Doing time for God

   It was unlike any Bible study I’d ever attended. I was the only woman. I was the only one not dressed in white. And we weren’t even reading from the Bible. We were using “The Heart of Hebrew History,” by H.I. Hester, which traditionally has been used to teach college level courses on the Bible.

   The author’s details, footnotes and cross references had the other students flipping through 4,000 years of both sacred and secular history. 
Note that I did not include myself here. I was nowhere near as knowledgeable as the 19 gentlemen who were discussing the text, reading between the lines, relating the content to the history of mankind, and most importantly, applying it to their lives.

   “They just wanted to be like everyone else,” Salvadore Carawan observed of the Philistines wanting to emulate the splendor of an Oriental court. (Never really thought about Chinese culture having any effect on what I ever read in the Book of Samuel.)

   “They weren’t using good discernment,” said Anthony Ethridge, “God gives discernment to all men liberally. We should use it well.”

   “We should, but we don’t always,” Anthony Quinn Standard replied. “The thing is God doesn’t interfere. He gives us free will, and sometimes we just hang ourselves with it. It’s not God’s doing that people end up here.”

   “Since I’ve been here, I’ve decided what I want is what God wants me to have,” said Steven Foster.

   “Here” to Standard and Foster and the rest of these gentlemen is the Gwinnett County Correctional Institution on Hi Hope Road in Lawrenceville.

   Gwinnett boasts having the only county prison in the state that offers what is known as Bible College. Chaplain Terry Buice said, “It is more than a Bible study. The course provides an intense study precept by precept that is very indepth.”

   Since 1975 the Georgia Baptist Convention has been offering prisons the same course of study that is offered in Bible colleges and some churches throughout the state. For every 20 hours completed, students receive a certificate for one credit hour. After completion of the course, students may be eligible for a diploma. The course may be completed in prison, or continued on the outside at several churches in Gwinnett County or others throughout the country.

   Not all inmates participate in the high level studies of Bible College, but the Word has its way of working itself through prison walls.

   “Back in the dorm we talk a lot, “said Willie Jefferson. “There might be other brothers who believe in God and we get to talking and knowing Him better. We have lots of time for it.”

   Chaplain Buice likes to call prison a “time out chair” for adults. And the Bible says there’s a time for everything. So as Ethridge says, with a little discernment, doing time can be a Godly thing. 

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