Integrative Question Research

When doing my Research for my integrative question, I did not not where to start.

When doing my Research for my integrative question, I did not not where to start. Thankfully, the video conference that I held with Professor Keehn gave me a starting point into thinking about where I should pursue my research and the fields. First, I began by describing how love and mercy within the criminology field would be seen and how it is a problem in this world. I staring talking about the importance of restoration within places such as prisons and jail and the importance of understanding that, as well as the importance of spreading the gospel within those places. The kind of research information I began to discover were that people who were in current prisons and jails suffered with major mental health, due to the fact that most of the time their minds were not being put to use. What I mean by this is that they were not allowed to do anything because of the system that was going on within in the criminal justice. Another finding I was amazed by was that some individuals, who were teens, were sentenced to life in prison without death, meaning that they would stay in there forever without a parole or court date anymore. This is so sad. The one ministry practice I will be talking about for this blog post will be spreading the word of God in fields/areas, such as jails and prisons, that people do not usually go to or are not usually exposed to. One theological foundation I wrote on my research response to integrative question was John 15:12 that says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (ESV, 2001). This tells us, as children of the Lord, that it is our responsibility given by God to love one another. This does not mean only when our neighbor is right or when they are living according to God’s will or not, we have to love them either way. Many times, I feel as if we do not know the difference between speaking of the word of God to someone and how it is applied, with loving them and being there for them as a genuine friend. When we read this verse and practice it and write it on our hearts, we begin to understand that loving one another is loving, as the verse ends, as Jesus has loved us. Jesus’ love towards us is not dependent on anything. The second theological foundation I found was that in Luke 29, we can see that Jesus’ last moments were spent next to two criminals, yet instead of rebuking them He accepted that one individual who recognized He was the Son of God. This lead me into talking about spreading the gospel as well. Jesus, as we see in this piece of the Bible, even on his last breath on this earth as a flesh, he spread the gospel and did not care if one of the individuals was considered a criminal