Handwriting on the wall

By Frederick Mason Handwriting On The Wall Matthew 23:23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law; justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone." Matthew 23:24 "Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!" Matthew 23:28 "Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." Even in prisons, there ought to be a strong respect and honor for God. You can't possibly teach respect, honor or discipline if you completely ignore God. Such is the case here, at USP Tucson, as I feel zeal while writing this essay. There are two parts I wish to establish here: 1) how this prison persecutes inmates on all errors, even frivolous ones, while 2) they ignore the greatest laws, even to completely reject it. Shortly before I began to write this essay, a couple of weeks ago, a young guy here left to go to a halfway house. However, he was supposed to have gone much earlier. Why didn't he go? Because he was punished for getting an extra tray at the cafeteria... Ok, let that sink in.. He was punished for getting an extra tray. USP Tucson throws away bags of food daily, yet has a problem with a guy who merely wants a little more food. So they punished him by preventing him from going to halfway house for 28 days. They actually kept him in prison for 4 weeks, because he got an extra tray! But you'd say, "that's the rules. If he broke a rule, then he must pay for it." Well, thank God He doesn't do that to us. We'd all be dead, even on the slightest of rules. But if you stand by such a noble thing, then surely you won't argue that if the prison punished on such small matter with justification... then they themselves ought to adhere to laws as well. In the same cafeteria the young inmate (he was about 24) was caught with an extra tray, there is, all on the walls, about a dozen "positive motivational" sayings. There's one from Picasso, one from Mother Theresa, one from Michael Jordan, David Brinkley and Presidents Obama, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. What's missing here? Scriptures! How can you put so many wise saying on the wall, and reject the wisest man-- Solomon? How can you put words to live by, spoken by mere people, and completely reject words by Jesus Christ? This tells me two things: 1) USP Tucson was too cowardly to put the Word of God on the wall and 2) there's no God in the staff of USP Tucson. To put up a dozen wise sayings without one scripture is like building a 10 story building without mortar,or building a ship with no deck, a plane with no wings. You don't "forget" that! Yet, this is what the prison has done. They didn't "forget" God's Word, which in itself is bad... they clearly rejected it. Matthew 23 is of Jesus telling the people of their hypocrisy. Jesus says the greater matters of the law isn't tradition, rather justice, mercy an faith. There's a scripture, "For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings". God loves mercy; where was that shown for a guy that was kept in prison 28 days because he got an extra tray in the cafeteria? And yet, they reject the Word of God, not putting even one proverb on the wall. There is no question that there must be rules in prison; and in some cases it is stricter than those on the other side of the wall. But why are there rules? To discipline, or punish. If merely to punish, then the prison isn't doing their job in helping rehabilitate a man. But if a prison has to discipline, ought they themselves to be disciplined if they get out of line? To much of society, the people who work in prisons are seen as "righteous" men and women, but often times, because they don't fear or know God, they are merely an extension of a flawed government who continually sees the worst in people. There then, is no truth in what they do. Isaiah 59:15 "So truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no justice. He saw that there was n man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. ." Isaiah 59:4 "No one calls for justice, nor does any plead for truth, they trust in empty words, and speak lies, they conceive evil and bring forth iniquity." If prison is to teach truth, justice and discipline, they must themselves be under the same authority. It seems clear that prisons-- like this one, do not choose to honor one word from God; they have rejected Him and His mercy... After all, it's all in the handwriting on the cafeteria walls.