May-June 1998

A Reluctant Prophet

by Jennifer Ferranti

In 1972, Charles Colson was one of the most powerful men in the country. Personal advisor to President Nixon, the 41-year-old hatchet man possessed everything Washington had to offer -- position, money, power.

But as the Watergate scandal unfolded, Colson's life began to unravel. One night, filled with worry and fear, he drove to the home of long-time business associate Tom Phillips, president of the Raytheon Company. Colson knew Phillips had recently become a Christian, and he wanted to find out more about it.

Phillips pulled out a copy of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and read the chapter entitled, "The Great Sin, Pride." It hit Colson like a bolt of lightening. Yes, he admitted, selfish pride filled every aspect of his life. And now he was paying the price.

As Colson got into his car that night, he was crying so hard he couldn't get his key in the ignition. "I sat there for a long time -- a half an hour, maybe longer -- crying out to God, saying, 'Take me the way I am.'" It was then and there Colson began his personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

In 1973, when news of Colson's conversion leaked to the press, it was met with deep cynicism.

The next year, he pleaded guilty to Watergate-related charges. He says he'll never forget how he felt when the gavel fell and the judge sentenced him to one to three years in federal prison. "It was an awful moment," Colson remembers. "But I didn't question God for an instant -- not then or later or even on reflection -- because my assumption was that I was going through what I was going through for a purpose."

Colson walked out onto the steps of the courthouse and boldly proclaimed to the watching world, "I submitted my life to Jesus Christ. I can work for the Lord in prison or out of prison. That's how I want to spend my life. And what happened today is the Lord's will and the courts will, and I'm going to accept that."

During the seven months Colson served at Alabama's Maxwell Prison, he discovered a genuine love for his fellow prisoners. Soon after he was released, he wrote his personal testimony, Born Again, which became an international bestseller, providing Colson with the money to start Prison Fellowship.

What began in a small, rented Washington, D.C. office in 1976, quickly grew into the world's largest prison outreach, serving the spiritual and practical needs of prisoners in the United States and 77 other countries. Today, Colson serves as chairman of the board of this multifaceted organization.

In the course of working with prisoners, Colson soon found himself writing and speaking on a variety of subjects. And as he warned about the state of the culture and reminded society that there is an absolute truth, the world sat up and listened.

"I feel deep convictions about things that I believe are messages from God," Colson says. "Not in the sense that I hear voices or have any extra-biblical experience. But in reading the scriptures and reflecting on what is happening in our world today, I feel this burning conviction to proclaim the truth of what God is saying and to challenge the falsehoods of the culture."

Like Jonah who was swallowed by a whale before he would go to Ninevah, Colson reluctantly accepts his role as a modern day prophet. "It's something that once in a while I shy away from," Colson says. "I'd just like to do my work in the prisons and not be so much in the limelight. And then I realize this is part of God's calling. I recognize that God has put me in this position, and I should use this voice to speak what I prayerfully believe to be the truth."

Colson has been proclaiming the truth for more than 20 years now. His 14 books have sold nearly 5 million copies. He contributes articles to the nation's leading magazines and newspapers. His daily radio commentary, Breakpoint, is listened to by 5 million people. And he is a frequent guest on national television and radio talk shows, as well as a sought-after international speaker.

In 1993, nearly two decades to the day that Colson spent his first night in a prison cell, he received the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, following in the footsteps of such previous recipients as Mother Teresa and Dr. Billy Graham. He donated his entire $1 million prize to the Prison Fellowship ministry.

Recently, at Prison Fellowship headquarters in Reston, Virginia, Chuck Colson talked to Plain Truth about his role as a prophet in a world that desperately needs to hear the truth of Jesus Christ.

Jennifer Ferranti: You have been referred to as "The Reluctant Prophet." Is that an accurate description?

Charles Colson: Well, I think that's an accurate description of anybody who has any kind of a prophetic role. Nobody wants to do this job. It would be a lot easier to sing hymns and preach pleasing sermons to people.

