I wrote a letter to a friend in prison last night. He is not a martyr. His crime was not honourable. And I did not know what to say to him.

Oh, I found words in the end; not for nothing am I a writer, and writing in spite of a loss for words has become something of a bad habit. I did my best to speak to him as a brother; I told him I loved him, prayed for him, and was as nearly there with him as I could be, simply because of our bonds in Christ.

The whole ordeal made me think of all the ways I talk to my brothers and sisters who are not in prison. I thought of the perpetual paradoxes between all our actions and professions, of the tenuous nature of life in the family of God this side of eternity. Above all, I writhed under a question that never quite ceases to haunt me: is mere respectability a definitive sign of submission to the will of God? Chesterton would say nay, and I (in spite of all my Protestantism) am inclined to believe him.

So I ponder my own discomfort at writing that letter to my friend. It is not a discomfort borne of a new situation; I write plenty of letters, and I know plenty of sinners. I hem and haw and try to philosophize around it, but eventually I reach the inevitable conclusion: this discomfort must be a practiced discomfort, borne of a reluctance to say anything worthwhile to anyone. While they are on this earth, the people I know (reprobate or sainted-sinner) need the Gospel a million times over with each encounter, and I have equal-millions of excuses not to bring it up: I don’t want to seem preachy or judgmental, the time is not convenient, it just seems an awkward topic to begin on…

Maybe if I were more constant in telling the Gospel to myself, I would not be so self-consciously close to passing judgment on others by telling it to them. Maybe if I really believed the Gospel were true, all the time, convenience and awkwardness would simply be simple road-blocks thrown up in a warfare that is distinctly spiritual. Maybe – and this is a real, rocket-science moment – maybe if I actually loved my brother in prison, I would be less reluctant to love him.

These are the sins of a hypocritical evangelical, and I wear them like a fancy blouse, so reluctant to repent of them because I am comfortable in them, and they look so nice; more so because they comprise, alas, a great portion of what I perceive to be my role and attitude as a respectable Christian. Yet repentance must come: the old man, however frilly and respectable, must be put off.

Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off in prison, with my sins exposed for all their ugliness, and the cross of Christ coming clearer and clearer.  I need that—need the presence and supremacy of Jesus to stop being a doctrinal point, and be what it is: life, thought, word, deed. I need the Word of God to stop being a daily devotional and become what it is: air and food and water, life-bringing sustenance. I need lies to stop being lovable, and the truth to be all that is desirable.

I suppose I could feel good for writing that letter; chalk it up to another embroidered-flower on the fancy hypocrite’s suit. But I know, in all honesty, I don’t need to go to prison to be a captive. I have enough bars and strongholds in my heart against the King of Glory to build a thousand prisons. And it strikes me that perhaps my brother in prison has not so much to be ashamed of as those of us with fewer civil crimes on our record, who say we are of God and yet cannot find Gospel-words to put into our letters.

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; 

for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God

 whom he has not seen.  

–I John 4:20