Charles W. Colson.



Komentarz  Jana Szoltyska ( website: Jan Szoltysek, e-mail: jan.szoltysek@cho.ge.com),
mojego Przyjaciela z Kanady, na temat Chuck'a Colson'a: 
  
" Chuck jest bardzo interesujaca postacia. Zaczal kariere jako zawodowy
zolnierz, nastepnie zostal prawnikiem. W wieku okolo czterdziestu lat byl
jednym z kluczowych ludzi prezydenta Nixona. Mowi sie, ze byl osoba numer 3
lub 4  w Stanach po prezydencie, wiceprezydencie i sekretarzu stanu, ktorym
w tym czasie (lata siedemdziesiate) byl dr Henry Kissinger...

Colson wprawdzie w samej aferze Watergate nie maczal palcow, ale poczas
prowadzenia kampanii wyborczej czesto stosowal brudna taktyke i dzialal na
pograniczu prawa. Znany byl jako "hatchet man"  czyli czlowiek-siekiera. Za
te dzialalnosc odsiedzal kilkanascie miesiecy w wiezieniu. 

Tuz przed procesem Colson wykonal zwrot o 180 stopni, upokorzyl sie przed
Bogiem i przyjal Jezusa do swojego serca. Jego najwiekszy rywal w kongresie
- chrzescijanin Harold Hughes stal sie jego najlepszym przyjacielem. 

Po odsiedzeniu wyroku Chuck zalozyl grupe Prison Fellowship ( http://www.pfm.org/  ), 
ktora przyjela za zadanie glosic Dobra Nowine w wiezieniach. Od tego czasu
wielokrotnie przeprowadzano badania na temat wplywu Ewangelii na recydywe.
Okazuje sie, ze wsrod wiezniow nawroconych do wiary Chrystusowej
prawdopodobienstwo recydywy jest co najmniej okolo 70% nizsze niz
przecietna. Inne organizacje zwiazane z Prison Fellowship to:

Justice Fellowship - http://www.justicefellowship.org/index.htm
 
Neighbors Who Care - http://www.neighborswhocare.org/
 
Angel Tree - http://www.angeltree.org/
 
Chuck elokwentnie opisuje swoja historie w autobiograficznej ksiazce "Born
Again".

Zalaczam list, ktory nawiazuje to nawrocenia Chucka Colsona, oraz jeszcze
jeden list, ktory opisuje sytuacje tak nieprawdopodobna, ze mozna ja
wytlumaczyc tylko w kategoriach transcendentnych.

Jestem daleki w tej chwili od chwalenia niemoralnego postepowania
kryminalistow. Puente, ktora mi sie nasuwa mozna by sformulowac tak:
Obecnosc Boga najbardziej uderzajaco odbija sie w zyciu ludzi, ktorzy kiedys
postepowali bardzo niemoralnie, ale pewnego dnie podjeli decyzje o porzuceniu
zlej drogi. Jezeli Pan Bog potrafil tak odmienic zycie ludzi, ktorzy
przekroczyli prawo, to moze on odmienic zycie kazdego z nas...

Jezeli moge cos doradzic, to sugeruje zamiescic ponizszy list Chucka Colsona
ze stosownym komentarzem na Twojej stronie internetowej..." 


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BreakPoint Commentary - August 12, 1998

25th Anniversary
by Charles W. Colson

Today is a very special day in my life and so I hope you'll
indulge me if I depart from the usual BreakPoint format and let
me share what is for me a cause of great celebration.

Twenty-five years ago I was mired in the Watergate scandal.
Almost every day I'd pick up the newspaper and see my name in
headlines on the front page.  There were times when I thought I
was Public Enemy Number l.  My world was collapsing.

Twenty-five years ago this very day I visited a good friend who
seemed so at peace that I was determined to find out what had
happened in his life.  Tom Philips, then the president of
Rathion, read to me from a wonderful little book by C.S. Lewis
titled "Mere Christianity." Tom read from the chapter on pride,
and told me about Jesus Christ.  I'd been to church many times
in my life, and I'd been at religious services at the White
House, but until that night I had never heard the gospel.

Tom wanted to pray with me that night but I was too proud to do
so.  I told him I'd read his book.  I tucked "Mere
Christianity" under my arm and headed for the car.  But I was
unable to drive out of the driveway that night because this so-
called White House hatchet man, ex-marine captain, was crying
too hard to get the keys into the ignition of the car.

I sat there for a long time that night deeply convicted of my
own sin.  Desperate to know God, calling out to him, asking Him
to come into my life.

Nothing has been the same since that night.  Nothing can ever
be the same again because the living God lives in me.  People
can argue all they wish about whether Christianity is true or
not.  I know--because I know my savior.

