Why Christmas?

Why Christmas? 

The lights? Food? Baby in a manger? 

If you spent time in Sunday School, you know the answer to every question is Jesus, and that is true here. No Jesus…no Christmas. No Jesus…no Christianity, but it doesn’t explain the why of Christmas. For the answer, we have to go beyond the dazzling lights in our neighborhood, the carols on the radio, and even a manager surrounded by shepherds. The why goes back to the start.

In the beginning… 

Mankind is God’s own handiwork, created in his image to do one thing: glorify him. Glorify means to please. It’s the reason people have children. We want our children to glorify or please us, and it’s no different with God. He wants his children to please him, but there’s a problem we cannot ignore. Sin entered the human race through the head of our family, Adam, and now, every child of Adam is born with the same affliction: we want to please ourselves rather than the God who created us. This is sin, and it explains why we are selfish and self-determined. We see it in our children the moment they are born, and if we’re honest, we see it in ourselves, but why does it matter? It matters because the ultimate result of sin is death; ten out of ten people die.

The only way to defeat the effect of sin/death is righteousness which is perfect moral character. The Bible tells us, “Without holiness, no one will see God.” Since we weren’t born righteous, and we can’t earn or win it, we must have righteousness from somewhere else. The proud person sets his will to the work of being good and doing good. He believes he can be good by what he accomplishes.

God resists the proud…but he gives grace to the humble.

A humble person fears God and can do nothing except receive righteousness from somewhere else because he has no righteousness of his own. Only the humble will admit their goodness is like giving their dirty laundry to a holy God. They are desperately needy for goodness they don’t have and cannot produce.

Humble sinners are the only ones qualified to be Christians. They are the only ones who can receive God’s righteousness in Jesus Christ. The proud, self-righteous can never receive Christ’s righteousness because God resists them, but those who humble themselves, repent, and believe on Christ as their only hope are those who receive salvation through Christ...not by works of righteousness that they have done, but because of God’s mercy in Christ alone.

Christianity is the righteousness of Jesus Christ received by a sinner, and that is why Christmas is a special day to those who bear the name Christian. It is the day when we remember there is no greater gift than the gift of righteousness. It is the time we remember Christ is our righteousness, and we have peace with God through him. The Apostle Paul describes why those who wear the name of Christ have peace on earth and good will to men: "Jesus saves us from the wrath to come." (1 Thessalonians 1:10) The humble, repentant sinner spends the rest of his life in gratitude to the one who took his punishment upon himself on the cross. Thus even the name of Jesus, the day of his birth, the essence of his life, and the blood he spilled is precious. "Unto you therefore which believe He is precious..." (1 Peter 2:7)

Merry Christmas...merry because Jesus died in the place of helpless sinners.
Peace on Earth...peaceful...because we have peace with God since Jesus experienced God's wrath for our sin upon himself.
Good Will Toward Men...because there is hope for humanity because Jesus was born, died on the cross, and rose again the third day.

The Showdown

On March 1, 1988, I stood before Caddo Parish Sheriff Don Hathaway with my right hand held high and swore to uphold the laws of the state and parish. I left the courthouse and went to my assignment at Caddo Detention Center in Springridge, 8 miles from my house. Caddo Detention Center, or CDC, was the parish lock-up housing over 500 inmates. 

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I got my paycheck early due to the long holiday weekend. I folded it in half and tucked it in the right pocket of my uniform shirt. I was working West Max, the maximum security part of the jail located on the west side of the compound. West Max housed over 80 inmates with a high bond for serious crimes or a history of repeated offenses. Like all jails, CDC had a laundry list of rules, and deputies were expected to enforce them. One of those rules was inmates could not wear hats or anything on their heads when they came out of their cells. I never considered whether any of the rules made sense, I just believed my effectiveness as a law enforcement officer depended on my ability to enforce them, and I would be effective or die.

Inmate recreation was a special time of day for prisoners. Twice every day and three times during the summer, the inmates were allowed to get out of their cells so they could exercise, play games like cards or basketball, or they could simply enjoy being out of the confines of their cells for awhile. Afternoon rec started at 1 pm and lasted for two hours.

I opened cell doors in the cage in West Max that morning, letting inmates out of their cells for recreation. Two other deputies were outside in the Rec Yard known as the bullpen. The bullpen was a rectangular area of concrete surrounded by high fences and topped off with four rolls of razor wire to discourage climbing. The razor wire was extremely effective, for I know of only two inmates who braved it during my three years at CDC, and they ended up cut and bloody.

When I opened the doors of the cells that day, the West Max inmates were neatly dressed in red jumpsuits. They filed out of their cells, eager to get outside to the bullpen. I wasn’t a person to them. They considered me a part of the institution like the walls, wire, steel, and concrete. They didn’t know I was there unless my presence could benefit them in some way. As long as I did not interfere with their entertainment, recreation, meals, or animal impulses, all was well.

