The God of Prison, Foxhole, and Crisis

Our human motivations are never completely pure.  We are called to love God.  “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38).  Many of us say we do love God, but do we?  We may want to love God with heart, soul and mind,  but our attempt  gets all tangled up in our situations and problems.  The truth is that our theology, our religious understanding about God, gets in the way of our loving God as God with all our heart, soul and mind.

Jailhouse religion happens.  It is the term used for the sudden and desperate turning to God of those who are “caught” and  sent to jail or prison.  They suddenly “find God” and claim that their lives have been “turned around.” Such an experience is scriptural.  The parable of the Prodigal Son is the story of a form of jailhouse religion.  The son, lost in the far country, suddenly comes to his senses and returns “home” to his Father.  We should never use the term “jailhouse religion” in a pejorative way, for those who are “uncaught” often experience the same phenomena as those who are “caught.”

It is said, for example, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”  This aphorism has been used to suggest that in times of extreme stress or fear, especially in combat (“in foxholes’), all people will believe in, or hope for, God.  How many of us (who are not in prison), the “uncaught, ” have, in our moments of crisis—with a critical illness, or in an earthquake—had our “come to Jesus” moment?  In my years of ministry in parish, military and prisons, I have witnessed this religious phenomenon, among the “caught” and the “uncaught,”  among the military and the civilian.   

There is nothing wrong with seeing God as savior.  In fact, there is much in Christian theology which proclaims this as being the very basis of our relationship with God!  This  is the God of prison, foxhole and crisis—the God of despair, the God whose only purpose is to rescue us.  But I sense God is and wants to be so much more than this kind of God.  Can we love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, if we only see our God as a savior and rescuer?