Impressions of a Jail in Riverside, CA

Once we got inside some of the wards I realized how different it is from any jail I've ever seen on tv. There are no bars. No straight rows of prison cells. They said they have an old section of the jail that is like that but we didn't have time to see it. The section we saw (which contained mostly people that were in for life), was made out of thick plexiglass. There was an oval shaped control room with airlock type doors everywhere (and floors are only navigable by elevator apparently, and there are no call buttons, the elevators have to be called by the central control room which sees you waiting by them on camera). Around the control room was a small common area with a few metal tables and a tv, a tiny counseling room (like a visiting room) where prisoners get their demerits and such when they do bad things (like a write up...if they get too many points they lose privileges, eventually ending up in isolation, if they're good for a certain amount of time, their points start to drop off and they get those privileges back) and then all around that was a half crescent shaped row of two tiers (floors, essentially with a metal staircase) of jail cells. They looked about the size of small dorm rooms, had a big metal automatically controlled sliding door with one glass window in it and a little break on the bottom for food to be slid under if necessary. Bottom tier are single cells, top tier are double cells where the inmates have to sign an agreement that they know each other well and won't fight. Most cells have tvs inside, which apparently the prisoners watch pretty much all day (and it keeps them pacified from thinking about ways to escape and hurt others and smuggle things in).

The control room had a big panel of buttons which corresponded to the cells. If you pushed a button, the cell door would open or close. There were cameras in some cells, and many cameras on the common areas. All the monitors were in the control room. Every section of the prison we went to was set up exactly like this, probably about 25 - 30 cells to a control room.

They told us all sorts of stories about incidents, things the prisoners do, how you have to be in pretty top shape to control them if they get out because many of them work out for four or five hours a day. They make shivs by scraping away at metal objects (cell doors, bed frames, etc.) with the shaving razor they are allowed to have (required by law because the prisoners have a right to look presentable in court) for sometimes up to three days to get a piece of jagged sharp metal off. It sounds like the prisoners are much more interested in fighting each other than fighting the deputies, and many times their aim is not to kill with their shivs but to "mark" or "slice" a snitch with a big scar on the face so everyone else can spot him easily. They showed us pictures of incidents that have happened in the last few years in the jail. They said violent ones happen every couple of months.

The set up of the place and the attitude of the deputies reminded me of Jurassic Park. Like these guys would eat me if they got out. They could really only be controlled in small numbers. They were all dangerous predators, essentially, was the attitude. They were in some ways treated and talked about like animals, and it seems in some ways they are. It was sad and exhilarating at the same time. Anyway, those were my impressions.

What's going on

Well, baby Josiah is born. He was born on November 15, 2010 at 2:59 PM. The CHP is still not hiring. Well, they're hiring, but only people who applied like two years ago. They're not accepting any new applications. I tested for a job with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's department last Monday morning, and this coming Monday I will be testing for the Riverside County Sheriff's department.

We should be moving into our house in Mentone by the end of January, it's looking like now. It's actually kind of nice that we won't be moving before Christmas and so close after the baby came. We're really poor. Unexpected expenses keep gouging us like swords. I make $15 per hour and support 5 people on it. I know it's not like dire poverty. But it seems like nothing in the middle of a town full of young professionals who have ambitions and shopping addictions like Rancho Cucamonga.

The Lord is good and will see us through, I've no doubt of that. I'm just running low on sleep and patiences and I'm honestly getting really tired of waiting for this house. I hope I don't fall asleep in class tonight.

Spiritual Laziness

I have become convinced as of late that it would be a good idea to pursue a career in the California Highway Patrol. I have many reasons for thinking this would be a good idea, and (believe it or not) I have fantasized about being a cop since I was about 4. I'm running into a dilemma, however. Beyond the fact that the CHP is not hiring right now (they're frozen till Shwartz gets his budget figured out), I keep coming back to the debate about whether or not God has specific callings for our lives. Because if He does, I became convinced a year or so ago that I am supposed to be a missionary. If He does not, then I can be a missionary (in some sense) while on patrol.

About a year ago (maybe more, now) I decided that the only way I could ever really be happy with my job is if I was working for a company whose sole mission is to help others, and in which I would have the opportunity to be a positive influence in people's lives. The second part I realize can be done at almost any job. The first part I decided would most likely need to be a non-profit organization because they are about the only ones who care about helping people who are not themselves.