I got very much involved in "Evangelicals and Catholics Together," trying to bring the Church together, and it created enormous controversy. I don't enjoy that -- getting people mad at me.

We've been talking about the end of democracy and this whole question of the court overreaching and challenging the representative structures of government, and the ability of people to govern for themselves, which was the heart of the American experiment. When I did that, a lot of my conservative friends got furious at me. Some of the so called "neo-conservatives" thought I had betrayed the vision of America. They thought I was abandoning the political process.

So, I don't think anybody ever signs up for a job like this. I don't. With what I just described, I did that job crumbling and shaking. I sat at this very table telling a colleague of mine that I was terrified to start writing those articles. And yet I felt called by God to do it.

When I spoke to the evangelical community about going into the prisons 20 years ago, that wasn't a very popular message. Nobody wanted to be concerned with that. In fact, going to the prisons wasn't a very popular thing to do. I had all kinds of other opportunities.

But if you really follow God's call, you will discover that it puts you in conflict with the comfortable assumptions of the day. That's almost the definition of what it means to follow God's call. You upset the comfort of people. In particular, the American church is a very comfortable place. It's the most comfortable place in the world. On Sunday morning, you go in, find a pew, sing the music, listen to a therapeutic sermon.

If you start talking about unpopular things, you rock the boat. I have yet to think, "Oh boy, here's a wonderful place where I can shake people up." I don't get any great kick out of doing that (chuckles). Just like Jonah who didn't want to go and warn the people of God's judgment, anybody who finds himself in the position of prophet would rather not do it.

Q. It's been reported that more Christians have died for their beliefs in this century than any other since the time of Christ.

A. Oh yes. This is one of the bloodiest centuries, this is the bloodiest century in human history. There's been nothing like this -- 50 million people killed by their own governments. The figures vary, but perhaps 100 million people killed for their faith. And it continues today -- in China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and various Muslim countries around the world. Isle of Pines still runs in Cuba with political prisoners, prisoners of conscience. We know what happened in the gulag in Russia -- priests were massacred by the hundreds of thousands.

So yes, this negates the lie of the enlightenment myth that education is going to make us better, that with knowledge and society's advancement, we will evolve into a better society. It's just not true. The more technology, the more vicious the weapons we've been able to make, the more lethal we are.

Enlightenment doesn't improve the moral climate. In fact, the moral collapse of the 20th century is a direct result of philosophies of the enlightenment which said that God was dead and that we could create our own paradise. There is no answer apart from Christ.

The persecution of Christians today is utterly shocking. And the lack of moral outrage on the part of our nation is equally shocking -- on the part of both the church and the government.

Q. The Bible talks a lot about pagans. Do modern Christians know how to identify paganism?

A. (Chuckles) That's a good question. A lot of our literature alludes to religion and paganism, and we sometimes almost embrace it. No, I don't thing we're very discerning about that. We look at the language people use when they say they're Christian, and if they have the right words, particularly among evangelicals -- the right code phrases, such as "I accepted Christ on such and such a date," then we never do anything else.

But you have to look at a person's entire world view. And certainly a good quarter of America has a pagan world view. How many Christians are in that number, it's hard to say.

Q. Some believe that the greatest challenge to Christianity is the materialism and the secularism of our modern world. Do you think it's harder to be a Christian in a nation of plenty than it is to be a Christian in a third world nation?

A. It's harder to be a true Christian in a nation of plenty than in a third world country. In a third world country, serious Christians put their lives on the line and, therefore, really appreciate God's grace. They live with nothing else to trust in, and so they have total abandon when they turn to Christ.

In this country, we have a hundred diversions every day. Just turn on your television set and look at the ads. Look at the ad with Volvo saying, "We'll save your soul." Talk about a pagan ad -- an automobile is going to save your soul! (chuckle) So there's a hundred distractions every day.

Yes, it is harder. And that's one reason I enjoy going to third world countries, because there's such vitality in the Church, and they're not sucked into the culture. Our Church has been horrendously encultured -- sucked into cultural values. That does not happen in third world countries where you know the culture is the enemy. Here it's like being in Vietnam during the war -- you can't tell who the Viet Cong are because they're all wearing the same suits we are.

