The Next Door, The Only Door

As I type this, I’m playing front desk receptionist at The Next Door in Nashville, a rehabilitation home for female ex-cons who’ve struggled with addictions. And through the application process, I learned a few things about the American penalty system.

To be fair, I am a bit of a bleeding heart. But I’ve never really been one to feel sorry for convicts. Those who find themselves in situations whose consequences demand time in prison have earned that time, not my sympathy.

But what I’ve come to find and am increasingly disturbed by is the simple fact that the majority of convicts come from the same basic set of circumstances. And their near inevitable criminal behavior is like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What’s worse, the majority of ex-convicts for whom no one immediately intervenes post-release will return to their former friends, lovers, lives, addictions, and lifestyles, and eventually find themselves back in prison.

It seems wrong. If I know these statistics, then so do the authorities. And if they know, they ought to be doing something to help the situation, right?

But they don’t, really. Public funding doesn’t cover that much. So when a person is released from prison, they’re literally given back the clothes and personal possessions that were on their bodies when first incarcerated, led through a gigantic metal gate (like a garage door), and left on the other side. To find a bus or a ride. More likely than not wind their way back to an old neighborhood and old, comfortable but dangerous arms.

Some are sent to halfway houses, but even there they’re not given much help to change their lives; Just a room, some rules, perhaps some help finding a job, a “good luck” pat on the back and the promise that eyes are watching, waiting for their first failure.

And yet we’re still angry when they revert to old behaviors and addictions. We condemn them for not trying hard enough, excuse ourselves from helping them having judged them not to want our help. (And I haven’t even tapped into the issue of mental illnesses that are so common among convicts, the homeless, and other social “undesireables.”)

I don’t understand it. It’s ironic to, on one hand, demand these people – whose situations most of us could never hope to understand, given our own rather cushy upbringings – take hold of all available opportunities, but on the other hand scowl at affirmative action initiative and other programs created to help do just that, while turning a blind eye to the circumstances that keep them bound from the progress that comes so easily to us. It seems criminal to imprison them for their crimes and then release them without direction to the very same circumstances that landed them there in the first place.

Don’t we know yet it’s not enough to simply turn or remove them from the old way? It’s just as important they have something to turn to…

That’s why I’m so excited and encouraged by organizations like The Next Door, who provide a home, clothing, employment help, education opportunities, and most importantly a new kind of spiritual family to women who, until now, haven’t had a home, or friends, or a job, or anything but the same old addictions and options. For most women, it’s the first door they’ve yet seen.

It’s also why I believe it’s so gravely important for those of us who’ve known nothing but endless options and wealth (even me, whose lower-middle-class upbringing could be considered poor by some), and been given every good thing, to pull our heads out of the sand, turn from the lies that somehow entitle us to our circumstances and condemn them to theirs, and start giving.

Time, money, clothes, encouragement, prayer. Encouragement. Prayer.

It’s incredible, how important a woman begins to feel when she’s finally able to share her story with someone who’s really listening; To watch smiles grow, as women slowly but surely decide I’m a safe and trustworthy ear rather than a judgemental tongue.

Indeed, if we who’ve known nothing but hope and heard nothing but “yes” would look mercifully on those who’ve known only rejection and heard nothing but “no”…

Well, I dare say we’d start to see them less as drains on society and more like its last hope.

To that end, I encourage you to get involved in your community. Find someone who needs love, and drown them in it. Find someone who needs prayer, and swaddle them with it. Find someone who needs another chance, and give it to them.

Upon Further Review and Assessment of Intelligent Design Theory

Tonight, Paul and I finally saw Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed at a (legal – all licenses paid for) viewing at our church. It’s the Ben Stein documentary promoting the discussion of Intelligent Design among the scientific community at large. Or, more accurately, the refusal to discuss I.D. as a viable opposing scientific theory to Darwinism.

If you remember back a few months ago when the movie first came out, I wrote a blog discussing why I.D. is or isn’t scientifically viable. I don’t want to re-hash that here.

On a side note: I do think the film could have been more effective within the mainstream scientific community (read: among those who don’t buy I.D. and stick to Darwinism or evolutionary theory) had it not so characturized the opposing side or worked to draw such “inevitable” ties between it and the Holocaust. Obviously and indisputably, Hitler used Darwin’s theory to propagate eugenics and promote the total eradication of Jews and the “less evolved” (i.e. mentally or phsyically retarted, etc). But, strictly scientifically speaking, Hitler’s use of “natural selection” to defend Social Darwinism was quite oxymoronic. Anyhow, I think it would have been better received on both sides had it done more to show the reasons why some adamantly oppose I.D. theory, rather than simply presenting them as ranting naturalists.

But after seeing the movie and hearing some of the absurd theories some scientists assert regarding hypothetical explanations for our yet-unproven origins, I have to say: I haven’t really changed my mind.

Here’s why.

While I don’t believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis that asserts the earth was created from nothing just 6K to 10K years ago because evidence shows the earth to be millions – maybe billions – of years old, neither do I believe we came from a single cell organism borne from primordial soup, also because current evidence suggests otherwise. Or at very least, current evidence – that being the most basic of cells – cannot be broken down to a point of honest scientific testing of data in that context.

But both sides have made efforts to explain what they cannot scientifically test or study: Scientists studying from a religious worldview assume a supernatural explanation; natural scientists assume a natural (or at least a non-religious pointing) explanation.

And that’s where the problem begins for me.

See, I wouldn’t mind a science teacher pointing out the complexities of cells to my own children and encouraging them to believe they were designed intelligently by a higher power…i.e. God.

But I would mind – in fact, I’d adamantly oppose and even fight against! – the same science teacher pointing out those same complexities and suggesting to my children that it all started with a crystal lying in such a way on top of another crystal, and the process spontaneously generating from there.

I would take similar issue with said science teacher suggesting to my children that, while our origins are yet unknown and unproven, we were most likely “seeded” here by intelligent life occupying another planet in the universe.

You may think I’m crazy, but both suggestions were made by reputable secular scientists who adamantly oppose the idea of Intelligent Design and its natural end being “God”…a Creator…rather than something natural and untouched by any deity, Christian or otherwise.

So, here’s where I stand; this is the ideal, preferred situation I’d love to see my children learning in: Let scientists be scientists. Let them teach the study of observable organisms and processes. Let them dissect biological and geological matter. Let them ask every question imaginable regarding what they’re observing, and test every imaginable answer.

And when that observation leads to the questions of “how did we come to be…back at the very, very beginning?” and “why am I here?” and “Who wanted me here?” – those questions of purpose and meaning that honest scientific observation inevitably beg but cannot answer, as they are questions of the metaphysical realm – let the science community humbly say “we just don’t know that” and leave hypothesizing to the experts in the fields of philosophy and theology.

Because ultimately, science will never, ever be able to prove (or disprove!) the existence of YHWH, my great unseen God and Creator. But theology – and more importantly, an honest, living, breathing, personal Faith that transforms me daily in an irrefutable way – can, and so swiftly and powerfully does supply answers and peace, in abundance.