I started spending a lot of evenings in my local county jail a few years ago, doing Bible studies and meeting with inmates one on one as a young chaplain. I immediately loved the Chicano gangsters best. I thought I’d found kindred souls on the margins our society who were readier to follow Jesus than either the youth group leaders or seminary students of my past.
They were delightfully irreligious in the Bible studies. Smart, boldly honest, aware of social injustice. They weren’t attached to the status quo or many family expectations, and not afraid to be arrested nor die for what they wanted. They knew how to hit the streets and get along with few material belongings. These guys could recruit other orphaned young men with uncanny results, and they already had experience in laying down their lives for their homies. Often one would take the hit for another’s crime, doing years in prison without saying a word to the lawyers.
But after a year or so in their gang meetings and living rooms, praying with them in my car, and even seeing them fall in love with the Jesus who was a “down-ass” “friend of sinners” (Matthew 9), I’ve observed how gang members are not very outlaw after all. Rather, they can be some of the most principled law-abiders I’ve met. The only thing is, they are citizens and patriots of a different law, a different constitution, a different nation.
A gang is a nation in miniature, in its elemental form. They are nations within our nations, comprised of youths our larger gang/nations have rejected and not counted or treated as citizens. And I think they tell us more about ourselves than we’d like to admit.
The men I work with, for example, are South Siders (Sureños). They have a flag. It is blue, and they wear it, display it, and revere it with a pride that seems ridiculous - until we think of American behavior with the U.S. flag following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Like nations, a gang begins with its turf, and marks its borders clearly. Their need for “protection” justifies their stockpiles of weapons. They don’t take kindly to people crossing their borders without permission, yet often aggressively invade others’ territory with a bold show of armed might and claiming of the area with their colors.
Mainstream society scoffs at such “senseless violence,” yet has no trouble accepting the foreign policy and international affairs of our own land, its military obsession, or immigration phobias.
What’s most interesting to me is how a gang is not just hostile to outsiders, but equally severe in its treatment of its own members. Those who fail to toe the line are treated as enemies. Gangs call them “levas.” Americans call them “scum” or “unpatriotic.” The same guys who I’ve seen flagrantly break into a car or mouth off to a judge in court would never even risk being seen associating with a member of another gang; they don’t want to be “put in check” by their own gang for breaking the code, the law of the gang.
When I invite them to transgress by not harming a Norteño they might cross on the street, for example, my friends look at me as incredulous as an average American patriot would when I suggest he dodge the draft or get arrested for public protest or civil disobedience.
I talk to leaders who may attend our Bible studies, inside the jail or out, to forgive another homie’s “stepping out of line.” It’s just as hard as asking a church-going judge to simply drop all charges and acquit a man on trial before him. “It’s not that easy,” they both chuckle at my naïveté. “Something has to be done. I mean, what kind of message would that send to everyone else? This is the law. It’s not totally up to me.”
Most American Christians are just as conflicted, I believe, as these tattooed patriots of the streets. They desire to wholly belong to their nation and its laws while also identifying with Christ and his kingdom. The law of the land and the law of the streets, though, always end up at odds with Jesus’ law of love.
Chris Hoke works with gangs as a chaplain in the Skagit County Jail and on the streets of northwest Washington state as part of Tierra Nueva. Tierra Nueva and The People’s Seminary will offer a one-month school of ministry beginning May 1, 2009, to train people to minister in the power of the Spirit at the margins of society.
From a prophetic standpoint you can see how the System at the top of the pyramid, namely the State, is organized. As Chris points out the policies and attitudes of the State are very much 'gangster' in character. That System is then mirrored in the society of the State reflecting the message back to those at the top "This is what you are like and it allows for this to exist within your nation. How can you expect a peaceful society when your own ways are not peaceful?" Very interesting observations Chris...thanks.
eric h janzen
Posted by: Eric H Janzen | June 06, 2009 at 12:15 PM