When I was invited to go on a ride-along with a friend who is a CHP officer, my future-goals world turned itself upside down. I suddenly realized that for profit and not for profit are not the only kinds of organizations out there. There are also public service organizations, state funded gigs whose sole mission is to serve the community. They also tend to pay extremely well and have amazing benefits. My friend's fondest experiences in the CHP so far have been helping a helpless mother of four change her tire on a freeway overpass and taking a distrought would-be runaway 14 year old boy to lunch and talking him into to going home and working it out with his parents. This guy is not a Christian. This is an organization that promotes such things with no religious benefit at all. It's amazing. I have started thinking about all of my past fantasies about being a cop, and how I have always been pretty obsessed with comic book heroes (Batman and Dick Tracy, specifically), vigilantes who have the balls to take on evil by themselves. CHP officers work alone and are first responders to many kinds of incidents. I even wrote a report about what I wanted to be when I grew up (when I was 6) and I wrote something to the effect of:

"When I grow up I want to be a police officer, because I think it would be cool to carry a gun and drive really fast cars."

I have started to think that my life is pointing in this direction. But a year ago I started to think that my life was pointing toward being a missionary, striving to bring churches together, spreading the gospel to a lost world.

So now I am confused. The debate is raging in my head. Does God have a specific plan for our lives, all laid out nice and pretty with a bow, including the career we are to take, the person we are to marry, the people we meet and help, etc.? Or does He have a general plan for our lives, namely following the commands and examples laid out for us by Jesus and some of the other men and women in the Bible? I sat on the idea of going into full time ministry for over a year and never did a thing about it, but the same week I went the ride-along, I had already started running six days a week and preparing myself for the Academy. Am I choosing the easy way out? Some would say yes (myself generally included). I feel sometimes like I'm jumping on the boat to Tarshish instead of the one to Nineveh. No, the CHP is not easy. The Academy is hell camp for seven months away from your family and everything you know. It is one of the most rigorous and challenging boot camps in the world, the most challenging for law enforcement. Why was I so not determined to make effort in the direction of mission work when I jumped on the CHP bandwagon so fast? Why am I so motivated to work harder than I ever dreamed I would have to for a job when I can't be bothered to work much at all for God Himself? He's a good employer, right? I would say He's got the best benefits. Is this just spiritual laziness?

My wife makes good points all the time (just so you all know). Her input on this is that this job has already motivated me like crazy to do things I've always been too lazy to do. She can see me really enjoying this job. It meets (at least most of the way) both of my career-happiness criteria. It's up to me to be the Christian, evangelist, missionary I want to be no matter where I work or who I encounter, and with all the extra income it will bring in we can afford to support missionaries all over the world, and then use the awesome retirement benefits to go out and do it ourselves when we're older. She suggested that the best way to know if I have the balls to be a missionary at work is to try it where I work now. It's funny that I am more motivated to take a bullet than to talk openly about Jesus with the people I work with. I make excuses that I talk openly about my beliefs when they come up and I try to be a good example to my co-workers (keyword - "try"). But in deed I am more afraid of starting such conversations than I am of pulling over coked out big rig drivers and tazing them if they are uncooperative.

I know that God's foreknowledge covers everything I will do in my life. I know that He will even prompt me from time to time in a direction that more fully expresses what I am capable of doing for Him. I have experienced it. But I'm in a conundrum. And I feel just as lost about now as I did when I started writing. Oi vey. I rue the day I actually have to make this decision. Imminent rue-age.

Another week of soreness

Well I've been running every day this past week (hoping to start a trend) and then yesterday I went on a 7.2 mile hike straight up Mt. Baldy (climbed 2800 feet in 3.6 miles, which averages out to about 1 foot up for every 8 feet forward, although the ratio goes way down towards the end to more like 1 up for every 2 forward). It was pretty intense. I'm hoping to apply and qualify for the CHP boot camp as soon as possible, so this stuff shouldn't set me back like it does. I have a lot of work to do.