An inmate filed past me, tying a blue bandana on his head. The bandana was contraband and wearing it was a double offense. It was my duty to inform him and the reason I drew a paycheck.

“Marcus Turner (not his real name) do not put that bandana on your head. You know it’s against the rules.”

Marcus didn’t look up. He tied the bandana on his head as if I never spoke to him. I was in the cage and unable to stop him, and there was no need to overreact. Maybe he would change his mind and remove the bandana before I went outside. It’s always best to give people the benefit of the doubt.

I finished letting inmates out of their cells. I checked all four tier doors, made sure they were locked, and made everyone standing around go outside. With everything secure behind me I walked into the sunshine of the bullpen on an unusually warm and pleasant day. It didn’t take me long to spot Marcus. He was doing pushups near the north fence with a blue bandana on his head. I took my time so the pushups would wear him down. Deputy Kevin Dunn was standing on the far side of the bullpen fence. Kevin was a Floater that day which meant he did not have an assigned post. Floaters escorted inmates on the compound, relieved deputies, and did whatever the sergeants told them to do. Floaters were automatically assigned to the Response Team. The Response Team responded to all calls of emergency which included fires, fights, and deputies needing back-up. Before I confronted Marcus Taylor, I let my co-workers, including Kevin, know what I was about to do.

It was rumored that Marcus Turner was a Vietnam vet which was something every deputy respected. He was muscular and tattooed in a day when only cons and soldiers wore ink. On his back in a grand curve of large Old English letters he had his last name “T-U-R-N-E-R” spelled out. He was hateful and known for fighting with deputies.

When I reached Marcus, there was a hush throughout the bullpen. It was a bad sign I should have heeded. All eyes were on me.

“Marcus…I told you not to put that bandana on your head. It’s time for you to go back to your cell. Rec’s all over for you my man.”

Marcus expressed his distain with two words consisting of a verb and the pronoun ‘you’ in a common phrase heard often behind cell doors. I ordered him to his cell, but he refused. His words were a spark in a tinder box. Inmates surrounded me. Marcus was directly in front of me while Geoffrey Palmer (not his real name) closed in on my left. Geoff was short but powerfully built. His upper lip snarled like a dog revealing a mouth full of white teeth and one gold one in the middle. He was inches away from me. I told him to step back. There were two deputies with me, but they were by the back fence watching. 

With Geoffrey Palmer on my left, and Marcus Turner in front of me, the other inmates made a large circle around us. It was incredibly intimidating. Geoffrey and Marcus refused to move, so I took a full step back to create distance, but when I did, Palmer followed. I took another step back, and he followed. Before he had time to think, I dropped low, grabbed his knees, and plunged forward. With a big upper body, Palmer upended easily. I took him to the ground, quick and hard. As he fell, he ripped the pocket off of my uniform shirt, and my paycheck fell to the pavement. I pinned Palmer’s arms to the ground and sat on his chest, and then a weight crashed down on my back. Instinctively, I brought my left hand up to my throat as an arm circled my neck. It was Marcus Turner putting me in a choke hold. His beard bristled the back of my head.

I was on top of one prisoner and had another on my back. Palmer squirmed beneath me while Turner squeezed my neck with everything he had. The only thing that kept me conscious was my hand between his arm and my throat.

I knew techniques for getting out of choke holds, but I couldn’t let Palmer go. I held my own with Turner until more weight dropped on my back causing me to put my hands on the concrete in a modified push up position. The pressure on my neck lessened until Marcus’ arm dropped away. It was Kevin Dunn who saw what was happening and put Marcus Turner in a neck restraint and rendered him unconscious.

The rest of the Response Team arrived and cleaned up the mess around me while I remained on top of Geoffrey Palmer. When the dust settled, a sergeant told me to get off Palmer. After 9 months experience, I considered Palmer to be under arrest, and I wasn’t going to let him up without handcuffs. I told the sergeant so, but he ordered me to get up. The moment I did, Geoffrey stood up and squared off with me. We were back in the same position we were in earlier until Deputy Bubba Richardson saw what was going on and stepped between us. I reached down to pick up my paycheck, but it was gone. The check had my home address on it.

A week later, there was a disturbance in West Max. I was on the respond team that day and responded. The disturbance was resolved quickly, but on my way out, I passed Marcus Turner’s cell. Turner spoke when I passed, but I couldn’t hear what he said. I approached his cell.

“You got something to say?”

“I know where you live. You’re a dead man.” He turned his back and said nothing more. My paycheck had found its way to the felon, and he knew exactly where I lived.

