Remembering Chuck Colson

Timothy George:

Once while visiting Trivandrum, India, Chuck Colson was taken to a camp with more than a thousand inmates, most of them “untouchables.” Caged in squalid holes, with no toilets or running water, they were totally dehumanized, treated as outcasts. Speaking through a Hindi translator, Chuck shared his own testimony of grace and forgiveness. After the closing prayer, acting against the advice he had been given, he jumped down from the platform and ran to touch the men before him. Later, he wrote about this event: “Suddenly, like a flight of birds, men rose to their feet and circled around me. I shook every hand I could. Most of the men just reached and touched; they were desperate to ‘touch,’ to know that the love God offers is real.” Later, they went back to their grim cells. But that night, through the witness of Chuck Colson, they had received some good news: in Jesus Christ there are no untouchables. All of us bear that message whenever we walk the thin edge of costly discipleship.

(HT: Randy Alcorn)

Tribute to Colson by Russell Moore

Russell Moore:

In the weeks and months after the death of Chuck Colson, many of us have reflected on how God changed the old White House “hatchet man,” the dirty trickster who participated in perhaps the greatest challenge to the American constitutional system in over two hundred years of our history. I was -perturbed to read newspaper and website accounts of Colson that treated him, after his death, as though he were still the Watergate criminal, as though his work in the prisons for nearly forty years after his conviction was just some way to “atone” for his crimes…

With the loss of Chuck Colson, we’ve lost a Christian hero. We’ve also lost a living picture of what it means to be a trophy of God’s grace. Let’s remember him as he would have us do. Let’s remember him as one who stood with the prisoners and the orphans, with the unborn and the addicted. Let’s remember him as one who stood up for the meaning of marriage and for compassion for those on death row. Let’s remember him as a loyal follower of Jesus Christ. And yes, along with all that, as a Nixon man, too.

Read the rest.

Colson's Last Public Interview

This is similar to the video I posted yesterday but has more footage.

"If Everyone Matters and Counts, Then Criminals Do as Well"

Michael Gerson:

Prison often figures large in conversion stories. Pride is the enemy of grace, and prison is the enemy of pride. “How else but through a broken heart,” wrote Oscar Wilde after leaving Reading Gaol, “may Lord Christ enter in?” It is the central paradox of Christianity that fulfillment starts in emptiness, that streams emerge in the desert, that freedom can be found in a prison cell. Chuck’s swift journey from the White House to a penitentiary ended a life of accomplishment — only to begin a life of significance. The two are not always the same. The destruction of Chuck’s career freed up his skills for a calling he would not have chosen, providing fulfillment beyond his ambitions. I often heard him quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and mean it: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life.”

Chuck was a powerful preacher, an influential cultural critic and a pioneer of the dialogue between evangelicals and Catholics. But he was always drawn back to the scene of his disgrace and his deliverance. The ministry he founded, Prison Fellowship, is the largest compassionate outreach to prisoners and their families in the world, with activities in more than 100 countries. It also plays a morally clarifying role. It is easier to serve the sympathetic. Prisoners call the bluff of our belief in human dignity. If everyone matters and counts, then criminals do as well. Chuck led a movement of volunteers attempting to love some of their least lovable neighbors. This inversion of social priorities — putting the last first — is the best evidence of a faith that is more than crutch, opiate or self-help program. It is the hallmark of authentic religion — and it is the vast, humane contribution of Chuck Colson.

Read the rest.

Chuck Colson Remembered

Decreasing the Surplus Population

Chuck Colson:

The last time that Britain’s population was cut in half was the 14th century. The cause was the Black Death.

Seven centuries later, a leading British environmentalist is urging a similar decrease in what Ebenezer Scrooge famously called “the surplus population.” Only this time, he’s asking for volunteers.

In February, Jonathan Porritt, the chairman of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission, said that couples with more than two children were placing an “‘irresponsible’ burden of the environment.”

He accused his fellow environmentalists of “betraying the interests of [their] members” by not telling people to be responsible for “their total environmental footprint.”

Not surprisingly, Porritt’s comments didn’t sit very well with a lot of Britons. But he’s convinced, as he wrote on his website, that “logic” and “sound evidence” are on his side.

So, six weeks later, he upped the ante: he declared that the UK must cut its population from its current 61 million to 30 million “if it is to build a sustainable society.”

Read the rest.