In the midst of this, words that I had learned in my childhood, words that had not helped me earlier, now helped me know where to turn: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16–17).
Finally, in the quiet of a summer night in 1970, I got on my knees on the concrete floor of my cell and prayed a simple prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, I have ruined my life and the lives of others and committed many sins. Please forgive me, take over my life, and do whatever you want with me. I gave myself to Jesus as fully as I knew how. When I knelt, I had no idea whether he would want the wreck that was my life. But thanks be to God, he did!
In that moment I felt as if a thousand pounds had been lifted off my shoulders. Something deep within me had changed—new life had invaded my heart. There was no high drama or frothy excitement, only a sense, an inner knowing, that Jesus had heard my prayer and I was now somehow different than I had been before I prayed.
More than two hundred years earlier, Charles Wesley described well what I experienced in that cell:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.5
14
NEW LIFE!
The apostle Paul said “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). Through trusting in Jesus Christ, that is what had happened to me. It was very different from the profession of faith I had made in my early teens, which had no impact on me. And it was not a matter of swapping ideology for religion or simply turning over a new leaf. No, Christ had first led me out of error into truth, then out of darkness into light, and finally out of death into life. I was now spiritually alive, and God was real to me in a way I had never known before. Even though I was locked in a six-by-nine-foot cell twenty-four hours a day, I had a freedom in my mind and heart that made it bearable. Gone was the hopelessness, and joy had come in its place. The words of John Newton rang true, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”1
I experienced a number of immediate and dramatic changes in my life. One of the most noticeable differences was my language—I used to curse with every other breath. But the morning after I came to Christ, the profanity disappeared and has never been a problem since. Why I experienced such a quick deliverance from this particular sin is a mystery, but I took it as evidence of God’s power at work in my life. Perhaps it was also meant to be an encouragement from God that he would deliver me from other, more difficult sins that would need to be dealt with in the future.
I wish all my sins had gone away as quickly as this one, but that is not how the Christian life works. I didn’t realize at that point just how deep and pervasive sin was in my life, or how long the journey of transformation would be. Choice by choice, I had corrupted my soul over the years and made my life a terrible mess. My twisted beliefs were a mess, my damaged emotional life was a mess, and my corrupted will was a mess. God’s transformation process would take time. And it would not be complete in this life, but as theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer observed, if we cooperate with God, it will produce “substantial healing.”2 Jesus alluded to this when he said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32).
I immediately began daily Bible reading and prayer. My appetite for Scripture was voracious. I read for hours every day. I focused on the New Testament at first, but soon I was reading the Old Testament as well. It was all so fresh, so new. I was exploring a new world, and it was exciting. Every day I discovered more about who God was, what he had done in the past, what he would do in the future, and how he wanted me to live today. Prayer began to flow freely. Before this, I had occasionally said a Puritan bedtime prayer that my mother taught me in childhood: “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.” Other than that, the only other times I remember praying earnestly were a couple of times when I was in a real jam. But now prayer seemed natural and became a daily experience, first thing in the morning.
In addition, with guidance from the chaplain, I was now spending hours each day exploring theology, apologetics, and related disciplines of study. I had what Anselm described as “faith seeking understanding.”3 A whole new world had been opened up to me, and it was thrilling to explore. I was on a great adventure of discovery that was both exciting and satisfying even in the midst of my confinement.
But the most profound change was how I viewed my old life. I wanted no part of my previous, evil life; I only wanted to leave it behind. There was no way to go back and undo the sins of my past, but there was a way to go forward and live a very different life. I now wanted to live for God. I wanted to draw near to him and to follow Jesus. I didn’t know how to do this, but the enlightenment and encouragement I received from reading the Bible fed and intensified this desire and gave me direction.
The apostle Paul wrote, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2 NIV). Though I didn’t realize it at the time, by immersing myself in Scripture, I was exposing myself to the Holy Spirit’s renewing influences in my mind. This renewal began to change my view of God and people and how to live.
I took encouragement from the stories of the Old Testament and the accounts of Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament, as I saw how God had worked in the lives of his people down through the centuries. King Manasseh of Judah, for example, was one of the most evil people in the Bible, yet through God’s severe chastisement he came to repentance, and God ultimately had mercy on him and used him to undo at least some of the evil he had caused.4 Saul of Tarsus, a religious zealot filled with anger and hatred, severely persecuted the followers of Jesus, yet Jesus saved him, transformed him into the apostle Paul, and used him to do much good over the rest of his life.5 These stories gave encouragement that, like them, maybe God had some purpose for my life. Maybe I could serve God in some way and do good the rest of my life.