Marcus Turner had a network outside cell walls. Over the next week, his friends in the free world found out where my wife and Bubba Richardson’s girlfriend worked. I didn’t tell Colleen for fear of alarming her. For the next months, I slept lightly. I hid guns throughout the house, didn’t leave home unarmed, and I saw Colleen off to work every day.  

Every inmate involved in the disturbance in West Max was punished for violating jail rules. Marcus Turner and Geoffrey Palmer were charged with battery on a police officer, found guilty, and sentenced to six extra months in jail. But it wasn’t over.

In early 1988, Sergeant Jim Reed worked day shift with weekends off as the classification officer. That summer, Jim left the Sheriff’s Office and went to work for the Post Office. Things didn’t work out, so he returned to the Sheriff’s Office, but he was no longer a sergeant. To humble him further, he was assigned to my shift at CDC. He was fifteen years older than the rest of us, a former sergeant, and a stranger to the deputies supervising inmates. While the rest of us were known by our first names, everyone called him Mr. Reed.

When I returned to work in West Max in December of 1988, Mr. Reed and I worked there together along with another deputy. The day started with a headcount and then recreation. That morning I assumed my usual role of letting inmates out of their cells and making them go outside to the bullpen.

I finished letting the inmates out on the upstairs’ tier and then went downstairs to let the rest of the inmates out. Things went quickly on the lower south tier, but when I went to the lower north tier things slowed down. It took a few minutes and some strong words to usher a couple of inmates out. One inmate was rather slow and confused about what he was supposed to be doing. Perhaps it was his first full day behind bars. I walked him down the tier to make sure he went outside. When I got to the end of the tier, I turned and shut the bar door and pulled it to make sure it was locked. When I turned back, around Geoffrey Palmer and another inmate were directly in front of me, waiting.

The inmate who had been loitering on the tier was nowhere to be found. I was blocked in. I had metal bars behind me and on my right side, a brick wall on my left and my two friends were directly in front of me. If I turned my back and tried to unlock the door to escape, I was sure to be ambushed. I knew what was at stake, but I followed my use of force policy. “You guys need to head on outside right now.” It was a clear and unambiguous command, yet I had no expectation that they would obey it.

I dropped my right foot back, lowered my center of gravity and tightly gripped the giant jail keys in my right fist.  My plan was simple: the first one to move toward me was getting my booted foot in his groin. The second one would receive a handful of keys in the throat. Both inmates had their hands in fists at their hips. I couldn’t see Geoffrey’s right hand. I stared at the middle of their chests and waited, but a deep voice interrupted. “No one is supposed to be on the tier…get outside now!” It was Mr. Reed.

Geoffrey and the other inmate looked at me, looked at each other, dropped their heads and walked out to the bullpen. Mr. Reed suspected something was wrong and came inside to check on me at the perfect moment. His presence was enough to change the odds and cause Geoffrey to recognize their intentions had been thwarted. Both Mr. Reed and I knew what was at stake.

The next morning in shift meeting, we found out evening shift searched Geoffrey’s cell and found a shank made from a large piece of wire. That shank was for me. I knew it. Mr. Reed it.

Jim Reed retired as a Lieutenant but died two years later in September, 2011. I will always be grateful to him. In his final act of generosity, he donated his body to science for medical research.

The Man on the Couch in His Pajamas

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few chosen."
- Matthew 20:16

In 1998, I was on patrol one Sunday afternoon when a call came over the radio. Dispatch said a woman just left Keithville returning to her home in Dallas, but she left her house keys at her parent’s house. Cell phones were rare in those days, so the caller asked the Sheriff’s Office to find her before she reached Texas. I was in Keithville between the caller's house and I-20 on Woolworth Road and figured she had to be in front of me. I drove three miles and found her car north bound at the Buncomb Road intersection. When I pulled her over, she wanted to know why I stopped her. I told her about the keys she left at her parent’s house. Dispatch called her father, Bill Bailey, and minutes later, he arrived with her keys.

Bill Bailey lived two houses down from me, but we had never met. Some neighbors considered him difficult, others called him a drunk. After that day, we became friends. 

Mr Bailey had a big Ford tractor he drove up and down the road with an ever-present cigar clenched between his teeth. He cut things, bushogged brush, moved dirt, and anything else a tractor could do. I had an old cinder block shed in my backyard, but whoever built it failed to put rebar in the concrete foundation. The slab cracked causing the walls to lean and fall. I tore it down to its foundation, leaving a 10 x 12 slab of cracked, unusable foundation. Mr Bailey saw it, and in less than an hour, scooped the whole thing up with his tractor and front end loader and dumped it in a sink hole across the road. After that, he tilled a spot for a garden. 

During down times on patrol, I often stopped by his house, and we talked about crime, evil, and God. He wasn’t a church going man…he left that task to his wife, but he had a sense of honor and right and wrong. During one of our conversations, he told me through tears that alcohol almost destroyed his life. He had been sober for three years.

