The Darkness of Prison

The Darkness of Prison

“After they (Paul and Silas) had been flogged, they were thrown into prison” (Acts 16:23 NIV).

“They arrested the apostles (Peter) and put them in Jail” (Acts 5:18 NIV).

Not everyone has been in a prison-like Paul (Philippi, Caesarea, and Rome), Peter (Jerusalem), and John (the island of Patmos, a Roman penal colony). Things we take for granted today, even in prisons, did not exist back in the first century, such as lights, running water, heat, and bathroom facilities. Prisons in the apostle’s time were dark, cold, dreadful places.

Today’s prisons are well-lighted, heated and air-conditioned, have sinks, showers, and toilets, three meals a day, medical care and programs to occupy the mental and physical needs of the prisoners. While prisons today are certainly not like staying at the Holiday Inn, they are far from the prisons that the apostles faced.

Punishment of almost every type is far different today than that of Paul, Peter, and John’s time. Many children today have been “confined” to their rooms or not allowed to leave the house as punishment. To a child, this is often as bad or worse than prison to an adult.

As a youth, I remember having to stay home by myself because I had misbehaved while the family went out to do things.  I remember hiding in a dark closet as though somehow that would shut out the terrible world that existed outside the door. Yet the darkness I was trying to escape from was the very darkness where I went to hide. Somehow, particularly as children, we convince ourselves that if we can’t see the world around us, the bad things in life don’t exist or can’t get to us.

The darkness that we are trying to escape from is not a matter of light (luminescence), it is a matter of what is in our mind. When we remove all the light and create darkness, there is nothing left for us to see but what is in our own mind, and that is where the darkness really lives.

As I write this, I am sitting in a cell in Federal Prison. Every day I see other inmates sit in their cells with the lights off and the windows covered. They are trying to escape the darkness of prison, yet they are creating the very darkness they are trying to get away from. We try to hide from the world, from pain, from suffering, from depression and despair with physical darkness. The darkness that plagues most of us is not physical darkness (absence of light), it’s the darkness of the mind, mental darkness. Turning out the lights only intensifies our focus on the evil that is lurking in our minds since that is all we can see.

The Bible is replete with comparisons of darkness (evil or the devil) and light (good or the Lord). Light and darkness, love and hate, good and evil, are all polar opposites as are the God and Satan. When we are born, our heart is like a new, clean whiteboard. It has nothing written on it.  As we grow, our experiences in life are written on the whiteboard of life.  What we don’t realize is that many things in life cannot coexist, especially polar opposites. Light cannot exist with darkness, good cannot exist with evil, pain cannot exist with pleasure and love cannot exist with hate. The whiteboard of your heart cannot hold darkness and light, or good and evil at the same time.  If you are to write the light of the Lord into your heart, you must erase the darkness of the devil.

The dichotomies of God, of nature and of humanity exist in all of us. Each of us must choose whether we will live in the light of the Lord or the darkness of evil.  Whether you are in a prison with bars and fences or going about your daily experiences in the free world, you have the ability to choose how you live your life, what is written on the whiteboard of your heart, what is written in your mind, what is written in your soul.  Make each day count and let it be full of the light and joy of the Lord. No matter where you are, we are all living life, but it is your choice how you live your life. You can live in the light or live in the darkness; the choice is up to you.