‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’
1 thought
When Shindo was a boy, he was raised in
a single mother family. Bored at home, he started getting high on glue thinner. When he ran out of money, he would steal his mother’s hard earned coins. His mum worked multiple jobs and would rush home in the afternoon just to cook food for him, before rushing out again.
One afternoon, wanting to help his mother with the cooking, he ran to buy pizza, with the coins he’d stolen from his mum. His mum was cooking hard. She looked at the pizza, and scolded him, saying, “don’t you do this again next time!”
He ran up to his room, and from the second floor, threw the pizza face
down onto the stair, and it went splat. All over the floor.
Shindo jokes, “if mom ate that pizza, maybe I wouldn’t join yakuza.” He was eventually scouted by the yakuza to join them. One of their initiation rites was to chop off a finger at the joint.
He promptly chopped it off.
He was caught multiple times for dealing drugs, and for him, going to prison was like a business trip. He laughed, recounting, “there, you’ve many prisoners who are users, so you can tell them that you’ve better quality, better
service, and all the other dealers lose.”
The second time he was caught, he was pumping petrol, when 40 to 50 policemen surrounded him. At that time, he’d already been sacked from the yakuza, because he was getting too high, too often, from drugs to do his job well. He’d lost his first family at home, and now with the yakuza, he’d lost them too.
Going into
prison, he was desperate. His wife came to visit him and she asked for a divorce. He saw the other offenders reading the Bible, and wondered what it was.
“Sure, if you bring me a Bible next day, I will divorce you.” She quickly went, and came back with one the following day.
He read the Bible, and was transformed.
When he was released, he started his first church, in his mother’s bar. His first member was his dog, the second he baptized was his mum. He would open up his church as a place for ex-offenders to sleep at the bar, and to rest.
Slowly, more ex-offenders joined him in his church, desperate to find some place that wasn’t bad company.
Sometimes, it’s about
becoming the family of those whose family has abandoned them.
1 tip
If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re in a more fortunate place, whether you believe it or not.
And so the call here isn’t to guilt-trip you to do more, it’s to say that this specific community of ex-offenders are
probably the most marginalised, forgotten people in society.
Recently I started some work with a halfway house, where ex-offenders rehabilitate from drug
usage. You’d imagine that they would be hardened criminals, but they are people I relate to.
Because yes, whilst their drug use is criminalized in Singapore, I too am guilty of many crimes - except that they are seen as legal.
What struck me was simply how lonely many were. One mother who visited her son spoke about how she asked her son to forget his bad
company, but he then didn’t have any new friends to make. Friends who cared about him, who wouldn’t just want him in to sell him drugs.
Today, this newsletter is for our ex-offenders. Not to make us cry, and feel guilty that we should have done more, but rather, it’s to say that we aren’t perfect. These ex-offenders are a reflection of our imperfections, and how society treats it.
Locked in a cell, put away, and cast away from society.
Even when you go out, they make sure you're tagged, so you're recognised, and you feel the deep feeling of shame that comes from committing crime.
Prisons break you, so that you’d be willing to build anew.
But they still matter in our society. Not because we pity them - but because they can be genuine
inspiration of how society's criminal systems can break you, and society then builds you up again. Hear any of these stories of ex offenders turned good, and it often sounds impossible. But it's happened so many times, that one must believe - that it is the person's individual desire to change, coupled with the family, and a belief in something greater than themselves, some call it God, others call it purpose; but all believe that they are powerless over addiction, and need
help.
It is their brokenness that we are drawn to, and that we can minister to.
So today, if you can pay attention to the prisons around you, please volunteer with them. Give to their work. Be the family of these ex-offenders, whose families wouldn’t even join them.
