There are certain things you expect to find in jail.
Bad food. Bad coffee. Bad company. Bad decisions.
What you don’t necessarily expect is a theological debate over the combustibility of the Holy Bible.
But there I was.
Somebody explained to me that paper Bibles were restricted because inmates had been smoking the pages.
I had questions.
Not about the existence of God. I’d already spent considerable time wrestling with that one.
I wanted to know how we had arrived at a place in human civilization where the Word of God had become a fire hazard.
Apparently, somewhere along the line, somebody discovered that the thin pages of a Bible could serve a purpose never contemplated by King James.
Rolling papers.
Now, I’ve heard of people getting high on Jesus, but this seemed to be taking the concept a little too literally.
I imagined the conversation that must have preceded the rule.
“Captain, we’ve got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“The inmates are smoking Scripture.”
“Smoking what?”
“The Bible, sir.”
“Good Lord.”
“Exactly, sir.”
I couldn’t help wondering whether certain books were more popular than others.
Genesis seemed like an obvious starting point.
Exodus might help you escape.
Leviticus was probably a difficult smoke.
And Revelation?
Well, that one already involved plenty of fire.
I began to appreciate the peculiar genius of institutional rulemaking.
Somebody does something ridiculous. Somebody else writes a rule. Eventually, the rule becomes more important than the original problem.
And nobody remembers why we’re doing any of it.
Of course, jails have legitimate security concerns. People can turn ordinary objects into things they were never intended to be.
But there’s something profoundly absurd about a system where a man looking for spiritual guidance might discover that the physical pages containing that guidance have become a security concern.
Imagine explaining this to a Sunday school teacher.
“Why can’t they have regular Bibles?”
“Because somebody smoked the Gospel of John.”
“Was he converted?”
“Hard to say, ma’am. But he did report feeling the Spirit.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at some of the things I encountered in jail.
Sometimes I do both.
Because underneath the absurdity is something worth considering.
Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to misuse good things.
Freedom. Money. Love. Religion.
Even the Bible.
And then we create rules to protect ourselves from ourselves.
Sometimes those rules make sense.
Sometimes they make absolutely no sense.
And sometimes they make sense only after somebody explains that a fellow inmate tried to smoke the Book of Psalms.
I suppose there’s a lesson in there somewhere.
You can confiscate the paper.
You can regulate the possessions.
You can write another rule.
But you can’t regulate what happens inside a human heart.
And perhaps that’s the distinction worth remembering.
The Bible isn’t sacred because of the paper it’s printed on.
It’s sacred because of what it says.
“Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” — Psalm 119:11, KJV
Nobody can smoke that.
At least, I hope not.
JC
