Churches and individuals within worshiping communities have made positive moves toward changing the prison system. Prisoners need and have a right to adequate health care, freedom from violence, freedom from solitary confinement, decent wages, decision-making power--and work in favor of these measures cannot wait until the state agrees to tear down the prison walls.
Despite the positive contributions toward change, churches have also been heavily implicated in the prison business. This is not to suggest that most churches forthrightly support the practice of locking people in cages. On the contrary, church support for the prison business has often come precisely with high-minded reform efforts. The penitentiary system owes a great deal to the reform efforts of 18th century Quakers. Churches today provide jails with chaplains, and jails in turn provide churches with ministerial visiting privileges.
Without a better biblical understanding of prisons and their role in society, we can easily become slaves to the present age rather than a servant people of God. This article is an attempt to provide some biblical perspective on our relationship to and responsibility for the one of every 500 Americans who is presently in jail or prison.
Ancient Israel's legal system used jailings and executions to treat its criminals. Executions were carried out in response to the crimes of murder, adultery, or the practice of magic, all of which were seen as particularly evil because they broke relationships within the covenant community or with Yahweh. Jails were introduced in Israel, mostly under foreign influence, one example being Joseph's prison experience in Egypt.
While the jails were primarily used to hold people until judgment could be reached on criminal charges, they were also sometimes used for political purposes, as when Jeremiah and numerous others were jailed on charges desertion and war resistance (although there was explicit divine condemnation of this use). But references to imprisonment in the Old Testament should not lead us to assume that jails wen common feature of life in Israel; when Jeremiah was arrested, he had to thrown into a make-shift prison in the home of Jonathan the secretary (Jeremiah 17:15).
Two factors hindered the development of a prison system in Israel. First, prison systems have historically grown with the development of standing armies and a military establishment. Military garrisons served as prisons and soldiers served as guards. Since a formalized military establishment was a comparatively late development in Israel's history, there were likewise few jails or officials with policing duties. Second, the Old Testament legal ethic was guided by the principle of restitution, and imprisonment would have done nothing to facilitate restitution with the victims of crime.
"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is the verse most often cited as evidence that the Hebrew legal system was based on vengeance. But actual restitution is always the more central concern, being seen as a way of setting things right with one's neighbor and repenting before God. If property was stolen, the property was to be returned. If damage was done to someone's house or fields, the person responsible was to repair it.
But even with the emphasis on restitution, the Old Testament understanding renounced the claim that crime was the responsibility of only a few evil individuals within the society. A breach of law pointed to a crisis in the very fabric of the society.
It is from this understanding that the prophets are able to warn that the entire nation is doomed because widows have been mistreated or because the hungry have not been allowed to glean the fields. Not only the people, but the land itself is caught up in sin and its consequences, for the meadows lie barren and the mountains quake and the trees bear no fruit. For Israel, the best response to crime was not the isolated punishment of an individual lawbreaker, but the repentance of the entire nation.
In the New Testament, Jesus explains that he does not come to renounce biblical law but to reveal how the law itself is a sign of God's mercy and grace. The law was made for humanity, not humanity for the law, and Jesus responds boldly to those who would be guided by a simple "eye for an eye" legal ethic (Matthew 5:38-42). Any form of revenge (and certainly execution) is not in keeping with the gospel.
The principle of restitution is a part of the primary biblical concern for reconciliation. For Jesus, the important element in the Jewish law is not the exchange or return of property, but the restoration of proper relationships among people and with God. Jesus preaches that reconciliation is not always served by material restitution; if someone steals from you, do not ask for the property to be returned (Luke 6:30).
We must not be misled into assuming that the biblical understanding of prisoners has to do with calculations about legal ethics or what should be done by and to criminals. Rather, the biblical word regarding prisoners is at once both simple and scandalous--liberty for the captives.
The Jubilee Year and Sabbath Year proclamations (Leviticus 25:10; Deuteronomy 15) held that land should be redistributed and slaves should be set free. In Isaiah 61, prisoners are specifically included among those to be released. In the context of the Jubilee Year, the freeing of prisoners was not to be seen as an act of charity, nor was it to be based on any illusion that all prisoners are basically "good" people. Rather, the proclamations of liberty to the captives were concrete social responses to God's liberating activity in the exodus of Israel from Egypt.
