Happy Go Lucky

Happy Go Lucky

by Chaplain R. Lewis

     He was a happy go lucky guy.  Yes they do laugh in prison.  He was trying to get a transfer closer to home so he had been keeping his nose clean and was just doing his time, but with a comical flourish.  A regular in the chapel, he knew all the answers.  Literally, he thought he had it going on.  He was a Christian and his game was his religion.  He participated in all the chapel services, dramas, Bible studies and regularly chatted with me in the office.  He had a funny sense of humor.  He made me laugh with his wry take on human behavior, even his own.  He could moralize, using that sense of humor, about his current situation which, this time, had been going on for numerous years.  He would come up with wonderful adages.  I could use many as illustrations in my sermons.  One of my favorites was in reference to his attempts to clean up his life now that he was a Christian. 

"Well Chap", he said grinning philosophically, leaning back in the chair across from me, "I may run up on the curb and lose a hub cap every now and then, but that wakes me up and I get back on the road." 

Great, huh?  If only he didn't take so lightly his mistakes.  He'd just laugh off his dipping his toe into sin, not necessarily unrepentant, but not realizing that repentance means a godly sorrow at sin and a turning away from it.   People in pain sometimes soften their failures with humor and that's not so bad, if  it doesn't turn into laughing off a lazy Christians' choice to give in to a sin.  

A lot of these guys just substitute God as a pain killer for themselves.  They are actually attempting a course change.  They use religion as a blueprint to attempt to steer the boat in another direction while still maintaining some kind of control.  Then they wonder why they keep getting sucker punched.  Maybe it's because they get into God rather than God getting into them.  They aren't too familiar with trust and relationships and that is key to their lives turning around.  It's not about religion, it's about relationship with God.  It's tough letting someone else steer the ship. 

He got his transfer.  I hoped funny guy would have that epiphany and quit gaming with his religion.  Then God could really do something with his talent for humor.  A year later I heard he'd been found in a prison hallway half beaten to death.  I guess someone didn't think he was so funny.