Born Again by Chuck Colson Review

My WEM Biographies Project has been thrown out of order past my library who doesn't carry well-nigh of the other titles, and then I've been forced to await for them on inter-library loans.  Which means that I have no thought when they are going to arrive or which is going to make it first.  After 2 months, the starting time book has arrived, Born Again by Charles Due west. Colson.

Colson occupied a position high-up in the U.s.a. authorities, serving as Special Counsel to Richard Nixon during Nixon's years in the presidency.  Named as 1 of the Watergate Seven, he was tried and sentenced to ane to three years in prison house.  His autobiography is a story of his ascension and fall, and finally his rise over again to a higher calling.

Colson briefly covers his early life as a U.S. Marine, his education, and the opening of his law do in Massachusetts, then quickly moves to his initiation into politics and his service to President Nixon.  Called Nixon's "Hatchet Man", he was quoted as saying that he'd walk over his ain grandmother to go the job done.  Yet at the fourth dimension, Colson saw these qualities as necessary in the political world.  Using an "ends justifies the means" mentality, he felt that he was helping the president build a earth of peace and safety.  Ironically, with those donating sentiments, came an anger and intolerance against anyone with different opinions:

"….. a Holy War was declared against the enemy — those who opposed the noble goals we sought of peace and stability in the world.  They who differed with us, whatever their motives, must be vanquished.  The seeds of destruction were past now already sown — not in them but in u.s.."

Colson shows how good intentions, however noble, can be corrupted without the values of a higher authority than man himself.

With Colson assisting in Nixon'due south re-ballot nonetheless non planning to stay on into the second administration, on June 17, 1972, a security guard discovered five men inside the National Democratic Commitee offices in the Watergate Circuitous.  Equally the story leaked, a bugging system had been installed in the offices by Nixon's men. Although Colson had nothing to practice with this "scandal", being Nixon's henchman, he immediately began to take the heat.

Yet even earlier Watergate broke, Colson was having a crisis of conscience over his behaviour and the accepted unscrupulous behaviour of others in this political machine. His listen became opened to the immorality rampant in Washington and he strove to reconcile it with his moral principles.  When Watergate hit, his turmoil increased:

"In the whole sordid Watergate struggle, the Weicker episode (a senator who told him he wanted to break his nose) for me was the most unpleasant; being falsely accused before millions on national Goggle box, then coming near to blows with a United States senator.  I was used to playing equally rough as the side by side guy, merely Watergate was creating a madness I had never witnessed in twenty years in Washington, reducing political morality to the level of bayonet warfare ……… The feeling of empitness was dorsum also, the questions about myself, my purpose, what my life was all about …. " (p.118)

Curiously at this time, he began to encounter Christians, including Doe Coe, Harold Hughes, Graham B. Purcell, Jr. and Al Quie, congressmen and senators who were part of the political motorcar, understood the mess only managed to live with integrity and morality within the turmoil.  These "brothers" were both Republican and Democrat, and withal party polarity meant nothing to them, as their bond was formed based on the common dearest of Christ.

In a nationally syndicated column, reporter Nick Thimmesch wrote of the growing prayer meetings:

 " ….. spurred by Watergate ….. They meet in each other's homes ….. they meet at Busybody Breakfasts, they converse on the phone ….. a Alliance in belief …. there are many here and more are forming ….. I am not most to say that virtue and dignity are well-nigh to envelop the nation's Capital — this is a tough, hard town.  But Watergate has created a not bad introspection, peculiarly about personal values and this underground prayer movement can provide some peace, and a amend sense of direction to many afflicted with spiritual angst… " (p. 204)

Nixon announces release of edited transcripts of the Watergate tapes source Wikipedia

While Colson stuck by the president, professing both of their innocence, with the release of Watergate transcripts, information technology became apparent that the president knew more than than Colson suspected.  While Colson had been urging exposure for those involved, behind closed doors Nixon was stonewalling the investigators.  Among other regrets, Colson felt that the transcripts showed Nixon at his worst, instead of the complex man he was, a homo who was passionate well-nigh his country, altruistic, and industrious, however with faults that were all besides common within political culture.  The transcripts, however, appeared to vindicate Colson.  Fifty-fifty the prosecutor finally acknowledged to the printing:

"Colson's declared roles in the cover-up and burglary would accept been more difficult to show than those of the other alleged conspirators …… because this man was outside the master stream of the overt acts."  (p. 260)

