Retribution

Yesterday, at my son's suggestion, I watched the documentary, Fear of 13. It is the narration of a life fraught with pain. Nick Yarris is articulate, wounded, intelligent. His story confirms that the form of retributive "justice" we have adopted in this world is often harmful to both prisoners and those hired to guard them. The atmosphere in our prisons creates an environment where both criminal and those in authority are encouraged to be less than.

To date, I have never looked into the eyes of someone who has severely harmed an innocent whom I dearly love. I realize it is easy for me to be theoretically compassionate for someone who has committed a hideous crime by which no one I love has been directly affected. I do understand this. Understanding this, however, I still feel that the de-humanizing of people is troubling.

When studying conflict management at Lipscomb, I did a presentation on the book, Changing Lenses. Before reading this book or taking the classes, I had always had a visceral reaction to capital punishment, and the indignities and abuse prisoners suffer, but certainly had no answers. This book helped me see and understand there are other ways that work. Please, do not hear me saying that there should be no consequence to actions, but some form of restorative justice makes more sense, for both the perpetrator and the victim.

We are a bloodthirsty society. So much of what is on TV is murder and mayhem, and I sometimes find myself anxious for the so-called bad guy to "get his."  I do not really like admitting that trait in myself. I think we become desensitized by the fictional cases we see in movies and on TV. Fear of 13 is about a real man, a man we come to know over the course of the ninety minutes or so of the documentary. He is a man who created a lot of his misfortune, and yet the pain with which he lived led to destructive ways of coping which contributed to the bad choices that caused him to be incarcerated. I do not know the pain of those who worked in the prison that caused them to see those in their charge as subhuman, and assume that the abuse of prisoners was acceptable, even laudable.

I have no answers, but I am grieved by man's inhumanity to man. It is everywhere in simple and more complex ways, to parents who hit their children, to husbands and wives who rather than making life easier for their spouses make things harder, to people on social media who feel free to bash parents who have suffered unspeakable loss, to "Christians" (NOT) who condone the deaths of those with whom they disagree, to prison guards who demean and abuse those who have no recourse and on and on it goes.

As is being driven home to us at church, each of us is capable of the most heinous of behavior as well as the most loving and generous acts. It is my prayer that we grow and cultivate the loving response in ourselves as well as in others, recognize our potential for depravity, and that we stay ever vigilant.



I haven't revealed much about this documentary and Nick Yarris' life. I am really not one to recommend movies for we all have different tastes in our "viewing pleasure," but, you just might want to check it out, as well as the book, Changing Lenses. There is hope found in these stories.

The photos in this blog were taken at the old prison in Nashville. I truly had a physical reaction to the unholiness of that place. It still disturbs me.

Blessings