The fact that I should have been dead was not lost on me. During the Meridian ambush a hail of bullets—some even fired at point-blank range—had filled the air around me, yet none had proved lethal. I had been hit four times at close range with double-aught buckshot and lived, while Kathy Ainsworth had been hit by a single shot while sitting right next to me, and she died.
What’s more, none of the shots I fired that night were lethal either. I’d shot Officer Mike Hatcher in the heart, and miraculously he had lived. Had he died, I would certainly have been given a death sentence and executed. The thought was chilling.
And then there was the prison break. In another barrage of gunfire that killed my fellow escapee, Louis Shadoan, I emerged unscathed. Minutes earlier I had been standing right where he was and would have been the one who died had he not relieved me early.
I could only conclude that my survival was God’s doing. It was inexplicable on any other grounds. If that was true—and to me it was logically inescapable—then God must have some purpose for my life. This gave me a glimmer of hope that a better future was ahead, not just in the world to come but here on earth as well.
I was only at the beginning, but by his grace I was on the way. John Newton described me when he said, “I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But still, I am not what I used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am.”6
I know that some people feel their sins are so bad that they cannot be forgiven, and they have a hard time accepting God’s forgiveness. But that was not
a big problem for me. God’s love and forgiveness were so clearly undeserved, yet so life-giving and liberating, that they eclipsed everything else. Knowing that God loved me, had spared my life, and saved me brought joy to my heart. The Bible says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Those words were a healing balm to my heart and soul.
I found it easy to accept God’s forgiveness, but it took some time to realize that I in turn needed to forgive others. And there were definitely people I needed to forgive. The police and the Roberts brothers, who had betrayed me to the FBI, were at the top of the list. I hated them. As I continued to read the Bible daily, I discovered that hating people was a serious sin, and that forgiving people was a nonnegotiable requirement from God’s point of view. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught that we should ask God to “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12), thereby connecting God’s forgiveness of our sins against him with our forgiveness of others’ sins against us. Then, to make sure no one could miss the point, at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, he said, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (6:14–15).
If I was serious about following Jesus, I had to forgive those against whom I had grudges, something I’d not even considered before. By an act of my will, I chose to forgive the police officers who killed Kathy. I also forgave the ones who shot me when I was lying faceup, unarmed, and barely conscious on the ground. They had tried their best to kill me, even though I was not a threat to them. Although I realized that I deserved what I got, I had nevertheless been angry and bitter toward these men.
While more difficult, I even forgave the Roberts brothers, who had set me up and betrayed me for selfish gain. I had looked at them as traitors and scum of the earth. I hated them and thought they deserved to die. But when I looked honestly at my own responsibility in what happened and realized that I was no better than them, it gave me a different perspective. By God’s grace, I chose to forgive them as well.
I was discovering that “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
I was free indeed.
* * *
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Gradually, it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”7 This insight also came to me, and I recognized that it had been easy to label others as evil and think I was one of the good guys. Now I saw that I had been far worse than those I had hated. They had been risking their lives to pursue freedom and justice; I had been risking mine for hatred and oppression.
One day I read, “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. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:20–21). When I read this passage, I knew God was speaking to me about my attitude toward black people. Just before my conversion, I had seen the errors of racist thinking and realized my hatred was ultimately based on lies and distortions. But there was a great difference between not hating people and actually loving and accepting them. God was now dealing with my heart at a deeper level. God was calling me to love black people, and not just those who were believers. Once I saw this, my heart quickly changed. The way I looked at the black inmates on the cellblock changed, and once I was released into the general prison population, friendships developed.
As strange as it may seem, my hatred for Jewish people had also vanished even though it had been the strongest of all. It had been based on anti-Semitic lies and propaganda that I discovered were false even before coming to Christ. Those lies had fueled anger, then hatred. But when that house of cards collapsed, my hatred of the Jews evaporated as well. The truth was that Jewish people had never done anything to me. I had hated them without cause.
Hatred of the Communists was last to go. I had always justified hating them because they were enemies of America who had done horrific evil on a vast scale under the Soviets and Maoists (estimated at 60–100 million deaths).8 And through their atheism and persecution of Christians, they were also enemies of God. But I came to see that I could not hate them either. They needed Christ as much as anyone else.
