We went and saw my dad at the Yuma State Prison yesterday. We had a good visit with him and had a good five hours spent with him. We all talked, played games, ate vending machine food, and hung out until it was our time to leave.
My dad is a much different person in prison than the one I grew up with. I know he had changed. I have seen a physical change in him. The hardness of his heart seemed to disappear years ago and the anger in his eyes left with it. I really believe he is a changed man and all because God answered my prayer when I asked Him to "put my dad in a place that the only thing he could do was to look to You." I saw the events unfold as God allowed certain things to happen and six weeks later my dad is sitting behind bars and even more angry at the world for all that had happened to him.
About three years later, when I went to visit him after not seeing him for about two years, He came into the waiting room and I could physically see that all the emotions, anger, and frustrations that I had seen in him all my life seemed to be gone. He really looked like a different man. One who was at peace with God.
But there is still a part of me that doesn't trust him. How much of it is an act and how much of it is real. He talks about the Bible studies he conducts, how much he reads and studies his Bible, and a synopsis of the Gospel that he's been working on for fifteen years and trying to get published. Maybe it's real for where he is because it's really all he can do. I actually had the impression this last visit that he thinks he's better than other prisoners because he's active with reading, studying, and praying while they just whittle their time away watching TV and sleeping. Maybe he's just saying it's better to be active than laying around.
I think the true test of his change would be if he kept this up if he was to get out. Would he be as devoted as he claims to studying God's Word if he was on the outside? I realize that it would not be possible since he'd have other distractions of life, such as: job, family, friends, etc. My questions are, would he go back to his old life? Would porn suck him in like it did before with it's even easier access and more anonymous methods than it was 18 years ago? Would he go back to his old tromping grounds of debauchery and visit the places he used to? Would he be able to stay strong and and say "no" to sin without the walls and the barbed fences keeping access to it away?
That would be the true test of my dad being "changed" or just "convincing." I pray that he's not the same man that I grew up with and that he's genuine. Otherwise, he's just living the same lie that I grew up with -- super-spiritual and godly on the outside but rotten, self-serving, lying, egomaniac, who could charm anyone to fit any occasion as long as it got him what he wanted.
Is he "changed" or "just convincing?" That my question and only God really knows that answer.
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