By the sheerest good fortune or blessing I chose RJRs Beyond The Headlines for my evening news and commentary last Tuesday evening and heard Dionne Jackson-Millers award-winning interview with prison inmate Warren Russell.
I like to spread the joy around and vary my choice of station for the 5 oclock evening news. And on the evenings when I am asked to, I tune into the station from which an invitation has come to perform the awesome task of public-affairs analyst. Having to respond to issues selected by the media has again brought into sharp focus for me the powerful agenda-setting and framing role of the media. But thats a discussion for another time.
powerfully different story
Dionnes lead story last Tuesday was powerfully different. She had gone to prison and had interviewed an inmate who wanted to appeal publicly for forgiveness from the victim of his crime.
Warren Russell and an accomplice set out to rob a taxi driver of his money and vehicle in Manchester. They hired him under the pretext of going to pick up something. The two young men seized the car at gunpoint and the accomplice started to drive, but could not manage the car. The taxi man managed to jump out, bawling, Tief! Tief! Murda! Russell ran him down, caught him and stuffed him back in the car.
The man managed to escape again as the vehicle teetered along and this time Russell chased him and chopped him in his head. He was going to separate his head from his body with the Cuban machete he had along with the illegal gun when he heard a mysterious voice calling out, Warren, don do it! And he didnt. His accomplice suggested running the car over the injured man. But they didnt do that either.
Warren Russell was caught operating the taxi in Westmoreland a few days later. In jail, at first he was scheming how to get off the triple charges of robbery with aggravation, wounding with intent and illegal possession of firearm. But then he decided to plead guilty. The judge took into consideration his guilty plea for sentencing. And with the three sentences running concurrently, he will serve only 15 years in prison.
Russell became a Christian during a prison crusade and felt compelled to apologise to his victim and to seek forgiveness. My sentence would not be complete unless I did this, this articulate and sober young man told Dionne Jackson-Miller.
He wrote a long letter to the victim, who has so far refused to forgive him or have anything to do with him because him mash up mi life.
Russell, with the permission of prison authorities, then took the unusual route of going public via media to offer his apology and to seek forgiveness. Commissioner of Corrections Major Richard Reece, who also appeared on the programme, said confession and seeking forgiveness is good for rehabilitation, but few prisoners ever do. Few humans, including born again Christians, ever do.
call of the Gospel
But this is the call of the Gospel. It is a hard call. The call to confession and repentance on the part of the transgressor is only exceeded in hardship by the call to the one trespassed against to forgive, and more so, to love their enemy.
In the heart of the child-like prayer which Jesus taught his disciples, and which children still learn in Jamaica if not at home anymore then certainly at school, is the petition, as rendered in the Amplified Bible (AB): And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven (left, remitted, and let go of the debts, and have given up resentment) against our debtors.
And then to emphasise the imperative of forgiveness in the Kingdom He was announcing, Jesus went on to explain: For if you forgive people their trespasses (their reckless and wilful sins, leaving them, letting them go, and giving up resentment) your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you will not forgive, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses. [Matt 6: 12, 14,15].
As if this radical demand is not enough, this revolutionary Galilean rabbi who said He was the prophesied Messiah went even further in announcing the demands of His Kingdom in that famous inaugural Sermon on the Mount: If when you are offering your gift at the altar you there remember that your brother has any grievance against you, leave your gift at the altar. First go and make peace with your brother, and then come back and present your gift. [Matt 5: 23, 24 AB].
But then Jesus showed His followers how to forgive. In naked, broken agony on a Roman cross while still a young man like Warren Russell, He reportedly prayed, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do [Luke 23:34 AB]. The power of example.
liberated man
I thought I heard a liberated man speaking, though still in prison with many more years to run, when I heard Warren Russell, who claims to be a follower of the Christ, speaking with Dionne Jackson-Miller.
Jesus was a master psychologist. The liberating power of confession and forgiveness for persons and societies is established beyond any doubt. It is not tied to any particular religion, or even to religion at all. On the eve of National Heroes Day, National Hero Sam Sharpe, himself a Christian, I think, deeply under-stood the liberating power of forgiveness and died on yonder gallows a serenely liberated man.
Post-Emancipation Jamaican society has held together and has prospered to some degree in no small measure because of the spirit of forgiveness without rancour demonstrated by the ex-slaves who crowded places of worship on Emancipation eve rather than sharpening their machetes. South Africa may owe its measure of peace and unity today to its Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
From the black hole of a Jamaican prison has come from a courageous converted criminal, a confession of crime and sin and an indefatigable quest for forgiveness. Suppose more Christians did that? Suppose some political leaders did that? Suppose more Jamaicans did that? A liberating, healing and rejuvenating power would be unleashed across this land which now is very much like the prison where Warren Russell is completing his just sentence for his reckless and wilful crimes.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.
