Charles Colson died on Saturday at age 80. The bright Bostonian was a conscience-less “hatchet man” (Colson’s own phrase) for President Richard Nixon. For orchestrating break-ins and disinformation campaigns against Nixon’s political opponents, Colson was convicted of obstruction of justice. Against the advice of his attorney, Colson pleaded guilty. That painful turn of honesty was the first sign of his rebirth.
In jail awaiting trial, Colson had become a born-again Christian. It was not a conversion of convenience. In prison later, he founded Prison Fellowship Ministries. He said he was moved to do so when he saw how his fellow prisoners lived their days consumed with thoughts of release and revenge.
Colson dedicated the rest of his life to saving the souls of as many of America’s prisoners as he could. “It is odd to say but prison proved the best thing that ever happened to Chuck, and it made him a force for good,” John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel, whom Colson had tried to destroy, wrote in The Washington Post on Monday.
Colson could have squandered his life in hatred and bitterness. Instead, through God’s grace he turned it into one of the great stories of redemption of the last half century. R.I.P.