I had encounters with people, or lack there of, both good and bad, that connect the guy sitting writing this to the one of 4 years ago.

I have spent a fair amount of time pondering that quote this morning. If this quote speaks truth, Its a tad bit scary. This will take a bit of explaining; bear with me. If this quote is true, it means that a child rapists, meth addicts, drunkards, thieves and toddlers all have a say in who I’m becoming. These are the people I am meeting, in fact I spent my past week with these exact profiles. Even more, not only am I meeting these people but I am growing to call many of them my friends. And to go a bit further, they’re all people who’s character I admire for the same reason. You see, most of the men I meet in prison are criminals. We say that God IS Love; with the same emphasis I say that these men ARE criminals. They dont simply do crime. They walk like criminals, they talk like criminals. They have tattoos on their faces to prove it. They have embraced the full persona.

In order to explain this further, I have to explain something called The Numbers Gang (From here on out known as “the number”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Numbers_Gang for the curious). Heres the summary. Under apartheid, a gang formed inside of South Africa prisons and constructed for itself an advanced mythology which it uses as its claim to power. What exactly it controls inside of prisons is unknown however its safe to say that in Pollsmoor (the epicenter of The Number), the Number has power. To spare you the stories that prove this point, I’ll just ask you to trust me. The Number is bad. They brainwash their members into believing their mythology and following their ways, despite their complete disregard for logic, real history and common sense.

The Number is evil incarnate. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. “Theres only one door” they say. If you leave the number, you leave it on your back, being dragged out covered in your own blood on your way to your funeral. They don’t play games. Theres one and only one exception: The holy book. In the mythology, it claims that if a member of the number finds himself in religion, he is free to leave. Anyone who leaves through this door will find himself tempted in any and every way the number can think of.

This explanation will be enough to explain what I respect in the first 4 listed profiles (Child rapists, meth addicts, drunkards and thieves) however I still have to explain the last one; toddlers. You see, I stayed at my bosses house this past week. His name is Andrew, he’s great (and probably going to read this…). Andrew has two children, whom I believe are 1 and 2 years old. Some of you are begging to smile knowing my personal disposition towards children. For those of you who dont know; Dan and kids dont go well together. Kids are the living incarnation of pretty much everything that makes me feel uncomfortable. Between the crying, the shouting and the lack of personal hygiene, baby sitting has never been a job I’ve had any interest in.

As seems to be a theme for this trip, I had to suck it up. At the end of each day this week, I left the company of the first 4 and went home to the last. I did my best to help entertain the kids and I even fed them once or twice. I had to hold the younger one at least like 10 times this week and again, if you know me, you know nothing scares me more than holding babies. So there I am talking with Andrew in a soft shout, trying to communicate over the clamor of two angry children. We were laughing as his youngest began to scream after he watched his sister take something that he wanted. Then it hit me. Between the complete lack of emotional intelligence and no understanding of delayed gratification, when these kids felt an emotion, they became that emotion. His youngest became a living, crying and unstoppable ball of envy when his sister had something he wanted. Nothing else existed, only envy. Sure it wore off after a minute or so, but in that minute, he was simply what he felt.

So there it is. What have I learned from these 40-something year old gangsters and screaming toddlers? I have learned what it means to give yourself to something. God IS love. These men ARE criminals. These kids ARE envy. Scripture calls us to feel a lot of things. It calls us to do a lot of things. But off the top of my head, the only things I can think of God calling us to BE is his children, to be feet to the lame and to be eyes to the blind. My friend Maxwell said it best. “When I was a Gangster, I was nothing else. When I was a Meth-addict, I was nothing else. Whatever I’ve done in my life I have done it with everything I had”. What a world it would be if us Christians had the tunnel vision for our end goal that gangsters and toddlers have. What if rather than feeling and praying for widows and cripples, we allowed God to turn us into their feet and their eyes. The members of the number are willing to die for their gang, posing the question of weather I am willing to die for mine.

Hope Prison Ministry claims their mission is to be “raising up a new generation of Christian leaders out of South Africa’s prisons” and after this past Saturday I understand why.  I stood in front of a room of 90 witnesses with my hands shaking violently. I lifted the microphone to my lips, knowing that the words I was about to say would have an eternal consequence. I knew I couldn’t un-ask the question I had boiling inside of me; I knew that no matter how it was answered it would change this mans life forever. This man had spent the past 10 minutes standing in front of the group, claiming to his wife, his brother, his fellow inmates and some strangers that this week had changed his life. I believed him because I was the one who had walked with him all week; but its not enough for me to believe it. He needed to believe it. The room needed to believe it. He knew as well as I do that the only real apology is a changed life and that our futures often come at the price of our past. I asked him about his place in the number. He froze. He took the mic from my hand with hesitance. For him, his faith wasn’t an idea or an ideal anymore. In that moment, faith became a matter of life and death.

He turned his back to me. He faced the his fellow inmates; his fellow gang members. He lifted the mic to his lips and paused for a moment. He wasn’t speaking to his wife, his brother or me anymore, he was speaking to the number. He denounced the number and he made sure that every last one of them in that room heard it.

After returning to his seat, he sat shifting uncomfortably in his seat, crying. I made eye contact with him from across the room. I expected him to look away but he didn’t. I expected him to be worried but he wasn’t. Part of me expected him to be angry but he wasn’t. His eyes were full of the exact things I have said I wish I could resurrect from my old self. This man had just learned how to hope and let me tell you, he had some childlike faith. Nothing except for Jesus mattered. On Saturday I had the privilege to walk alongside a man whom has spent 30+ years dedicated to BEING a criminal as he decided he was ready to BE something else. He held that eye contact just long enough to whisper “Thank-you” to me.

I smile as I write this because if this man puts in half of the effort he put into being a criminal into following Jesus, prison and his community will never look the same. He turned his back on the number knowing better than anyone the difficult path that would take him down. Following his bravery, 19 other men all decided that they were done believing the lies they had clung to for so long. 19 other men followed in my friends footsteps that day. God willing, that man will change more lives in prison than I could ever hope to.

“the truest test of love and allegiance is found at the cross. Just imagine that you are standing at the crucifixion scene. An angry mob is hollering spiteful invectives at your Lord, falsely accusing Him, denigrating His person. What would you do? True love and allegiance would rouse itself to walk to the foot of His cross, turn toward the crowd, and with a trembling finger pointed upward, toward that bloody, naked, pulp of a man and yell out ‘I’m with Him!'” -Krissy Ludy