Yet one night in 1972, Chuck Colson found himself in his car in the driveway of Tom Phillips, president of the Raytheon corporation. Phillips, a committed Christian, had just been reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity to Colson. These words were used by the Holy Spirit to penetrate Colson’s once hardened heart:
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. … There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. … The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.
Colson saw those words and felt as if Lewis were talking directly to him. In his car, he bowed his head and put his faith in Christ alone for salvation. Two years later, Colson was convicted of crimes and sent to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. He served seven months in a federal prison camp in Alabama. Before he was released, a fellow inmate challenged him to remember those left behind bars and Chuck made a promise that he would. He spent the rest of his life fulfilling that promise.
In 1975, Colson began a small Bible study program in Washington, D.C. In August of 1976, he filed papers to launch Prison Fellowship, a non-profit ministry serving incarcerated men and women. That same year his book Born Again was released. Little did Colson know that God would use this disgraced political operative to launch the largest faith-based prison ministry in the world.
Click Here to Read More (Originally Published at World Magazine)
Daniel is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including The Dignity Revolution, Agents of Grace, and his forthcoming book, In Defense of Christian Patriotism. Dan is a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Angela, have four children.
