The Big Turn Around

Posted by Larry Miller on August 9, 2011 under How | Be the First to Comment

This past Sunday, we had a special speaker at Grove Avenue Baptist Church in Richmond.   Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy, champion surfer and world class jewel thief told his amazing story. That such a man is speaking at a conservative evangelical church, let alone, is free and alive, is nothing short of a miracle. He was facing a parole date sometime in 2225. Yet, when the miraculous takes place, the facts don’t count.

He told the story of sitting in the back of prison chapel hearing chaplain telling him and his fellow prisoners that if the best you can do is get up in the morning and put on your prison shirt, you aren’t managing your life very well. That was they day his life began turning around. He might have seen himself among the lowest of the low in society and knew things were not right in his life.

Jack Murphy found God in the midst of thieves, murderers and rapists. He found Him while living in a six by nine foot cell. He became concerned about the prisoners around him – more concerned about them than himself. He walked out of that Florida prison after 21 years a different man than the reprobate character that the state put away.

There are those that scoff at jailhouse conversions and there is reason for this – sometimes. I was on the jury that convicted a Richmond man of burglary who claimed to have become a “Christian man” between the time of his arrest and his trial. I would like to have believed him, but his words and actions just didn’t add up. The proof for this forty year old man with eleven convictions already, would have to come over time.

For Murphy, time showed the change was real and he is now going into jails, talking to people who are in the situation he once was. He is now working with chaplains of the Good News Jail and Prison Ministry, who were his lifeline when he made the transition from prison into the world of productive citizens.

Often times many of us, who even wouldn’t think of climbing down the outside of the American Museum of Natural History in New York to steal the Star of India sapphire, are just too happy lock people like this up and throw away the key. We tend to forget they are people like the rest of us. Sometimes they have done some pretty awful things. There is no question, they belong behind bars.

Yet, prisons are not really correctional facilities, just warehouses where so many just go to learn new skills to inflict on an unsuspecting public. This is where private organizations like Good News come in. The reason they succeed where government employees fail is that government dollars take the Bible right out of the picture for the prescribed generic deity recognition. These fine men and women are only concerned with what is best for the prisoner, not with meeting the expectations of people who wish they weren’t there in the first place.

This is not just an altruistic move to make it easier on those who have victimized society, it is also a solid benefit for the rest of us as well when they turn some of really bad guys into really good guys.

Now this is more than just a great story of personal redemption. It is a reminder that when we find ourselves on our backs with no prospect of escape, like Jack Murphy did when he cried out for help from his death row cell, that help is available.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that our country in down for the count economically and morally… that we have managed this great nation badly. Some think we can solve all problems by just getting the dollars right, but they are missing the reasons behind our downfall. Unless we get it figured out, we will just keep spiraling out of control until we finally are driven to call out for the help that saved Jack Murphy.