What is the Relationship between God’s Divine Presences and Prisons?

Leave it up to the skeptics and those who may have never spent one day behind America’s bars designed and built to correct our societal behaviors by locking us away and throwing away the key so that the decent folks in society are protected from us unruly, uncontrollable and criminals who seek to destroy our otherwise peaceful society with violence.  Leave it to them to speculate that the reason many who go to prison is often times quoted as finding God as the reason why they have been rehabilitated and has turned over that new leaf, is simply to receive more privileges in prison or get their sentence reduced.  Now we are not that cynical to think that there are some who think along that line but let’s assume that the few who actually believe that they found God in prison and that they do turn over that new leaf do.  What is the teachable moment here and how can we maybe help so many others reach this calm within out jailing everyone we see?

The primary force, I believe, behind this discovery of God in prison is the fact that while in prison, individuals began to get a clearer understanding of how the decisions that they made has affected their lives and how those choices were never caused by another person but was simply ours to make.  Maybe prison is the only place where taking personal responsibility for your choices is taught.  Maybe we lack teaching this to our children as they grow and definitely fail to try and reinforce it in our teens as they mature.  What if we practiced truly being our brothers and sisters keeper by pressing the need to be aware that all of our decisions and choices are ours to make and should never be subjected to the whims of another.  What if we took the lead in setting the example of how bad decisions made for any reason can be the reason between being behind bars and standing on the other side of them.

Do you really need to go to prison to find God?  No, the divinity of God is present all around us all of the time but one major characteristic that you must possess is the willingness and ability to understand that we are in complete control of our own destiny.  That no one can make us do anything we do not wish to do and no man-made law shall ever trump the laws of God.  That God’s presence exists in all things but is often times so clouded by our desire to ignore it only to capture those things that are contrary.  You would rather have a big mansion, more cars than you can drive, much more wealth than you could ever spend, many more “yes men and women” surrounding you and mostly important the life where you are never questioned or held responsible for anything you wish to do.

But consider this all that which we have listed above is still all about choice, you do not have to go to prison to find God but can we at least give those who make this claim the benefit of the doubt until they choose to prove differently?