Words Matter
This month I have had the privilege of speaking at a few churches about our work. As I have been preparing for these talks, I have been drawn back to the bible and looking at some of the key passages that underpin our work. In Isaiah 61 we read:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,”
This is of course the same passage that Jesus uses in Luke 4 when talking about his own ministry.
Studying this passage has led me to reflect on the word freedom and what it means. For those being released from prison, at a very simple level it is the freedom to go where they choose, to meet people they want to, the freedom of not being in a prison cell. But when we take time to look at this passage and its context we see that the freedom that Isaiah talks about is not just freedom from being confined in a physical space, rather it is the freedom to be the people that God wants them to be. The Israelites had got themselves trapped in a place of false religiosity, of idol worship and of neglect of the poor and as a consequence had spent 70 years in exile. This passage is written to them after they have come out of this exile and through Isaiah, God speaks words to them saying, you are now free to be the people that God wants you to be. I love how he goes on to call them oaks of righteousness (v3), priests of the Lord, ministers of our God (v6).
As we work with people in prison and on occasions after prison what words do we use? Unfortunately, our society is dominated far too much by negative headlines in what can at times be a very toxic print media that loves to denigrate people who have had any association with prison using words like thugs or animals or beasts.
When I speak in church, I love to speak about the overarching narrative of scripture being one of restoration. We see this through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we also see it in this passage of Isaiah. We worship a God who is making all things new. As people who go into prison or support the work in prisons what language do we use about those we work with? Maybe we can copy Isaiah and think of ways of using words in a positive way. A way that reflects their potential their future, and their value in God’s sight.