Q. Some of our readers may have read about the term post-Christian world. Is Christianity more threatened by direct persecution or simply by the cares of this world?

A. Christianity is being most threatened because the basic cultural value system of what historically have been known as Christian cultures has become post-Christian. That is, they're past Christianity, and they're into a view of life that has no relationship to absolute truth or absolute moral values.

What you're seeing is more and more of the cultures in which we live reflecting pagan values, or post-Christian values, even as we're professing to be Christian. The real danger is that we (in America) don't understand that difference, as we just said. A lot of Christian cultures understand it very clearly because their life is on the line.

Q. What can Christians do to guard against or overcome the non-Christian influences around them?

A. Well, I think you have to see Christianity as a world view. You have to see it as a life system. You have to see it as a way of understanding the totality of reality. And you have to understand that through and by and for Him, are all things held together.

This is God's creation. And so we have to look at music and be discerning. We have to look at advertising. I just did a radio series about the fact that so many advertisers today are selling philosophies instead of products. I had a call from the president of a large automobile manufacturer who completely agreed. He's now going to review the whole advertising campaign for his company.

But we don't realize this is happening. We drift into these things. So we first have to have a biblically informed view of the world, and then measure what we see by standards that are biblically rooted and clear.

Don't confine your Christianity to your relationship with Christ and your salvation and your growing sanctification. These things are obviously fundamental, but look as well at how Christianity is reflected in science, how it's reflected in the arts.

What is the Christian view on all the genetic research going on now? We should be looking at all those questions and thinking about them from a Christian standpoint because that's the only way you provide an influence that's formidable in culture.

Q. What I'm hearing you say is that your faith can't be like a suit you put on and take off.

A. Precisely. And it can't be just private. It is private in the sense that your relationship with God is personal between you and God. But it has profound corporate implications in the sense that when you become a Christian, you become a member of the body -- the worldwide invisible church, the believers from all denominations and colors and countries. You also become a different kind of citizen because now you are a citizen of the kingdom of God working within the city of man. So you have a different perspective on life -- or you should have.

Q. Your life has been a wonderful inspiration and role model to many Christians. What is the most important contribution you see yourself making as we prepare to enter the new millennium?

A. I would hope that I would be educating people to the need to look Christianly at all of life. I suppose my life will remembered most for having been in the White House, and then falling into prison and being converted to Christ in the process. And so my life will be remembered, I suppose, as a dramatic conversion.

But I hope I am remembered more as someone who was called to defend the truth in an age that mocks truth. Someone who called people to begin to see the totality of God's sovereign plan for human beings and nations, a plan that is quite different in terms of how we live than if we were only living for ourselves. I would hope I'd be calling people to that. That is the prophetic role, and that's what I devote my life to. I hope it will make a difference. 

Jennifer Ferranti is a freelance writer and reporter in the Washington, D.C. area.

A Vision for Today According to Chuck Colson, four great myths define our times: the four horsemen of the present apocalypse. The first horseman is the goodness of man. He believes man has multiplied evil by denying its existence. No one is accountable for his actions because every evil deed is blamed on something or someone else. The second myth is the promise of coming utopia -- the idea that the nature of man can be perfected by government. Marxism, communism and even democracy have attempted this lofty goal, yet all of them failed. The third horseman represents the relativity of moral values. Societies have abandoned their sense of ultimate moral standards. Today, everything is true, everything is right. Moral neutrality and tolerance have blurred the lines between good and evil. Finally, Colson warns of radical individualism. Societies have elevated individual rights as the ultimate social value. Family, community, church -- sacrifice for these things disappears as each person's agenda becomes more important than the communities in which they live. Colson's message is one of urgency, action, a call to arms. Not the arms that have stained the soil of this lonely planet, but into the arms of the God that hung it here. Excerpted from the film, The Reluctant Prophet, Worldwide Pictures.

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