Child of God

By Malcolm Crooks

This book tells the fictitious autobiographical story of Malachi Scott, an inmate at the Michigan Department of Corrections who recently has converted to Christianity. The story candidly deals with his struggle to survive in an evil environment while simultaneously trying to keep his religious purity and dignity. His life is further complicated when he falls in love with a newly hired female prison guard. Their secret love affair adds to his already complicated life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796081909

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Malcolm Crooks.

ISBN:                Softcover                 978-1-7960-8191-6

                          eBook                      978-1-7960-8190-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Website

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/09/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

807481

Contents

Acknowledgements

PART ONE

Chapter 1     Thelonious’ Introduction

Chapter 2     Dark Redemption

Chapter 3     Bloody Evangelist: The Verdict Is In

Chapter 4     Preaching Debut

Chapter 5     Malachi’s Wisdom

Chapter 6     I wish I knew how it would feel to be free…

Chapter 7     Leticia Jones

Chapter 8     Me and Ms. Jones

Chapter 9     Transition: Final Thoughts

Chapter 10   Thelonious’ Conclusion

PART TWO

Introduction

The Prison Tribe

Welfare Babies

The Last Prayer of Malachi Scott

Tribulation

Demons

The Pursuit of Perfection

I Wonder if I Can Die

Faith Confessions (To be read aloud every day)

No Excuses

Freedom for All

Maxims

Detroit City

Myself

Pet Peeve

Why Does God Forgive Me?

The Chosen Ones

The Genius in Me

Fair Game

The Joy of Understanding

Pro-Life

Where I Belong

The Blessing of Suffering

Peer Pressure

Love & Pain

Hero

Maxims: Volume 2

Absolute Love (For Leticia)

For The Unsaved

Acknowledgements

God is the only person I can thank for the conception, completion and publication of this book. I was saved in 1997 and I immediately began seeking God diligently about my purpose in life. One day while walking to the bus stop on Woodward Ave. in Detroit I was pleading with the Lord to please tell me my purpose and while walking across the street this voice deep inside me spoke and said, write a book, that was the conception for Child of God. To make a long story short 14 years later I finally finished it. The story of Malachi Scott was birthed in my spirit and God himself wrote the story through me.

There are people that I won’t mention by name that also helped with the writing of this novel. In order to understand the perspective of Malachi’s misery to complete this work I had to experience some of it in my own life. Therefore God placed certain people and circumstances in my life to help maintain some consistent misery for me in order to keep the story realistic.

I know this book is something I’ll forever be proud of for the rest of my life and I hope it saves many souls for the Lord Jesus Christ. Please share it with your loved ones it could change their lives forever.

Yours in Christ

Malcolm Crooks, Author

Part One

Chapter 1

Thelonious’ Introduction

This journal was written by Malachi Scott, the 27 year old inmate at the Michigan Department of Corrections. These were his private thoughts from January 16, 2011 to August 15, 2011. I was a struggling writer and I was teaching a one day course, 6 Steps on How to Write Good Poetry in the local prisons in my area. This is how we met. After the course he approached me and I was impressed by his intelligence and inner strength. He also seemed to have a deep inner peace. I wrote him a few times after that. He told me on one occasion he wanted me to publish his journal and his poetry book because he felt that they might be a blessing and inspiration to others. So after reading his work in it’s entirety I began the process of getting his works into print. So now they’re being presented to you just as Malachi wanted. None of his words have been tampered with. These are all his private thoughts the way he wrote them. I wanted to keep this journal and poems as authentic as possible. Please read them and be touched, inspired and challenged by Malachi’s joy, pain and humility. Believe me you will never be the same.

Signed

Thelonious Coffey, Author/Poet

Chapter 2

Dark Redemption

January 16, 2011, Sunday

I used to wonder how a woman could marry a man in prison who’s done very bad things. Now I know. You really aren’t the person who’s done horrible things on the inside. That person is just a person who in a moment of rage totally lost his head and all common sense. That’s just not me. I can see how a woman could still love me because I still have love inside.

Even though I’m totally back to my normal self I have to promote some sort of bad boy image here in prison in order to survive. That’s the person that people see on TV but that’s not the real me. If you would just sit and talk to me, you would easily be able to get to know the real me. You would see how gentle and loving I really am.

