I nodded and then hung my head again. We were sitting opposite each other on our separate bunks. To say that Bubba was my friend was probably not true, but I think I knew him quite well. We had been talking weekly for about two years.

“I think I said something similar when you first came to talk to me a couple of years ago,” Bubba said.

“Well, killing five people does make you think about things.” I looked up quickly. I didn’t want to offend him.

“I thought they needed killing.”

“Not anymore.” Bubba had become a Christian a year or so ago. I had led him to the Lord after a troubled and dangerous relationship had developed. It wasn’t easy talking to this giant of a man.

“No, not anymore,” Bubba said. “But there isn’t much difference between one and five is there?”

I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? Murder is murder. Five is worse than one but one still makes you a murderer.

“You used to say that talking about it was a step toward healing.”

“I remember.”

Silence.

Bubba finally broke the silence and seemed to take a new direction. “You haven’t been coming to our group meetings.”

“You seem to be doing fine on your own.”

“I’ve got some real ball breakers in there and I could use your help.”

I shook my head a bit violently. “I’m no good to you or anybody else anymore.”

Silence.

“You told me once that wearing orange doesn’t change how God looks at me.”

“That’s you. Not me.”

“So, you’re an exception that God can’t do anything with?”

“Of course, it’s different.” I couldn’t help raising my voice. “I was your Pastor and I told all of you that I believed in the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives.”

“So, what’s changed?”

“Don’t be so dense.” I stood up with my fists clenched ready to take on this giant with the strength of my despair. “The Holy Spirit is a fake. I proved it. I killed a man proving it. What more do you want?” I walked over to the open toilet and tried to hide in the corner of the wall, my face turned away from the look on Bubba’s face.

“Why get mad at me?”

“You asked the warden to put us together,” I said quietly. “All you do is remind me…”

“Of what?”

“You know what.”

“So, are you saying you don’t believe in this religious stuff anymore?”

Silence. But Bubba wasn’t finished.

“So, what happened to me wasn’t real? I’m not forgiven. I am still just a sad mistake of a man who killed his entire family in a fit of anger, is that it?”

I couldn’t look at him. “It isn’t the same.”

“How is it not the same? Five is worse than one, is that it? Or are you saying that God can only save dirty sinners like me, but not fine, upstanding people like you?” I couldn’t tell if Bubba was getting angry or not.

“No, no. That’s not what I’m saying.” I paused. “It’s just that betrayal is so much worse than…”

“Than what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. I didn’t betray my family, my children, my mother?”

“I betrayed God.”

Silence.

“Me too,” Bubba said. “Just in a different way.”

They were quiet for a long moment.

“I couldn’t believe how angry I got that day,” Bubba said. “I still don’t understand it. You told me not to blame it on the Devil and take responsibility for it myself.”

“I was angry too.”

“Yes, but you had a good reason to be. I was just angry at life in general and took it out on anybody that was within my reach.” He stopped. “Until I went too far.”

“I didn’t have a good reason to murder that evangelist.”

“Say his name,” Bubba said. “You always told me to look it straight in the eye and call things what they are.”

Silence.

“John Cunningham.”

“And who did he leave behind once you murdered him?”

Would he never shut up?

“You know her name,” Bubba said. “I know you do.”

“Annie.”

“And their daughter?”

“Kristie.”

We were quiet again for a few moments just thinking. A sob seemed to escape from somewhere and I looked up quickly to see if it was Bubba. It wasn’t.

“Where did you get the gun? I thought you didn’t believe in guns.”

“It was my brother’s. He’s a cop. I know the code to his safe. He didn’t realize that I had seen him input it when I was visiting after….”

“After what?”

“You know what.” I was getting fed up with all this talking. “I’m not talking about that and that’s all there is to it.”

“Ok, I respect that but...”

“Can’t you just leave things alone? If I don’t want to talk about her, you can’t make me. Just leave it alone.”

“I doubt she would want me to leave it alone.”

“How the hell would you know what my wife wants or doesn’t want,” I shouted at him, taking a step or two in his direction.

Bubba stood up. He was a giant of a man, but I didn’t care. He had gone too far.

