When Redemption Is Real

[Valin]

National Review: Chuck Colson didn’t fall from grace, he ascended to it.

Rich Lowry

4/6/12

 

For the first time in 34 years, Chuck Colson won’t be in a prison for Easter. The famous Watergate figure and Christian convert usually spends the day ministering to prisoners, but is recovering from surgery to remove a blood clot on his brain.

 

Colson, 80, is a giant of our time. He is a reminder of the true meaning of redemption, a concept that has been debased in our Tilt-a-Whirl media culture that can’t distinguish between notoriety and fame. In contemporary America, redemption begins sometime between the first check-in into rehab and the first cable-TV interview, and reaches completion when everyone gets distracted by someone else’s attention-grabbing disgrace.

 

Colson’s personal redemption was wrenchingly sincere, a shattering experience that brought him through that great narrative arc of conversion: worldly success, crushing humiliation, and then victory in terms he never would have imagined when he was at the pinnacle of power by the side of the leader of the free world.

 

(Snip)

 

He who has ears, let him here