Reed Secular Alliance

Returning to the Fold – Reflections from a Barbed Wire Monastery

By:  Prison Bob

A prisoner contemplating in his cell

The following is part nine of an ongoing feature with a real incarcerated prisoner, who goes by the pseudonym of Prison Bob.  This individual is behind bars in Oklahoma, and he is a freethinker and staunch atheist.  We hope you will enjoy this feature.

Recently, I dropped a few lines concerning a Wiccan/Pagan, who has in the last few months turned from his non-Christian beliefs to fully embrace Christianity.  In fact, he has not only embraced it, but like so many new or returning practitioners, he feels comfortable holding conversations completely concerning his favored Bible translation.  He really prefers the King James Chronological.  Evidently, it reads more like a story, so it is therefore easier to assimilate without deep thought.

I might come across as catty or gossipy, but all I’m going to talk about are observations or conversations I have personally had with the persons in question.  The former Pagan I’ll call Jad.  His former lover, I’ll call Mar.  The reason Jad has left Mar and wholly embraced the Christian ethos is over a woman.  Jad’s new (two months) woman nee fiancee found him online.  He tells me he doesn’t know why.  Mar, still in love, was devastated, but is still here and caring.  Interestingly, both Mar and Jad come up for parole within a year.  After more than two decades apiece, both men are preparing for this with large amounts of hope.

Now all of a sudden, Jad is no longer a former addict who himself sold in prison (not this facility) to obtain a fix.  Having found Jad used, abused, and left with no one who would touch him, Mar has (their story) taken care of him for years.  Now, Jad is a man with hope.  He is proselytizing.  He’s out winning souls  for, say it with a Southern drawl, Jay-sus.  None of that truly bothers me.   Homosexuality just is.  And it isn’t as if I can pass judgment on the actions of another addict.  One does what one can and must survive this.  But…

I personally find it repugnant that in less than 90 days, Jad has gone from staunch anti-Christian to a good little Christian soldier.  Jad and Mar are no longer even seen around one another.  Jad is in marriage counseling and he and the mystery woman are planning an early winter union.  It may sound hateful of me, but none of this heartfelt conversion happened in the two and a half decades prior to mystery woman choosing Jad like a pet from the pound and mailing him unexpected funds.

The question I have asked myself time and again since beginning to watch this situation is:  What happens to Jad psychologically if, after this spurt of new thought, the marriage fails or the attempt at parole does not succeed?  How much damage is he preparing to do to himself?  Who knows.  And I’m a guy who has gotten married three times, because I thought I was saving them.  It seems that when sober, I have an overdeveloped White Knight Complex.  There is no way I’d marry a woman I couldn’t be around, or had only met three times.

Well, maybe Halle Berry.  Or Rihanna.  Or Jenna Elfman.

Okay, very few!

I’m possibly over-judgmental, but I never claimed to be above that.  Be kind to yourselves and others.

Ever wondered what it’s like to be an atheist in prison?  According to Sean Bearden, a prisoner in New York, non-theism behind bars has its challenges.  To read more about his experiences, click on the following link:

Sean-Bearden-Essay.

We hope you will enjoy his story.

Letters from a Barbed Wire Monastery:  The Choice to Think Freely

By:  Prison Bob

A prison cell

Why I choose to do anything is often a mystery.  Even to me.  To explain, when I joined the Marine Corps in 1989, it was a spur of the moment thing.  The recruiter called and said, “Have you thought about what you want to do after high school?”  I told her “Nope, no clue.”  So, she says, “Have you thought of joining the Marine Corps?”  I hadn’t, so I said (this  is 100% true), “Sure, where do I sign up?”  Used to rejection, she said, “You don’t have to say no right…What did you just say?”  I repeated, “Sure.  Where do I sign up?”  That’s only one example of how I float through life.  I rarely pre-plan or think anthing through.  And, I am certain that it shows. 

So, in an earlier letter, I mention that I chose to label myself as an atheist/agnostic/freethinker, because I was bored with Christianity in the form of church.  At too early an age, I felt that something as siginificant as the thought process which would guide the rest of my life would need a more relevant basis than just “it’s what’s expected.”  The most telling reason why I have denounced religion – any form of religion – is that I find it to be dishonest.  I am not the epitome of honesty.  I am, however, often indescreetly honest, some may say brutally so.  Such open, anti-social weapons-grade honesty doesn’t make friends.  To put it most openly, I feel that I cannot have faith, because I have knowledge.  Do I know everything?  No, I just act like it sometimes.

And, yes.  The above was a psychological trick that I use when things become too intense for me.  The first three paragraphs took me a week to compose.  Deep introspection is physically painful for me.  That is why, at most times, I keep only a nodding acquaintance with deep, personal thought.  Besides the pain, there is the ever-present rage, just beneath the surface.  Impotent rage – the best kind.  As I see it, the dishonesty – not of religion in theory – but of religion in practice, tells you to be true to a god figure.  Then, this god figure will provide for you in “the afterlife”.  To me, that sounds like a lend-lease or installment purchase plan.

Religion sticks in my craw, because it asks – no tells – you to go against your very nature as a human.  Religion, in the end, is for lazy people.  Religion – Christianity specifically – introduced fanaticism.  From fanaticism comes racism.  It isn’t the only religion to put forth such thoughts.

Yet, I don’t know of any gnostic or agnostic mindset, which proposes the “death to those not like me”.  If you cite communism, well, wasn’t that just a religion with the state as deity? 

Be well.  See you next month.