“We all loved Karen.” Bubba looked at me intently and then sat down again.

After a moment, I sat down across from him on my bunk. “Pastor John promised that she would be healed.”

“I know.”

“And I believed him.”

“Yes, apparently God spoke to him and gave him assurances that she would be healed completely from her cancer.”

“I did everything right.”

“Like what?”

“I had enough faith for her healing. I prayed like there was no tomorrow. I put all of our life savings into his ministry. Whatever he asked for, I gave him.”

“So, he was a fake.”

Silence.

“Not just him.”

“What do you mean?”

“God is a fake. The Holy Spirit is a fake. The whole thing is a fake.”

“That seems to be quite a leap,” Bubba said.

I didn’t say anything else.

“Obviously, this evangelist, John Cunningham, was lying when he said that God had spoken to him. How does that make God a fake?”

Silence.

“Look, I really want to know,” Bubba said. “I don’t get the connection. I’m obviously missing something.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, you aren’t the only one that is in trouble now, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have been discipling me and my friends for almost two years. You brought us to know the Lord. You have been teaching us how to fight the good fight and now you are saying that the whole thing is a lie and that the Holy Spirit inside us is a fake. What am I supposed to say to the guys when we get together?”

Another sob seemed to escape from somewhere deep down but this time I knew it was my own grief bubbling to the surface. But I still didn’t say anything. Bubba had his head down. It looked like he was praying. Finally, he looked up at me and asked me a question.

“So did you betray God or did God betray you?”

A cry deep and ferocious exploded from my lips, and I leaped on top of Bubba, pummeling him with my fists and arms wildly, pushing him back on his bunk. The bunk broke from its struts connected to the wall and crashed to the floor, but I couldn’t stop yelling and crying and punching him. The guards came but were so surprised at what they saw that they hesitated at the cell door and a look from Bubba told them it was under control and to give him some time. Their respect for Bubba and his work in the prison earned him some space. It wasn’t like he was in any danger.

Bubba physically picked me up and pinned my arms to my sides and sat me down on my bed. He sat beside me with his arm around me in a bear hug that kept us both a bit calmer. I couldn’t stop weeping. Bubba just waited. Finally, the sobbing subsided, and he asked me again.

“So, which one is it?”

“Both,” I managed to whisper. Then I took a deep shuddering breath and shook his big, beefy arm off.

“Why both?”

“Because I betrayed him by making a widow out of Annie and taking a father from Kristie.”

“You were a Pastor, and you murdered another Pastor because he was a fake,” Bubba said. “A bit extreme, but I get it. You weren’t the only person he did it to either.”

“I know but that’s no excuse.”

“So, how did God betray you?”

Silence.

“I’m not leaving until I know,” Bubba said. “I need to know whether you’ve been lying to me all this time and the guys are depending on me to give them a straight answer.”

My head hung low, and I shook it slowly from side to side as if it were a heavy weight. Finally, I told him. “The Holy Spirit is a fake because he let me become a murderer. He allowed the darkness to consume me.”

“So, it’s God’s fault.”

I looked at him sharply.

“It isn’t that simple, and you know it. Having the Holy Spirit inside you is supposed to mean something. It’s supposed to protect you from evil, not allow you to do terrible things that betray everything you believe in. Otherwise, what’s the point? I get that Pastor Cunningham was a fake and I was stupid for believing in him. That’s on me. But the rest?”

“You were desperate to save Karen.”

“It doesn’t matter. I know better. It was my own fault. But when I went to his tent meeting that night and walked up on the stage and shot him point blank in front of his wife and kid and all those people, I was so full of anger and darkness, I didn’t even recognize myself. That isn’t supposed to happen.”

“It isn’t?”

I looked at him sharply.

“Of course not. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“So, believers are not able to do terrible, evil things is what you’re saying.”

I didn’t say anything. King David came to mind and Samson. The list seemed to get longer the more I thought about it. I shook my head violently.

“No, it’s not supposed to happen if we are walking in the Spirit and doing everything right.”

“And when did you stop walking in the Spirit?”

