MESSAGE FROM DEATH ROW
by Steven C. James
SAD. This acronym stands for seasonal affective disorder. It can
also represent other problems in a person's life: sex, abuse,
drugs or perhaps sarcasm, alcohol, deception. I battled all these
issues unsuccessfully in my younger years; today I sit on death
row.
The roots of my SAD began before I was even born. My biological
dad was a junkie and thief; my mother, an alcoholic barfly
prostitute. Both abused everything and everyone in their lives.
My biological mother tried to smother me to death. That's
understandable: Anger ruled my parents for the way they were
abused as children, and they passed that anger on to me.
My parents put me up for adoption, and the Jameses took me in
when I was almost five. They religiously believed "Spare the rod,
spoil the child." Well, the rod wasn't spared, and it wasn't
always a rod. My adoptive father beat me with anything he could
find. I came to that family with more problems than they knew; he
only exasperated them.
The day the Jameses said I was their son and my adoptive father
tried to hug me, I spit in his face. He didn't understand that I
didn't like to be touched. That drew my first spanking from him,
but nowhere near the last. After some of his punishments, I was
black and blue and bloody.
Come Sunday morning, we all went to church - boring to me. I had
to memorize a lot of Scripture, but I didn't believe any of it.
Folks there talked about someone they called God the Father. From
what I knew of my two fathers, I had no need or want for another.
I rejected God from the start and rebelled against the church.
For eleven years I was forced to go where I didn't want to go.
As I got older and bigger, I could get anything I wanted. What I
couldn't steal, I bought with money I stole. At fourteen I looked
to be at least twenty. I could buy alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes
without being carded. And with that, I could get women.
Things got worse. By the time I was sixteen, my sixty-year-old
adoptive parents with no children of their own had to deal with
the total teenage terror I had become. The more I drank, the more
enraged I became for being who I was. I discovered that no amount
of sex, alcohol, or drugs could take away my hate and rage toward
everything and everybody - most of all this God the Father!
By the time I was eighteen, my SAD behavior was out of control.
In my rage, I broke all Ten Commandments. I had sex with hundreds
of women, including married and single ladies in church. I was
angry and full of hate for people. My plan was to be dead by age
thirty. Instead I landed in prison, on condemned row, convicted
of beating a man to death because he wanted to have sex with a
fourteen-year-old boy.
In November 1981, twentythree years old, I began doing straight
time. Prison hardened me. In July 1997, I saw a man and his wife
killed while in the prison chain gang, and it didn't bother me in
the least. What did bother me is that I wasn't bothered by the
killings.
Still, God worked on me while I was in prison, from 1982 to
October 1997, and I remembered some of the things I had heard in
church years earlier. Then He worked in me.
I kicked my smoking habit of twenty-five years and decided to
fast so I wouldn't start eating heavily. One night in October
1997, while I slept, my TV came on by itself on a channel I
didn't watch. When I awoke, a preacher-biker announced that he
had written a book, so I sent for a free copy.
With all the alcohol and drugs out of my system, my mind was
clear and I could read. However, I didn't think much of the book,
so I sent for a study on the Seventh-day Adventists. As I began
reading their study, I shook my head in disagreement. This is not
what's taught in Sunday school, I said to myself.
I decided to wait and read the Bible first, beginning in Genesis.
After some time, I sensed an inner voice telling me, "Repent and
be forgiven." I did, and have been listening to that voice ever
since.
I began searching the Word of God compulsively to disprove the
SDA studies. I received books, four or five at a time, and read
them. Many things I still disagreed with, so I went searching for
another church. That's when I found Church of God (Seventh Day),
listed in a writer's market guide. In 1998 I started
corresponding with editor Calvin Burrell, and he explained the
teachings of CoG7. While I still disagree with some things, I
agree more with this church than with any other I've found.
I have spent over a quarter century locked in prison - more than
half my life - as the result of my own SAD. Guards or other
inmates prepare my food and bring it to me in solitary
confinement. Though I don't know much about the world outside, I
do know I have new life from Christ on the inside.
Prison is hard under any circumstance. Add the religious factor,
and many people will call it weakness - a crutch. The majority of
so-called Christians on the inside use religion for self-serving
reasons and never experience inner life change or work for God's
holy purpose in others.
I was recently advised to turn away from another man, to have
nothing more to do with him. He is black and I am white, and
someone doesn't like him. The root of the hatred is not skin but
spirit. I refused to turn away from my Christian brother. He is
not a pretender; we worship together in daily fellowship with
Jesus, passing notes of psalms and other Scripture. It took
eleven years for him to see that my walk was true, for he had
known my previous hatred and anger; some of it was directed
toward him.
The daily choices we make dictate the lives we live, and we must
accept the consequences of those choices. Genuine godly love in
prison is when you put your honor into action for one another,
regardless of the cost. The way you think and speak must hold
true in your actions.
One cannot force others to hear God's Word, so when they
requested I not speak openly for more than ten years, I humbly
agreed. That has changed in the last year, as I now live in
another area. I still do not force my faith, but I preach and
teach openly as the Spirit leads. I truly enjoy sharing and
rejoice in all things (1 Peter 4:11).
Grace and peace in Christ Jesus to all His children. Amen.
......
If you want to write Steven James, please send your letter to
Bible Advocate, P.O. Box 33677, Denver, CO 80233. Or e-mail it to
bibleadvocate@cog7.org.
Taken from the July-August 2010 "Bible Advocate" - a publication
of the CoG7Day, Denver, CO. USA
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