Charles Colson, the hatchet man of Nixon’s infamous Watergate scandal died this year on April 21.
More than becoming a prisoner at the height of his world-wide influence, he would perhaps be best remembered as a converted ex-con for Christ who went on to found the largest prison ministry, Prison Fellowship, again with a world-wide influence.
Among those who left indelible marks on his born-again life were larger-than-life heroes of faith in the persons of Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, Kuyper, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Francis Schaeffer.
These (and other Christian reformers) set a pathway, which in his middle and later life Colson was only too glad to tread following his fall from the height of power.
He demonstrated that only a reform backed by the power of the Spirit of God would change lives in and outside the prisons permanently, requiring no (or very little) remission to pre-convicted lives.
In his incessant fight for the real truth, which is convincingly found only in The Truth (Jesus), Colson spent his even- more- hectic post-White House years to vindicate the biblical message.
“Some say today that the church should take a sabbatical from speaking to the culture at large,” wrote Colson in one of his recent columns.
“That would be a grave mistake. The alternative to winsomely engaging the culture isn’t blissful withdrawal: it is further subjugation to…the dictatorship of relativism.”
The gift of a sharp intellect that he was endowed with, coupled with being a stickler of a post-conversion pungent morality, reminds many of another changed slave of God in the person of King Solomon.
The Old Testament hero made tremendous good use of rightness of God’s wisdom, freely available to those who ask for it, in hundreds of his simple but profoundly life-changing proverbs.
Following one of his puzzling sayings: “Wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her,” Solomon expounded the rightness of wisdom as a way of life.
It contrasts starkly with the life of wickedness as shown all through his proverbs. Those who had found the true way of life testify to the difference between them.
This means that when a person takes God’s wisdom as his own way of life, it will characterize what is wholesome and good in him.
This is what Jesus promised when He said He had come to give life and that meant a more abundant life.
Solomon compared wisdom to valuable material things, but there is really no comparison.
Colson’s earlier life testifies that the power and the prestige of the White House was not enough prophylactic to his fall from grace.
Narayan Mitra is pastor of the Merritt Baptist church.