I glared at Bubba with narrow eyes. “I did everything that Pastor Cunningham told me to do, I told you that.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bubba said evenly. “Last time I checked Pastor Cunningham was not the Holy Spirit.”

“No, of course not.”

“So?”

I had to think this through. My mind was groggy and confused. There was something here I was missing. I needed help. “Bubba, would you pray for me? I think you’re on to something, but I can’t seem to think straight.”

“Of course.” Bubba’s prayer was simple and sincere, and my mind seemed clearer. I added a half-hearted “Amen.”

“Ok, let’s figure this out,” I said. I was surprised at myself. I seemed to be fighting something, wanting to work it out and get to the bottom of what had happened. I didn’t know where that was all coming from, but I was like a drowning man grasping at anything that was thrown in my direction.

“So, if otherwise good, Christian believers can do terrible things, like David, Samson, and others in the Bible, then, obviously, it can happen to me too.” I paused. “Even though I have the Holy Spirit in me.” That last thought seemed to spark a bit of hope that not all was lost. “But why?”

“I think we were onto something,” Bubba said, “when you mentioned walking in the Spirit.”

“Yes, we can walk in the Spirit or grieve the Spirit,” I said. “If we walk in the Spirit, there is protection from evil but if we grieve the Spirit, then I suppose anything can happen.”

“But you can still be a believer, just one that´s off track,” Bubba added.

“Yes, but when did I get off track, that’s the question.”

“I don’t know.”

I had to think this through. When Karen was first diagnosed with Stage 4 Liver Cancer, the doctors gave her only a few months to live. I was desperate to get healing from God for her. I couldn’t even think about life without my best friend. Just thinking about it, I started to spiral and had to clench my fists and hold myself together.

“Maybe you wanted Karen to be healed when God wanted to bring her home,” Bubba said. He seemed to be able to read my mind. It was uncanny. But I knew it was God ministering to me through this big, dangerous inmate who had become my friend and was now a follower of Christ.

“Yes, I wanted healing,” I said. “At any price, no matter what it cost me. I was desperate not to lose her.”

“You stopped trusting God’s will for your life, and hers,” Bubba said.

“But aren’t you supposed to pray and believe for healing?” I still didn’t want to give up until I had it all figured out.

“Pray for healing, yes,” Bubba said, “but believe for healing as if it was some sort of promise or guarantee? I don’t know.”

“That’s what a lot of preachers teach. Entire books are written about having the faith for healing.”

“Well, the only book I’m interested in is this one here.” Bubba held up his Bible. “Seems to me that some people get healed, and some don’t and even the ones that are healed get sick and die later on.”

“True enough,” I said. “Even healing has a purpose, I suppose.”

“Didn’t you tell me that Jesus prayed that he would be spared the cross, but he kept coming back to the fact that he wanted to do God’s will and not his own?” Bubba asked.

“Yes, I did. I guess we can pray for healing but still let God be God and let Him make the final decision on what is best. I just couldn’t see it at the time.”

“I guess that’s where you got off track, thinking that you could tell God what He should do about Karen,” Bubba said quietly.

“I guess so.”

Silence.

“But that’s still a long road to picking up a gun and shooting someone in cold blood,” I said.

“Short or long, grieving the Spirit is a dangerous road to travel,” Bubba said.

“What do I do now?” I looked at Bubba expecting him to have some sort of answer for the rest of my life.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Take one day at a time. Get back on track with God and take care of each other, I guess.”

I smiled weakly. “Well, twenty-five to life is a long time. We aren’t going anywhere.”

“In the meantime, the guys are waiting and wondering where we are.”

I nodded my head. I had no children. My parents had both passed. My brothers and sisters lived in other states. I wasn’t going anywhere. I may as well join the group. They were my family now.

“Do you mind if we pray together for a few minutes first,” I said. “I think I need to talk to God for a bit and ask for his forgiveness and help.”

“Of course, brother,” Bubba said. “Always.”

We both bowed our heads and entered the throne room of God together as brothers, broken and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. I trembled just a bit to realize how close I had come to destroying the faith of these brothers of mine. I was now more than convinced that the Holy Spirit was the most powerful force for transformation on the face of the earth and I wanted to share my story with anybody who would listen.