This is Death: it's a jail. Full of swarms of people, brought in after being convicted by the Prosecutor. This is the result of sin. One wrong move, and BAM, you're jailed for life. A life sentence without bail, without appeals, without even a phone call. You hate the Prosecutor. He made you like this. He made you live this way; He put you in this stinking, filthy dungeon, pungent with the smells of urine and un-showered convicts and death. When you first arrived, you choked at the smell. Now you've gotten used to it, and you hate the Prosecutor even more for making you unable to recognize bad smells from good ones.
You have a jail cell. You too have sinned. You are an inmate. Yep, you were admitted a long time ago, since before you can remember. You've been here longer than most. You wander the halls of the penitentiary, thinking you know what freedom is, and yet understanding so little of the world beyond the fence. You were practically raised here. You aren't dead yet, but you aren't alive yet either. You just kind of exist alongside all the other sinners stuck in this jail of Death.
You've been here so long that freedom starts to look like yard time, where all the convicts get to lift weights and run laps and play in the dirt. Freedom is the tasteless mush you get to eat, because you have a choice. Choices mean freedom. Or, if you make bad choices, even more punishment comes. Solitary confinement for two hours if you talk back to the guards, and twelve hours for attacking one. At least that's what the rules say. But this is Death's jail, and it makes the rules, so sometimes the punishment is a bit more severe.
It didn't have to be this way. The Prosecutor's plan originally included you two enjoying each other's company for eternity. But, you messed up, and since the Prosecutor is just, He had to prosecute you... and He won. He always does. His love for you is still all there, and He misses you, but it's stuck just beyond the glass windows of the visitor room. Sometimes the Prosecutor visits the jail; but recently, He hasn't been here at all. You've forgotten what He looks like. He just went silent one day, and you hate Him for that too.
And then, one day, a crazy man shows up in the prison. He claims to be sinless, but He walks among the inmates and speaks with them as if He's always known them. Even amasses a following. Time passes, and eventually the Stranger becomes a familiar face.
After a year or so, you realize this allegedly sinless man has lived in the jail, alongside the convicted, for the entire time. He has not left since He arrived, though, because He loves His friends. With a true love. He can leave when He wants, but instead He chooses to eat their food, wear their clothes, and reek as bad as them. Beyond the barbed wire is where He belongs, in the land of freedom, and yet He stays here. It's hard to see why, but hey, let the man do what He wants. You just mind your own business.
Until He gets in your business. He walks up to you, one day, and offers His hand to shake. You just walk on by as if you didn't see Him. You don't want trouble and you don't want conformity; too many already follow this man. Plus, the guards don't like it when the inmates congregate because it gives birth to riots and insurrection. The man seems nice enough, though, and it's hard to see Him overthrowing the authorities of the jail.
The Stranger is persistent. The very next day, He's at your side, asking you questions. You answer curtly, obviously put off, but He doesn't mind. He keeps pace and continues to drone on about love and a higher way of living and how your world, this jail, means nothing. You let Him drone on and just tune Him out; years at the penitentiary have hardened you to many things, and you have the power to ignore the annoyance.
Eventually He leaves you alone. He realizes He cannot engage you, and so He moves on to the next inmate. You are pleased with this victory, because once again, your callousness has warded off another weirdo. There are plenty of those in Death's halls.
You see more and more people follow the Stranger around, and He starts to teach them His lessons of love and grace and living for more. He teaches them all at once, and they are enraptured, just sitting there in the yard while He stands in their midst and details His plan for their life. Ha! As if these inmates know what life even is; all that they can find in these halls is Death. You see through His lies and refuse to believe them, but if it makes the weak-minded feel better, hey. No problem. Let them believe what they want.
The stranger's teachings are COMPLETE hogwash. They don't even remotely make sense. You listen from the edges of the crowd, pretending to lift the weights that lie on the perimeter of the yard. He speaks of DYING in order to LIVE... what an idiot! Who would believe such nonsense? And yet, daily, His following grows. He is kind and never says anything bad to anyone, and no matter how strange the teaching, He always seems to follow His own word.