The Jubilee and Sabbath Years were a type of social counterpart to the Jewish Passover or the Eucharist: Do this in remembrance of me. The Jubilee was a time of remembering--a time to celebrate faith in the God who had been and is faithful.
Liberty to the Captives
It is Isaiah 61 which Jesus quotes in Luke 4 as he sets out the platform for his ministry. Here at the very outset of Jesus' teaching is the proclamation of liberty to the captives. And as he speaks, Jesus announces that the proclamation is fulfilled. In his Lordship, Jesus assumes a greater authority than that of the principalities and powers--authority to announce freedom to those who are imprisoned by the powers.
As Jesus proclaims liberty to the captives, he is also renouncing the power of death of which imprisonment is a manifestation. At numerous points in scripture, death is represented as a power which is separate from and opposed to God. The power of death manifests itself in various forms, including illness, hunger, injustice, opulence, and imprisonment.
The identification of imprisonment with the power of death is especially strong in the Psalms (Psalm 79:11), but there are also some hints in the New Testament (Luke 22:33; Revelation 2:10). Thus, the proclamation of liberty for the captives is not just an isolated segment of Jesus' ministry; it stands as a renunciation of the power of death and therefore points towards the resurrection itself.
The identification of imprisonment with death helps us to understand the miraculous deliverance of the apostles from prison in Acts 5 and 12. It is not because of anything magical that these deliverance accounts are miraculous. Rather, in New Testament accounts of miracles, at least one of two elements are inevitably present: an assertion of divine authority over demons or over the creation of nature, and/or life-giving activity such as feeding, healing, or resurrecting. Both of these elements are present in the deliverance accounts. Releasing the captives asserts divine authority over the state and over the fallen principalities and powers.
Even though we are admonished in 1 Corinthians 6:1 not to rely on the courts, and even though the biblical vision is one of liberty for prisoners, this does not mean that we are to be unconcerned with the victims of the violence within our society. On the contrary, we are called to witness to those structures and those individuals who perpetrate violence, being called to meet the needs of all victims of crime. What the biblical vision does mean is that we cannot respond to violence by resorting to the further violence of locking people in cages.
What then is set forth as the biblical responsibility to the sisters and brothers in prison? Matthew 25 talks of a responsibility to "visit" the prisoners. While this "visiting" certainly involves establishing relationships and personal contact with prisoners, the Greek term episkeptomai also refers to more than just spending time with people. The same term is often used to refer to the divine activity of caring for, redeeming, and freeing. There are numerous biblical references to being "visited by God" or an angel of the Lord and being freed by that visitation. Tertullian and other leaders in the early church interpreted the Christian responsibility to be that of procuring release for prisoners.
Finally, the Bible tells us that we have kinship with brothers and sisters in prison. In its origins, Christianity was a prison faith. John the Baptist, as well as all of the disciples, was imprisoned.
If we are serious about coming to a biblical understanding of prisoners and prisons, then Jesus Christ is always at the center of our understanding. We are placed in this position by Jesus' own imprisonment and death. And we are placed in this position by Jesus' proclamation of deliverance for the captives.
But to take a stand involves no small risk. If biblical people are to speak a clear "no" to the prison system, it necessarily involves more than words and more than legislative lobbying efforts.
It might mean that we will be more personally involved in the lives of these men and women whom society has labeled the "criminal element." It might mean that we will be more involved in caring for the victims of crime without seeking to victimize the lawbreakers. It might mean that we will be more involved in bail projects, prison release programs, and efforts to provide housing and food and companionship for people released from incarceration.
As we struggle for a response to the prison system, it is important that we
not be guided by illusions about what will "work." There are no guarantees that the involvement of loving people in attempting to release prisoners will do any more to curb crime than the prison system has done. But the church must be guided by the biblical witness, otherwise it forfeits the only power which is given to it: the suffering power which flows from the word and activity of God.
Lee Griffith was a member of Advaita House in Baltimore, Maryland, when this article appeared.
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