Biblical Counseling in an Inmate Environment?
Woody Fisher, M.A.
Chaplain with Good News Jail & Prison Ministry
Henrico County Regional Jail, Virginia .
In dealing with this topic, my approach will be to move from the general to the specific. To be thorough would obviously require a lot more space than I have here, so this will in no way be an exhaustive presentation. Rather, I want to present two major problems I have observed in my 11 years as a jail Chaplain. Then I will present some specific examples to illustrate the problems and to present a biblical method for dealing with them.
In my experience in counseling with inmates, I have observed that there are, generally speaking, two overriding issues that surface most frequently in counseling with inmates—an unwillingness to accept forgiveness and an unwillingness to accept responsibility. I believe that these two issues are at opposite poles on the same continuum, and that dealing with them is often the key to a breakthrough in an individual’s spiritual life and growth.
On one end of the continuum are those who are unwilling to accept forgiveness. In a sense, they take too much responsibility for the consequences of their behavior. They choose to believe that because of their mistakes and awful behavior, they are beyond forgiveness. As a result they wallow in self-pity in an effort to seek reassurances that they are really not as bad as they think they are. It is, in essence, is a backhanded effort to bolster their own ego, while appearing to be just the opposite. This approach is total self-absorption and results in morbid introspection.
Everything is turned inward so that these individuals end up feeding upon themselves. It is a cycle that only leads to discouragement and depression, since there can never be sufficient reassurance to overcome the guilt.
In counseling with individuals like this, I often begin with Romans chapter 7, verses 14 and 15 where the Apostle Paul says, “We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.” (NASV) It is often at that point that an initial point of identification is established. Inmates often respond with statements like, “I could have written that” or “That sounds just like me.”
I then go on down in the chapter to verses 18 and 19, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish.” (NASV) These verses typify what many inmates feel. They do not deny that they know right from wrong, they simply deny that they have any means of doing right and not doing wrong. They feel that they are trapped within themselves.
That then leads very logically to verse 24 where Paul says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? (NASV) That is exactly where many of these people find themselves. They see themselves as wretches who are incapable of doing the right thing.
At this point I usually ask them if they know who wrote these words. Many of the men and women who are incarcerated have no background in the Bible and really don’t understand who Paul was. Depending upon the level of their knowledge of the Bible, I review Paul’s credentials, explaining to them that he was one of the greatest Christians in all of history and wrote many of the books in the New Testament.
That accomplishes two things. It enables the individual to understand that this kind of a problem is more typical than they probably think. This negative thought process is not limited to those who have done terrible crimes and end up in jail. Hopefully that enables them to accept these words from Scripture as applicable to them because it is a more universal thought process than they believed.
Secondly, this sets the stage for them to accept the fact that they cannot change themselves apart from God’s work in their lives. If one stops at Romans 7:24, it is a hopeless situation. Paul expresses this inability to do right and avoid wrong and seems to pose a rhetorical question there, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The unstated answer, based on the previous verses is, “Nobody can.”
Establishing the fact that their condition is hopeless, from a human perspective, then opens the door to move on into Romans 8 where Paul declares in verse 1, “There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” That then sets the stage for presenting the Gospel and dispelling the self-condemnation that has characterized their lives.
On the other end of the continuum are those who are not willing to accept any, or very little, responsibility for the consequences of their behavior. Their means of coping is to adopt the victim mentality. There are always rationalizations and justifications for what they do so that they bear no blame. These individuals feel that they have been incarcerated unfairly, and because of that are typically bitter and angry. They view incarceration as the last in a long series of circumstances by which they have been victimized.
The victim mentality has been drilled into their minds by our culture. Repeatedly through the media and other avenues of communication even the most atrocious behavior is attributed to societal ills rather than personal actions.
To combat this in a personal counseling situation, I begin in Genesis chapter 3 and review the events leading up to the Fall. With some understanding of the background, I go over, a bit more carefully, the sin of Adam and Eve and God’s confrontation with them. The emphasis of interaction with the inmate is on the blame-shifting that occurred throughout the confrontation. The major point from all of this is that failure to take responsibility for one’s actions and the consequences is a basic flaw of human nature which has been the case since man’s fall in the Garden of Eden.
A logical conclusion from this discussion is the same as what is presented in Romans 7, it is hopeless from a human perspective. The tendency to avoid responsibility is a part of human nature because of the Fall and apart from God’s grace there is no remedy.
From Genesis 3, I move into James 1 where James discusses the progression from thought to action (sin) in verses 13-15. I attempt to lead the inmate in understanding that the process laid out in James is exactly what occurred in the interaction between Satan and Eve in Genesis 3. The obvious direction with this is to confront the inmate directly with the fact that he/she has been seeking to avoid responsibility for their actions just as Adam and Eve did so that the process of James 1 has been played out in their lives over and over again.
The bottom line in all of this is that the key issue is that of mind control. If the starting point for sin is a thought (lust or strong desire), then the way to avoid that is to establish a way to control those thoughts. A variety of additional references could be included, but the most obvious one is Romans 12 where Paul says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”(NASV)
For one who is a believer and is grappling with addiction or other habitual sin, Psalm 119:11 is the antidote. “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”(NIV) The way to control one’s mind in a positive manner is to saturate one’s mind with God’s Word. If Scripture controls our minds, our minds control our thoughts, our thoughts control our actions, and we can move in a positive direction.
For the one who is an unbeliever, the inherent inability to control thoughts can be established and then a good place to go is II Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”(NASV) That then can lead to a full presentation of the Gospel.