Anyway, I took my 14 year old "nephew" with me (he's my wife's half-sister's son). He's a cool kid. His name is Noah. He's from the Florida Keys and his one desire while he's here in CA is to kill a rattlesnake and eat it. It's a bummer we didn't run into any yesterday (sort of a bummer, at least). Anyway, we had a pretty rad hike, ate some beefstick (summer sausage), drank some fresh mountain spring water (actually out of a mountain spring, not out of the exhaust pipe of a power plant like Crystal Geyser), sat on top of the mountain for a little while. It was fun. We were both incredibly sore afterwards.

Anyway. I'm starting a fairly strenuous training program to get myself ready for the CHP which includes running six days a week, doing all sorts of jumping jacks, pushups and situps, and eventually some pull ups, it will probably involve some weight lifting down the road but one thing at a time. It will also involve learning Spanish (better than five years of schooling could teach me). All of this will be really hard for me since I'm skinny but out of shape and haven't been in school for like three years. I don't remember how to be consistent. Actually I never knew.

So them's the ropes. I guess I should work now. Good day, eh.

Testing...

So lately I have been testing myself. The night when it rained and rained and there were VW Beetles floating down the street, I was listening to some AM stataion on the radio (some guy named Brian Savage or something, something Savage anyway, if anyone knows what station it was, please let me know) and he was mocking Christians who were saying that the earthquake in Haiti was a judgment from God for Hatian voodoo practices. His words were pretty infuriating, but not because I disagreed with what he was saying necessarily. Who am I to say that the earthquake was a judgment from God. I know He judges whomever He wills whenever He wills and there are plenty of biblical examples of terrible natural disasters occuring and being labeled specifically as judgments from God. But because he was mocking, I was infuriated. I took it as a personal attack even though he was not speaking to me. I was offended. But I forced myself to keep listening to it because I was starting to realize that I had no solid position on the issue, and this guy was devouring other Christians in similar situations who also had no solid position on the issue. He was using all of the garden-variety arguments that God is supposed to be loving, and killing tons of people is not the best way to show that, that Catholics are all child-molesting loons, etc., etc., etc. So I realized that I was angry because he was spewing out fighting words and I had nothing to come back at him with, at least nothing so solid in my mind and heart that it was right there in my time of testing, which could easily (if I wasn't so darn stiff-necked) coerce me to agree with him in what he was saying rather than hold on to what I believe. His "arguments" (which were really emotional attacks meant to upset people just like me because it makes good radio) sounded pretty convincing in the absence of anything better.
Since that night I have begun to see these mockers and scoffers in a slightly different light. I am forcing myself to listen to them instead of just being disgusted by them and shutting them off. I'm realizing my need to know the Bible like the back of my hand. Jesus said that in the last days many scoffers and mockers would come. Well they're here. I feel like I'm being swamped with "false doctrine" all around me, and it seems more and more like it's even working itself into and through many churches. I have begun seeking out these scoffers so that I can listen to what they have to say and become calloused to their attempts to make me angry, lose my temper, and make a fool out of the Christian name. I want to get to the point where I can analyze their "arguments" (which are weak, logically and philosophically speaking) objectively and show them where they are wrong. This New Atheism that has come into play in recent years in so full of hot air, but it's extremely aggressive and as long as they can keep us on the defensive, we have already lost.
1 Corinthians 15:1-8 lays out the gospel as plain and clear as it could possibly be. It is a legal case for the resurrection that would have held up in Jewish court (would actually hold up in our courts today because of the huge crowd of witnesses, that is if it had happened today and those witnesses were still alive). The point is that we have nothing to fear in the beliefs we hold or the Bible we read. We can cross-examine them even to the point of molecular biology and find God in everything. The majority of cosmologists (people who study the origins of the universe) are becoming deists these days because they can find no other explanation for the universe's existence than the existence of some sort of God.
I am praying and fasting for the lenten season from fear and from judgmentalism. Fear of recompense for spreading the gospel and wearing my beliefs on my sleeve, and judging others (especially other Christians when they hold different beliefs than I). I am growing, I think, in part because of these attacks that surround us in this culture today against God and against Christ. They only confirm it in my head, but I need to get past this point of simply being offended, and have a direct, well thought out, rational, biblical response to their actual arguments (no need to defend against the irrational attacks that are only meant to make us angry). I need me some vulcan-power. God bless.