Along the way I've learned some lessons.  The most important
one as I reflect back is that I used to think the most
important things in life were money and power, prestige and
position.  But the more I achieved by the world's standards the
emptier I was inside.  It was in prison with everything gone
that I realized the great lesson of life--the one that
Alexander Soltzenitzen wrote about from the gulag, when he
said, "Bless you prison, bless you, for being in my life, for
there, lying on the rotting prison floor, I came to realize
that the object of life is not prosperity, as we are made to
believe, but the maturing of the human soul."  We seek security
in this world, we can never find it.  When we lose our lives
for Christ's sake we find the only security there is and the
only meaning and purpose.

When I got up this morning I prayed a prayer that I've prayed
every morning for the past 25 years--but I prayed it with
special feeling this morning because it was the quarter century
mark.  And that prayer is one of thanking God that he reached
down in the depths of Watergate, picked up what was then public
enemy no. 1, turned his life around and now uses him for his
glory and his purposes.

People often ask me why I do what I do.  This isn't easy work.
I've been in 600 prisons including some of the worst hell holes
in the world. My life has been threatened. It's demanding, it's
pressure all the time.  But I've never looked back.  I do it
not because it's a job, not because it's a ministry, not
because there's some glamour in it--there's none.

I do it out of gratitude to God for what He did in my life in
that driveway 25 years ago.  And it's that same gratitude that
should drive every single one of us as Christians.

Think about what Jesus did. I do all the time.  I would have
been overwhelmed by the stench of my own sin were I not certain
for a fact that Jesus Christ, the son of God, died on that
cross for my sins, and I'm forgiven, and I can live with
myself.

That realization is so overwhelming that I can do nothing apart
from doing my duty.  Whatever God calls me to do, that's what
I'm going to do.  I want nothing more than to please him out of
gratitude for what he has done for me.

Maybe these reflections will encourage or help you because
while my conversion was celebrated and I was the chief of
sinners, the same gratitude should apply to every one of us.

(c) 1998 Prison Fellowship Ministries

Copyright notice:  We encourage liberal distribution of these
transcripts through email and print.  Please do not post on
the world wide web or use this content for profit.

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BreakPoint Commentary - October 2, 1998
Changed Hearts, Changed Lives
Daniel Crocker's Repentance
by Charles W. Colson

You can hardly turn on the television these days without hearing the word
"repentance."  It's become, thanks to the Washington scandal, a hot topic.
And pastors all over the country are being asked, "How do you know when
someone is truly repentant?"
Well a few days ago, a Virginia man answered that question more eloquently
than all the pastors combined.
On the surface, Daniel Crocker was the typical suburbanite. He had a wife
and two kids and a good job as a warehouse manager.  But Crocker had a dark
secret: Nineteen years ago, he had taken the life of a Kansas woman named
Tracy Fresquez.
Over the years, the burden of this secret became intolerable.  Eventually,
Daniel Crocker turned to God for forgiveness, became a Christian, became
active in an evangelical church, and he and his family grew wonderfully in
their faith.  But he could not bring himself to tell the police about his
terrible crime.
It was when Daniel began ministering to a prison inmate that he came under
conviction.  One day after Daniel returned home from a prison visit, he
prayed with his wife, Nicolette.
Daniel then began planning how to go about surrendering to the authorities.
For assistance, he turned to the Reverend Al Lawrence, a Prison Fellowship
staff member and assistant pastor of a local church.  Lawrence is an
ex-offender himself, and he counseled Crocker and helped prepare him for
prison life.
Lawrence told the Washington Post why Crocker was taking this extraordinary
step: "[Crocker's] faith," he said, "told him he had to deal with that part
of his life that he's been skirting over the years."
For Crocker, the hardest part was telling his children, nine year-old Isaac
and eight-year old Analiese, why he had to leave them.  As the children
tearfully begged him not to go, Crocker, himself in tears, told them: "I
have to do this.  I'd be a hypocrite if I raised you by the Word of God and
I didn't [turn myself in]."
So last week Crocker boarded a plane for Kansas where he was met by startled
prosecutors and charged with first-degree murder.  Prosecutor Paul Morrison
says that while Crocker will receive credit for turning himself in, "he also
did a horrible thing" for which he ought to be held accountable.
The apostle Paul writes that "godly sorrow leads to salvation and brings no
regret." By contrast there's "worldly sorrow": grief over being caught, not
over having sinned.  Paul warns that this kind of sorrow "produces death."
The Crockers' remarkable story is a timely lesson in what it means to
repent. The kind of repentance Paul describes produces changed hearts and
changed lives. It doesn't ask "what can I get away with?" but rather "how do
I make things right?"  I talked with Nicolette, and her faith is rock-solid.
She will hold that family together while Daniel's away.
But they need our prayers and support.  If you'll call Breakpoint we'll tell
you how you can write to the family if you wish.  And you can surely pray
for them.
You also might want to share this extraordinary story with your neighbors.
At a time when words no longer seem to mean what they used to, the Daniel
Crocker story will help people understand the difference between bogus
repentance . . . and the real thing.

(c) 1998 Prison Fellowship Ministries
Copyright notice:  We encourage liberal distribution of these transcripts
through email and print.  Please do not post on the world wide web or use
this content for profit.