In June 2001, Colleen, the kids, and I were unloading the car after a trip to Six Flags when the phone rang. Colleen handed the phone to me. It was Mrs Bailey, Bill's wife. She told me Mr Bailey was in the hospital, and he had been diagnosed with lymphoma. She asked me to call him. I didn’t know what lymphoma was, but it didn’t sound good.

I called Mr. Bailey at the hospital. He was glad I called. He told me was scared, and didn’t expect to live much longer. He said, “If I get out of the hospital, I think I would like to go to church with you.”

I told him I was glad he mentioned it because I had been meaning to ask him if he was right with God.

It was quiet for a moment and he asked what I meant.

"Mr. Bailey...if you have to stand before God tonight, will He look at you and say, ‘Come in thou good and faithful servant to the joy of your Lord,’ or will He say, ‘Depart from me for I never knew you?’”

It was quiet again.

“I hope I’ll be found good enough to be allowed into heaven.”

“The Bible says, ‘There is no good, no, not one.’ We have to be righteous, and since we aren’t, the only hope for us is to have the righteousness of someone else.”

I thought about our conversation all night. He was in turmoil and uncomfortable talking about God. I asked myself if I pushed him too hard...

The next evening, we went to the hospital to see Mr. Bailey. He was thrilled to see someone other than the hospital staff. He said hello to Colleen and the kids, and he called me to his side, shook my hand with both of his, and hugged me.

“Our conversation last night was helpful.”

I wondered why. He was on his death bed with little hope, and the day before I told him he was not going to heaven because he was not a good person.

I asked Colleen to wait for me outside. Mr Bailey said goodbye to the kids, and when the door closed behind them, he started asking questions.

He was desperate, and I was scared for him, but I knew I had to be honest about his situation. I told him what the Bible says about sin, righteousness, and judgment, and it was direct and offensive.

I asked him if he ever told a lie. Without hesitation, he said he had, but when I told him people who tell lies are called liars, he winced. He admitted he stole some things in his life time. I asked him if he was a thief, and he dropped his head and shook it up and down. I told him the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," and he was quick to say he had never killed anyone. When I told him Jesus said anyone who is angry with another person is guilty of murder in their heart, he squinted, bit down on his lip, and told me there were two people in his life he would never forgive. He said two men he knew treated him so badly, they did not deserve forgiveness. He would not forgive them because they deserved nothing but punishment.

I told him Jesus said we must forgive others or he will not forgive us. Mr Bailey leaned back in his bed and sulked. Up to that moment he was willing to do anything to ease his fear, but he was not willing to forgive. 

I told him Jesus’ parable of the man who was forgiven a huge debt, and then self-righteously threw another man in jail who owed him a small amount. The first man was condemned for his unforgiveness and ingratitude. I explained how Christ’s forgiveness is so complete and costly, it makes offenses committed against us trivial, and how God's gift of repentance helps us recognize we cannot be righteous without Jesus Christ himself. We must have the righteousness of Christ to be right with God. 

While I spoke, his demeanor changed. He had come to the crossroads. He leaned up in the bed on one elbow. I asked him if he needed to repent. 

“Yes, yes, yes.” 

I asked him if he wanted to pray. He grabbed my hand with both of his hands and cried.

“Yes! Yes!”

I didn’t lead him in a prayer; I just held his hands and listened. 

He called out to Christ for forgiveness from God, and he was contrite. It was a desperate cry of a dying man for forgiveness and salvation.

Mr Bailey was released from the hospital a week later.

In September 2001, he came by on his tractor. He was smiling and grateful. He drilled twenty four holes in the ground for a barn I was building. 

As fall arrived, Mr Bailey struggled with chemotherapy. He was in and out of the hospital. On December 20th, I visited him at the hospital. He told me he thought his cancer had returned, but he knew it was in the Lord’s hands. Mrs Bailey told me he was a changed man.

On December 22, he came home from the hospital. He was looking forward to spending Christmas with his wife and daughters. Colleen fixed them a pecan pie, and my nine year old daughter Olivia and I took the pie to him that evening.

Mrs Bailey answered the door and led us inside. Mr Bailey was on the couch in his pajamas, an oxygen tube in his nose. He smiled, eagerly. I sat the pie on the table behind him, then reached over the couch and put my hand on his shoulder. He turned toward me, took my arm with both hands and lay his head on my arm. He rubbed his whiskers back and forth across my arm and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” 

It was the last time I saw him. Two days later, on Christmas Eve, he died at 73. 

God performed a miracle on Mr. Bailey. It was not the miracle of physical healing, it was something far greater. It was the miracle of new life that continues  forever. 

Mrs Bailey said he died peacefully, something that was impossible before his conversion. 

I think of him often.