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Sunday, May 27, 2012

RIP Chuck Colson

Chuck Colson died April 21st.  To millions of incarcerated men and women like me, Chuck Colson was a hero.  He represented the transformative power of grace.  He was a man, alone at times, who cared about the plight of the incarcerated.  In many ways, Chuck Colson saved my life.
That his life turned out the way it did proves what the Prophet Jeremiah told the scattered, defeated people of Israel whose sins and failures led to their collapse as a nation and exile to Babylon.  “God says ‘For I know the plans I have for you, plans . . . to give you a future and a hope.’”
Chuck Colson, lawyer, rabid-Republican, a right-hand presence to Richard Nixon, was known as a fixer. Anything Nixon needed done, Colson would make happen.  He was ruthless, brilliant, arrogant and deeply committed to Nixon and his success in the Presidency. 

It was Colson who went after Daniel Ellsberg – leaker of the famous “Pentagon Papers” which detailed America’s military failures in Vietnam – using a series of illegally orchestrated actions against Ellsberg to embarrass and discredit him.  Colson engaged the likes of Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who shortly thereafter gained notoriety with their botched break-in at the Watergate Hotel.
Indicted on a charge of obstruction of justice for his role in the Ellsberg affair, Colson ignored the advice of his lawyer and friends and pled guilty, no questions asked, no deal sought.  He claimed a religious conversion.  He’d “found Jesus” and he had to eliminate his old life before he could begin anew.  For that, he was ridiculed and lampooned.  Sentenced to one to three years in a minimum security Federal prison, he made parole after seven months.  His imprisonment had a profound effect on his life. 

His “frightening experience in confinement” taught him that prison, for the vast majority of those sentenced, was a horrible failure and not a suitable punishment.  Prisons, he argued turned prisoners into embittered individuals who could only “contemplate escape and revenge at every turn.”
Colson founded Prison Fellowship, a Christian prison program evangelizing the incarcerated and pushing for prison reform and dignity for those behind bars.  His work led to him receiving the prestigious Templeton Prize in 1993, a million dollar award given to the person who had done the most to advance religion in that year.

For inmates and their families – Christian, Muslim, atheist – it didn’t matter, Colson was a source of comfort and hope.  Few programs work well in prison.  Prison Fellowship is one shining success in a sea of despair.
A few days after my arrest, as I calculated and contemplated ending my life realizing my worst fears had happened – I was losing everything even though I’d prayed over and over for a way out – I ran across Colson’s autobiography, “Born Again”.  Shortly thereafter I instructed my lawyer that I would cooperate fully, plead guilty to all charges brought provided I could sign our home and personal effects over to my wife.  Lawyers, friends and a doctor told me not to do it.  “You’ll have no leverage with the Commonwealth.  You’ll have nothing if she divorces you.”  It didn’t matter.  I’d made a promise to God to put aside the old.

Many times, days that I thought would never end, I returned to something I heard Colson say.  He would go through everything again, he said, for the opportunity to experience God’s grace.  I thought of that often and it sustained me.
Colson was a brilliant, driven man.  And, like all of us, he was flawed.  Yet God had a plan for Chuck Colson.  God has a plan for all of us.

Outwardly, Colson was the same man, still driven, still amusing, still engaging.  But inwardly he was a new creation.  That his “new” life didn’t begin until he was in his late forties gives me hope. 
The work Chuck Colson began with prisoners and prison reform will continue.  And for that, those of us in here can rejoice.   Chuck Colson and his story of faith will never be forgotten.

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