January 17, 2011, Monday

Please don’t hate me for what I did. Please try to get to know me and my past and try and understand why it happened. You would see that I’m not just some evil guy who was born and then decided to go around hurting people. I was hurting badly myself. The people that didn’t care about my pain triggered my rage toward them. For my entire life I’ve just been trying to find one person who cares anything about my painful past. Now that I’m in prison, possibly for life, I know that I’ll probably never know someone who cares for me.

I’m afraid of my cellmates. No matter how bad you think you are, there’s always someone worse than you in prison. I want to pay for what I’ve done, I just hope that I’m not killed here in prison before I can complete my sentence and I hope I don’t get death.

My trial has begun. The victim’s families despise me and are looking for justice. The media hates me. The jury probably hates me. Everyone hates me. I just wish someone could know the real me. And not just know me for what I did. Oh well, maybe God will.

January 18, 2011, Tuesday

Jesus, you are all I have. Society and even my own family don’t want me. My ex-girlfriend doesn’t want me. It looks like it’s going to be just me and you for the rest of my life. I hope you’re ok with that.

January 19, 2011, Wednesday

I hate people Lord. I hate people because they hate me. They don’t even know me and they hate me. They hate me for what I did. They won’t even let me explain myself. Why is everyone else’s pain more important than mine? This is why I don’t love anyone, because no one loves me. You might say that you don’t love me because of the crime I committed, but did you love me before I committed that crime? I didn’t think so. When you saw that I was lonely did you offer your friendship? When you saw that I was lost did you share your faith in Jesus Christ with me? No, you didn’t! I had to find out about salvation through Jesus in prison! You want to know why so many people don’t get saved until they’re in prison!? I’ll tell you! It’s because you Christians don’t want to share the gospel with ghetto trash like me until we’re in prison! I wish I had someone explain the gospel to me when I was growing up. Maybe I wouldn’t be in this jail cell today. If I knew Jesus back then it probably wouldn’t have mattered that I had bad parents. I still would’ve had Jesus. Now I have to live out my Christian life in prison, possibly death row. I guess it doesn’t matter where I live out my Christian life because I’m still a child of God. No one can take that from me.

January 20, 2011, Thursday

In case you’re interested, let me tell you my story. This is a story that I would have thought to unbelievable if it didn’t happen to me. It all started about a year ago. It was a Sunday and God was the furthermost person from my mind. Please forgive me if there are portions of this story where I start to cry but I can’t help it. Also, please forgive me for all of my rambling. I can’t help it I’m too excited to sit still. Anyway, let me start from the beginning. My name is Malachi Scott and I’m from Detroit, the worst city in Michigan you could grow up in. And I had the typical ghetto upbringing. I grew up on welfare in a single mother household and an absentee father who hates me. It doesn’t matter how much your father claims he loves you, if he’s not willing to do anything he can to take care of you, he hates you. A father who truly loves his kids would be willing to sweep the streets with his tongue just so he can feed them. I had no spiritual foundation growing up. And there were times when I was a kid when I wanted to go to church, but no adults in my family would take me. Then when you grow up and have no moral compass, those same adults act like there’s something wrong with you. Or, when you’re growing up no one in your household or public schools are teaching you anything about how to become self-sufficient. Then, when you grow up and are still living at home because you have no idea how to survive on your own, those same people look you in the face and tell you you’re a loser. And they’re the one’s who taught you how to be a loser! They’re the one’s who raised you and groomed you for failure. You can’t set someone up for failure and when they fail, act like there’s something wrong with them. You raised them to be a failure! Parents want their kids to leave home but they teach them nothing about how to survive in the real world. By law kids have to go to school from kindergarten through 12th grade but in those 13 years you’re taught nothing about how to become self-sufficient. Then when you see homeless people or women prostituting or men selling drugs you shake your head and say why. I’ll tell you why, for the first eighteen years of their lives the people who were responsible for teaching them how to become self-sufficient taught them absolutely nothing. So now their wandering the streets doing whatever they can to survive, even if it’s illegal. Then you see and judge them and say they’re going to hell. If they’re going to hell then their parents and public schools are going to hell for not teaching them how to become self-sufficient. Even wild animals teach their young how to survive on their own before they abandon them in the wild. It’s a shame to think that lions and monkeys are better parents then some of you. There are baboons that are better parents then the one’s I had. All you need is one million-dollar idea to be financially secure for the rest of your life. That’s what public school should be teaching you,