[MUSIC] I'd like to return to this question of what theology might be able to contribute to that kind of understanding of the complexity of human experience. But I also want to, before we do that, return to an issue that you brought up, which is this issue of inequity in the system itself. And I just want to cite three statistics that I think are central to our course and that we'll be considering over the course of our time together. That is that roughly 85% of people caught up in the criminal justice system are at or below the poverty line. That 95% of people plead, never go to trial, but take a plea agreement. So that means some people may be innocent or may be guilty of a different crime altogether, but because of the power of the prosecutorial office they're forced to accept a plea. And the third is the racial inequality or inequity in our system so that if you're a young black man, you have a one in three chance right now of being incarcerated. If you're a hispanic male you have a one in six chance of being incarcerated. And if you're white it's 1 in 17. I mean it's not good for anybody. But it's clear that it is particularly onerous on brown and black communities. So I wondered if you might help us think, what does theology or what does the communities of faith have to say about this kind of fundamental inequity? >> Well, I would hope the first thing that communities of faith would say is this sucks. That this is not the way that we understand creation should be spinning out into the universe. That when you have such stark inequities, that there's a system that is somewhat broken if not fully broken. And that we may not well be meeting the purposes we say we want to in the kind of incarceration system we have right now. And so our job, I would think, as people of faith is to say, we need to work to find a better way. I think this is one of the reasons why the Restorative Justice Movement has begun to pick up steam, in that you are forced to sit down and look at each other across the table and deal with each other. So that, that family that said he's never said I'm sorry, gets to hear someone say I'm sorry. If that's where they are, if it's not, then it's a hill of beans. That's another thing altogether. But to not have a place where people can come to try to think through what was broken. What was destroyed, even? I think that's our job as people of faith to say we've got to find those resources within us. There is a big tradition of forgiveness within certainly the Christian tradition that's at stake here. And it's not the kind of forgiveness that says there there, everything's all good, all fine. Don't worry about it honey, it'll be all right. But a forgiveness that's wrapped up in a sense of justice and fairness and integrity and respect for humanity. A respect for life. That says in light of those things that are important. In light of the fact that if you want to be Biblical and you look at the book of Genesis, every time a mark of creation happens, there is always the affirmation that God said it was good. If we're trying to live into that goodness of creation, then that's what we should be trying to move back to, I think. And instead, we spend far too much time dwelling in the Garden of Eden and the mistakes made by Adam and Eve. And therefore, we are set on our path of being fundamentally wrong. In some traditions, fundamentally wretched. And we forget all about the way that creation was marked as good. Let's move more toward the doctrine of creation, a doctrine of goodness. And make it as robust, if not more robust, than the high doctrine of sin and evil that most of us spend their lives in. And has not been to good effect over the centuries, frankly, because we have managed to create within ourselves in a society, a society that's scared of itself. And that's not what people of faith are supposed to be preaching and teaching. We're supposed to be saying, can we look into each other's eyes and find the light of God there? In some traditions, the face of Jesus. And to realize that that's not just a reflection, that's also what's dwelling inside that other person. >> Thank you, that seems to be getting harder and harder just to do at a practical level to see the face of another. >> Even with people we love. That's harder and harder, so imagine, what that means when a relationship's been broken or destroyed. >> I do think that's a call to visit people who are incarcerated. To meet them, visit people who have been the victims of crime and to see them face to face, but increasingly I think it's difficult to do. It's harder to get into prisons now than it was even five years ago. So there are obstacles to doing the very kinds of I think spiritual work that you're talking about. [MUSIC]
