Led through the maze of tunnels in the belly of the dungeon, we finally entered the cavernous cellblock. A hollow electronic "click" pierced and then reverberated through the dark silence, and the thick door in front of me popped open. A voice out of nowhere ordered me inside the small, sterile cell. After the door slammed shut, a sense of finality forced me onto a cheap plastic chair standing by the grey concrete-block wall. This was it. At last, God and man were extracting their pound of flesh for my vile sins. With body and mind numb with disbelief, I sat there with eyes transfixed on the lone barred window that looked out into the night.
Over the next several weeks as I languished in the inhospitable dungeon, an unyielding fury burned into my every thought. Angry voices in my head hurled vicious curses at God, and like a maniac, I directed my unrelenting hatred at Him. Why would He allow this to happen? Why did He let me hurt the very people that trusted me? Why did He fail to protect the innocent from harm? What was so broken and repulsive about me that not even God was willing to fix me?
Furious, I screamed, "God, this is Your fault. No one has been more faithful to the cause of Christ than me. I have worked hard to earn Your love and approval. I studied the Bible and prayed. I went to church every time the doors were open. I was a preacher, a teacher, and a winner of souls. I even tithed beyond my means. Yet, after all of my efforts to please You, You ignored my pleas for help and betrayed my trust. Well, if this is all there is to the Christian life - You keep it." Despite my ranting and raving, the heavens remained silent and the dungeon walls closed in on me.
It all began eighteen months earlier on Palm Sunday, 1993. Right after church that afternoon my pastor led me into an empty room and confronted me with accusations of sexual misconduct. The secret life that I had so carefully constructed exploded and burned to the ground. After the initial shock wore off, I confessed my sin to him and to my wife later that day.
That was the single most painful day of my life. But, it was also the day that my heavenly Father began lifting me out of the ruins of sin and exchanging His beauty for my ashes. Looking back, it seems almost poetic that it was during the season in which mankind celebrates the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, when God brought me to the point where I was ready to die to the "old unrenewed self" (Eph 4.23), so that I might become the new spiritual man and habitually "live in newness of life" (Rom 6.4).
Eight months later, the police arrested me and hauled me off to jail. Ten months after that, I plead guilty to criminal charges and the judge sentenced me to eight years in the dungeon. In the end, I did six years in the Connecticut maximum-security penitentiary.
Although I wish I could undo the crime I committed and erase the harm I inflicted on my victim, I do not begrudge one day of the years I spent in prison. Up to then, those were the best years of my life. During that time, my heavenly Father ripped open every emotional wound, flushed out the infectious poison killing my spiritual life, and taught me how to be a man of God.
