The Results Business

I recently made my way out to one of the units at the jail to deliver a few items that had been requested by inmates. Bibles, writing paper, calendars, devotionals, bible study courses—each must be documented, labeled with a name and a number, and then placed on the window sill at the bubble so the guys can see when there’s something for them. On my most recent trip, one of the guards noticed a name on one of the packages I was putting out which contained a bible study course. He snorted. “That guy’s not here any more. Down in the hole. Guess you were a few days too late with that stuff!” I smiled. Picked up my materials. “Yeah. I guess I was.”

What is the role of a chaplain (or a pastor, for that matter)? What is that we do? What is it that we are offering to our “clients?” I suspect that for many of the guards at the prison, chaplains are naive do-gooders who are wasting their time on men and women who will probably never change. It’s hard not to get jaded when you constantly see people at their absolute worst—this I have no trouble believing. At best, perhaps chaplains can make the inmates they have to deal with every day slightly more bearable. Maybe the net benefit of our being there is a bit less violence, a slight moderation in the flow of contraband, a few less headaches to deal with. Maybe.

This was, of course, the (sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek) assumption of the guard on my recent visit. If this inmate could have gotten himself some religion, maybe he wouldn’t have done whatever got him sent to the hole. Religion is about behaviour modification. Convincing bad boys to be a bit better. This is a fairly common assumption outside the jail, too, obviously. Religion can make you a more faithful spouse or a better parent or a more committed political activist or a more honest businessperson or a more ecologically sensitive citizen or a _______. The options for what counts as “better” are virtually limitless. Whatever content we might want to put inside the “better” bucket, on this view, religion is about changing human behaviour.

But there are other things that chaplains (and pastors) might be selling besides behaviour modification. Maybe it’s an intellectual system to make rational sense of the world and our place in it. Maybe it’s psychological equilibrium. Maybe it’s comfort. Maybe it’s a healthier sense of the self. Maybe it’s mercy, kindness, companionship. Maybe it’s the right words to pray when the demons come out at night to tempt and torment. Maybe it’s material support. Maybe it’s a sense of purpose or belonging in a world that so often seems to offer neither. 

Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s Jesus Christ and his kingdom which welcomes sinners who don’t know that they’re saints and saints who forget that they’re sinners. 

I don’t want to downplay behaviour modification (or any of the other things I mentioned above). I think that religion (in general) and Christianity (in particular) can play a role in helping with any and all of these. I would never want to suggest that embracing the way of Jesus ought not to lead to concrete change in how we live and move and have our being in this world. 

I’ve also been a chaplain, and a pastor, and a person long enough to know that measuring Christianity by the observable results it produces in a given life is a risky business. I’ve seen some of the guys come in and out of the jail multiple times, even in my relatively short time as a chaplain. They leave full of the love of Jesus and the best of intentions and a few months later they’re right back on a plastic chair in a prison chapel. I’ve also seen faithful churchgoers who have been around Jesus and his people for multiple decades and have yet remained, to all outward appearances, just as graceless and eager to judge as they ever were. I’ve even seen pastors, ahem, whose reflexive cynicism has barely been blunted by serving long years in the church. 

If Christianity is primarily about behaviour modification, and the life of faith should be an inevitable steady arrow up and to the right on the “more like Jesus” trajectory, then I think many of us are in trouble. I suppose there are blessed saints who arrive at death’s door giving near-perfect evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, their life hitting peak “Jesus-like-ness” right at the moment they set off to meet him. I have known a few for whom this at least seemed to be the case. But that word “seemed” is important. I also know that every human heart has its conflicted depths, things it dares not whisper aloud. We never cease to be “the sick” in need of the Divine Physician. 

Seeking results isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Who doesn’t want better people (provided, of course, that we get to define “better”)? I long for the men and women I encounter at the jail each week to have better futures than the ones that keep landing them on plastic chairs in a prison chapel. I long (and pray!) for miraculous deliverances and radical re-routings. But sometimes change is slow, incremental, halting, unimpressive. Sometimes “better” is barely observable. For some lives, “up and to the right” will simply never be their story.

In a piece that is worth reading in its entirety, Kirsten Sanders recently had this to say about Christianity:

It is a faith, after all, of beggars and fools, of bleeding women and demoniacs and failed religious and deeply disappointed religious men. It is the faith that comes to the brokenhearted, after they’ve suffered the defeat of their expectations. God doesn’t come to them saying “Do this, in exactly this way, for great results”. He says, “Fear not.”

A few days ago, I sat with a young man who had tried to take his life by burning down a house with himself in it. His life was one characterized by appalling neglect, casual abuse, addiction, relational upheaval, grinding poverty, and just a kind pervasive, omnipresent chaos that I can barely comprehend much less describe. This is the world he has marinated in for most of his life. I felt emotionally wrung out after twenty minutes of listening to his story. I can barely fathom living it. 

This is a young man who may need to hear, “Do this for better results.” Maybe. At some point. But before he ever hears this, he needs to hear, “Fear not.”