Finally, with Colson's indictment, on his lawyer'due south advice he pleaded not-guilty, just took the fifth amendment, however this plea did non assuage Colson'due south conscience nor marshal with his new-found Christian conventionalities.  While he was not party to the Watergate affair, he was complicit in a burglary x months before, a intermission-in of a psychiatrist's office to search for information on Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst,  planning to use the information as a smear tactic against him; Ellsberg was suspected of leaking Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.  Burdened with his part in this detail campaign, Colson, with the support and prayer of his new friends, decided to tell the truth.  It was a shocking decision from a man who, if he'd kept silent, would likely have been acquitted and could accept gone on to alive a very comfortable existence.  Even so, Colson had been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Toll of Discipleship and was convicted by these words:

"The first step which follows Christ's call cuts the disciple off from his previous existence.  The phone call to follow at once produces a new state of affairs.  To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible." (p. 242)

Colson'due south resolution, not only sent his lawyers into fits but came with a cost.  However, the new life he discovered held infinity more success and contentment and freedom than his old life had supplied.

On June 21, 1974, Colson was sentenced to one to 3 years in prison house and a $v,000 fine.

White House Special Counsel Chuck Colson source Wikipedia

Sent originally to Fort Holabird prison, where he was needed every bit a witness, Colson spent near of his sentence at Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama.  Initially, while the feel was foreign and unsettling, while reading his Bible, Colson noticed a beauty and wonder in the words, understanding the Trinity in a deeper sense and with a personal message woven within it:

"Just as God felt necessary to become man to help His children, could it be that I had to become a prisoner the meliorate to empathize suffering and deprivations?  If God chose to come to earth to know us better as brothers, then peradventure God's plan for me was to be in prison house every bit a sinner, and to know men there every bit one of them.  Could I ever sympathise the horrors of prison life past visiting a prison?  The voice inside of me answered: Of course not.  No one could understand this life without being a part of information technology, feeling the anxieties, knowing the helplessness, living in pathos.  On a tiny scale, it was the lesson of Jesus coming to us."

Colson began to see his incarceration every bit an opportunity to accomplish out and assistance people. He began immediately to connect with the inmates, meeting with some to pray, helping others with their letters to gain parole, and even helping smuggle dye into the facility to dye some coats prison-brown then the prisoners would non have to freeze during the winter (Later, he regretted this breaking of the rules, an evidence of his former habit of manipulating situations).  Colson had truthful empathy for these men, many some of who were imprisoned due to mischance, or harsh sentencing.  Through his love and caring for the prisoners around him, he began to change some of their outlooks and behaviour, and when he was released from prison seven months later on, there were many whom he'd call "friend".

While the volume ends with Colson's release, his interactions with inmates didn't terminate there.  Having an enormous heart for their plight and the struggles they faced, he began Prison Fellowship, an organization that grew to go the nation's largest, helping both prisoners and their families.  In the epilogue of the book based on a study washed at the University of Pennsylvannia, Colson reveals that when comparing the inmates who accept gone through his program with the general prison populous, only 8% of the his prisoners reoffended within 2 years, compared with xx% of prisoners from the control group and 50% nationwide.  With these very impressive statistics, I institute some online controversy about them, complaints that of the 177 people in Colson's study group, that simply the 75 people who graduated were used for the report, skewing the figures to his advantage.  These complaints appear inconsistent with the purpose of the study.  The intent of the study was to show the re-offending figures of Prison house Fellowship graduates compared to the standard prisoner.  To use prisoners who didn't fully complete the program would be senseless and not within the written report's parameters.  The report every bit is, does show that if a prisoner stays in the Prison Fellowship programme and completes information technology, he has much better chance of returning to gild, becoming a useful member of information technology, and living a fulfilling life.

Some reviews (and fifty-fifty the introduction to Colson's book) merits that the main focus of the book is Colson's conversion and non the Watergate scandal, which isn't quite accurate.  While I won't debate with the verb "focus," practically almost of the book relates Colson'southward political career, and with possibly ¼ covering the period of his incarceration, the book ending right after his release.  However, I do recollect that the back-story is imperative to build and explain his journey from a cut-throat pol to a committed Christian with non only a love for his beau human, simply a desire to put that love in action to better the lives of others.

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Source: https://classicalcarousel.com/born-again-by-charles-w-colson/

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