And then things get cryptic. He starts talking about how He came to die, and that it needs to happen in order to liberate those in the prison. As if anyone could leave Death's impenetrable fortress. He talks of His Father, who He claims to have sent Him; the very man who put you in prison in the first place! This gets you mad; the fact that your Prosecutor has the AUDACITY to send His own Son to the jail to mock your imprisonment with His talk of freedom! It's just incredible! You hate the fact that the Stranger would spread a lie like that. He is sinful, like everyone else, and He isn't the Son of the Prosecutor.
You know it isn't true! The Prosecutor really didn't do such a thing. This Stranger just wants to stir up an insurrection in the jail and have some fun. There is no way a sinless man would willingly come to the jail; He has done some wrong that no one thought to ask about. That's why He is here. He is spreading LIES. And He must be stopped because you are concerned for your inmates (you can't really call them friends), whose minds have been poisoned by His reasoning. So you hatch a plan.
You speak to the guards, and they give you the opportunity to spell out your concerns in front of the warden. The warden agrees that this Stranger has gone too far, and he is willing to help you stop Him. He must be killed to show His mortality and the falsity of His lies.
What you fail to see is that this plays right into His hands; He has spoken of His death more and more during these last few days.
You confront Him in the halls. You call out His name, approach Him, overconfident and with swagger, wishing you had a fedora and a cigar to chew on. You say to His face that He is a liar. You spit on Him. He just stands there, looking a little confused, as if He was in a daze. And then an uppercut, right to the chin. He drops to the floor, bleeding from His lip.
And then He stands up. And He looks into your eyes. And you stare back.
You don't see rage. You don't see anger. You don't even see fear. You look back into His eyes and see sadness. A single tear rolls down His cheek, and this enrages you even more. You start to lay it on Him, fist after fist, punch after punch. When you're done, He coughs blood, but He doesn't lift a finger to hurt you or even stop you. He just takes it.
Your inmates look stunned. Their leader, their champion, was just beaten to a pulp by you. You puff your chest, showing your superiority, asserting yourself over the situation. You have won.
The Stranger stands up, and by now, a crowd has gathered. Your fellow convicts CHEER as He staggers to His feet, almost unrecognizable. The guards stare on in silence, forming a circle around the crowd, nightsticks drawn.
You spit in His face again, and you ask Him if He is indeed the Son of the Prosecutor. He replies simply: "You have said it."
Immediately the guards seize Him and take Him away. Satisfied, you glare at those who used to be your friends. Frightened, they hurry back to their cells, to ponder what they just witnessed.
News comes out later that the Stranger's life sentence has been shortened, and by quite a lot. He dies the next morning. You are pleased with yourself. His followers become frightened and you can't find them anymore. They seem to avoid you. No matter, as long as they aren't causing any more trouble. You are sick with this whole business. You overheard Him once speak of forgiveness, but that's just heresy. No one can be forgiven once they are jailed. That's the rules.
At nine in the morning the next day, He is brought before the entire jail. His followers cry out for His release, but it turns out most of the inmates are like you: enraged at this hypocrite who speaks of forgiveness. The overwhelming vote is to kill the stranger, and the cries for His spilt blood sound even louder. The men you live with don't just want Him dead, they want Him brutalized.
That's when you realize you did this.
You realize it's gone too far. You feel sick. You rush back to your cell and retch in the toilet. This man has done nothing but reach out to you, and you have killed Him. You were the one who handed Him over and started this whole mess. The crack of the whip, the sucking sound of flesh being torn. And as His cries of pain start to reverberate throughout the prison, they echo in your soul as well. You are the reason He screams, and it's too late to turn back the bloodlust of the onlookers. You sit on your bunk, only imagining the tortuous things they do to Him. His banshee-like screams of pain only speak half the picture. The other half is filled in by your imagination, and the images come rolling in, graphic and unmistakable. You just killed an innocent man.
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