Remembering Chuck Colson

At 12 the son of Inez and Wendell Colson organized fundraisers at his school to buy a Jeep for the Army to use in World War II.
At 17, he worked as a volunteer to re-elect the governor of Massachusetts.
At 21,  with his bachelor’s degree in hand, he served with the U.S. Marine Corps.
At 28, having served as assistant secretary to the Navy, he earned his Juris Doctorate from George Washington University Law school.
At 30, he founded a law firm that quickly became known in Boston and Washington, D.C., especially after adding a former chair of the Securities Exchange Commission.
Then at 37, Charles Colson took the first step to activities that changed his life. He joined the Richard Nixon administration, becoming the president’s special counsel responsible for many projects.
At that time, Slate magazine writer David Plotz described Colson as “Richard Nixon’s hard man, the ‘evil genius’ of an evil administration.” Colson echoed the thought in his own writings, saying he was “valuable to the President … because I was willing … to be ruthless in getting things done.”
The Hatchet Man, as some called him, would walk over his own grandmother if necessary to get things done. Wikipedia reports that as a result of Colson’s actions the use of the term “has since become commonplace for anyone who is tasked with conducting distasteful, illegal or unfair ‘dirty work’ to protect the reputation or power of their employer.”
His activities reflected exactly that – until the tower of terror came tumbling down. Nixon’s secrets and Colson’s complicity, along with others, became public knowledge with headlines daily screaming new information about Watergate, “The White House Plumbers” and cover-ups.
Nixon resigned in shame; Colson pled guilty to obstruction of justice and was sent to jail.
In the midst of all the turmoil, the devastating headlines and revelations, a friend gave Colson the book “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. Colson read it, saw the error of his ways, repented and became a follower of Christ – a Christian.
When he made his new-found faith public, few newspapers saw anything other than just another public ploy for sympathy and an attempt to avoid prison.
At 44, the former Hatchet Man went to jail and, although he served less than a year, those months in jail so impacted Colson that it changed his focus from men in power to men in prison.
At 45, Colson founded Prison Fellowship as an outreach ministry to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families. In a sense he became the Hatchet Man for changes in our national prisons. Having personally seen the impact of our national warehousing approach to criminal justice, Colson promoted prisoner rehabilitation and prison reform.
In the decades since then, he saw the recidivism rate cut by almost two-thirds for prisoners who completed the faith-based program and he touched the lives of countless prisoners’ families.
At 52, Colson established Justice Fellowship, a Christian-based criminal justice reform group which reflected his changed views. Colson criticized the death penalty as being unequally applied; he opposed the incarceration of nonviolent, non-dangerous offenders, and advocated for restitution as a more redemptive approach for both perpetrator and victim.
Colson, never one to sit silently on the sidelines, wrote more than 30 books related to prison reform, as well as books about living as a member of the Body of Christ and books on government and God. He wrote columns for Christianity Today, and spoke across the nation on related topics including a speech titled “The Problem of Ethics,” where he argued that a society without a foundation of moral absolutes cannot long survive, which he delivered at Harvard Business School.
Saturday, April 21, at age 80, Colson died in the hospital “from complications resulting from a brain hemorrhage.”
From his controversial conversion to his speeches and books, Colson exhibited the change that Christ made in his life – a change that left a legacy in many fields which will long be felt.