To love God and to follow Jesus meant to reject hatred toward anyone. Instead, I was to love my neighbor and even my enemies. And soon, God would bring black and Jewish people into my life in a more personal way, giving me the opportunity to do so.
Hatred had been a spiritual cancer in my soul. And it had grown and metastasized throughout my entire belief system. But God had given me a regimen of divine surgery and chemotherapy to get rid of it and had planted love in my heart in its place. Of course, many people were slow to believe that someone like me could be set free from such intense hatred, especially so quickly. In the normal course of human affairs, that just doesn’t happen. But when the Holy Spirit is at work, the impossible becomes possible.
Racial and ethnic hatred was only one area of my life that needed change. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was at the beginning of a process that would touch all areas of my life over time. It is worth mentioning some of the other ways God was working at this stage.
One of the prison chaplains, Rev. Glenn Howell, played a vital role in my life during this formative period. A recent graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, he had just joined the prison staff as a chaplain. One day Chaplain Selby McManus, the head chaplain, brought him to the maximum-security unit. He stopped in front of my cell to talk through the bars. In his late twenties, Glenn was a solidly built guy with a thick head of hair, a ready smile, and an easy manner. He seemed like a man of God, and I enjoyed meeting him.
Although he had a strong desire to help inmates, Glenn was not naive or gullible and could read people well. That was important in prison ministry. Some inmates turn to religion as a way to gain certain benefits in prison. They are con men who are trying to manipulate the system. Others turn to religion as a crutch, hoping it will support them in a hard situation in life. Once they’re released, their religion often falls away. But in some cases, people really do come to saving faith in Jesus, begin to change while in prison, and continue to follow him after they get out. Glenn seemed to think that I might have had a true conversion and was willing to help where he could in the process.
I was eager to read anything dealing with biblical faith, and I asked if he had any books I might read. One of the books he gave me was Christianity Rightly So Called by Samuel G. Craig—a clear explanation of the basics of biblical faith. This gave me an invaluable orientation to foundational biblical beliefs. Through the footnote citations in that book, I became aware of other good books and was soon ordering them by mail. And through those books, I discovered others. I soon got Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof, which I loved. Mere Christianity, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, God in the Dock, and other books by C. S. Lewis followed.
While all of this reading was helpful in understanding my new faith, I also really needed practical instruction on how to live the Christian life—how to grow in grace and follow Jesus in daily life. This season of intense but informal theological study in my cell lasted about two years. It was a time of significant intellectual growth for me. Through it, I was beginning to see what C. S. Lewis meant when he said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”9 But ironically, after a good start, I experienced a time of increasing spiritual “dryness.” I would later learn that this is not uncommon for those who love ideas and knowledge and overdevelop their intellectual life to the neglect of their spiritual life. My focus on acquiring theological knowledge was overshadowi
ng my daily, personal fellowship with God. Without the freshness of regular communion with God, I had become spiritually stale and arid. Knowing about God and actually knowing God in a personal and intimate way are two very different things. It would take years for me to learn that “the longest journey in life is the eighteen inches between your head and your heart.”10 Another reason for my dryness was the growth of pride in the knowledge I had been acquiring. The Bible strongly warns against the great danger of pride and says, “For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar” (Psalm 138:6). As Thomas à Kempis said so profoundly, “God walks with the simple; He reveals himself to the lowly; He discloses His meaning to pure minds, and hides His grace from the curious and the proud.”11 That was another truth that would also take me years to learn.
My spiritual growth was hindered in other ways—major ones that I could do nothing about. I needed a church—fellowship and prayer with other believers and an opportunity to regularly worship God and take Communion. I also needed personal discipling—spiritual mentoring by a mature believer who knew the Bible well, understood the process of spiritual growth, and could spend the time needed to guide me. However, my confinement to a cell twenty-four hours a day under maximum-security conditions made all those things impossible. Without access to most of the essential means of spiritual growth, my development was significantly impeded.
* * *
Not long after I came to Christ, and filled with the zeal of a new convert, I wrote letters to the people I’d been involved with in the Ku Klux Klan, telling them how wrong we had all been to think that we could hate black people and Jews and still be Christians. How could we think we were true followers of Jesus if we hated other people? I hoped they would see their error and find true salvation as I had, and I prayed for them.
Unfortunately, they did not see it that way. Instead, as I would later discover, they started looking for ways to have me killed in prison.
Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love Page 12