Serve Without Reserve

Go set a watchman to expose what is going on—IS 21:6 

I recently read Go Set a Watchman and had some of the direction in the Holy Spirit has been giving me affirmed. As Harper Lee explains through Scout’s weekend back in Maycomb, your Watchman is your own awareness to see the truth of “what is going on”, no longer being deceived, unaware, or unprepared. After being awoken to the unspoken bigotry of her community, Scout declares, “I need a watchman to … draw a line down the middle and say here is the justice and say here is that justice and make me understand the difference.”

As I consider not just the past eleven hundred days, but the eleven hundred to come, I truly find myself focusing on what my new consciousness of the overwhelming injustice of Oklahoma’s, especially of Tulsa County’s, judicial court system leads me to do. As the former Scout, Jean Louise, becomes painfully aware of the political, spiritual, and economic bigotry of her former community and family, it appalls her and sickens her.

I too am appalled and disillusioned by the way the state and city I have loved living and serving in has been adjudicating generational injustice to so many of the families in our state through the mass incarceration of so many of its mother and fathers. Children and families continue to suffer and degrade as self-serving and self-righteous district attorneys and judges serve up political, prejudicial, and predetermined injustice as they seek to hide behind walls of fences and razor wire those who, are themselves, victims of generational poverty, a substandard educational system, cyclical addiction, and mental impairments that have led many men and women to engage in socially unacceptable behaviors.

After 3 years in jail and talking with a wide variety of fellow “offenders”, it is clear to me that Oklahoma is adjudicating a “tough-on crime” Christian morality by incarcerating those who D.A.’s and judges do not deem to hold near and dear the same Christian values that they themselves purport to esteem. If you are impoverished, mentally disabled, under educated, chemically dependent, view pornography, struggle with sexual identity, are Muslim, are too darkly complected, or in any way do not espouse their homogenized expectation of conforming to a heterosexually married person with 2 children and a full-time job paradigm, then you are a prime candidate for incarceration.

What is a person, a follower of Christ, to do when he steps outside of his firmly rooted, yet silent and unknown, unrealized bigotry, and becomes aware of such radical injustice within the society he lives? What is the Watchman’s responsibility when he sees “what is going on” and it makes him ill?

When Moses’ consciousness was awoken, he interceded in the unjustified beating of his kinsman; David stood up to the harsh bully harassing His brothers; Esther interceded, fasted and prayed, for an entire people’ group being prejudiced and segregated; when the Apostles’ set their watchmen they became martyrs; when Jehoiachin headed Jeremiahs advice (29:4-14) and set his Watchman he led his people through incarceration and was rewarded by being freed from prison, eating at the King’s table, being well clothed, and never wanting again (52:31-34).

I have de-barnacled my own consciousness from the collectives of my county and state. I have a new awareness and will never be the same. As Uncle Finch advises Scout, “Prejudice and Faith have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.” The Holy Spirit has sown me that I have a mission to expose the prejudices of the Oklahoma judicial system, to bring back some reason into sentencing those who truly are guilty, to expose the political, prejudicial, and predetermined  injustices sought by the Tulsa Co. D.A’s office, adjudicated in Tulsa Co. courtrooms, and agreed to by well-meaning but maliciously maligned, manipulated, and marioneted Tulsa Co. juries, to set my Watchman and expose “what is really going on,” as an act of service to my community, with the Holy Spirit as my guide.