COMMENTARY: Let moral renewal begin with me

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(AT)compuserve.com.) (RNS)-In synagogues, churches and meeting halls across the […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(AT)compuserve.com.)

(RNS)-In synagogues, churches and meeting halls across the nation Thursday (May 2), Americans will gather for the National Day of Prayer. The centerpiece of the occasion is an all-day prayer vigil in the U.S. Capitol at which I, among others, will speak.


Visiting the Capitol is a reminder that our nation, great as it is, has been experiencing a long moral slide. Statistics on abortion, crime, the breakup of the family and inner city chaos testify to what Princeton professor John Dilulio calls the”moral poverty”of our age. The Capitol is also an emblem of our abiding faith in solving our problems with massive governmental intervention.

Over the last two decades, I’ve watched Christians organize political efforts that attempt to reverse this moral decline. It began with the Moral Majority, whose cause has been taken up today by the Christian Coalition. A host of other Christian political movements are all aiming at the same goal: The restoration of virtue and traditional values.

Many Americans would like nothing more than to wake up tomorrow to discover that God had fixed everything, arranging for peace between the Bloods and Crips, for metal detectors to be taken out of schools, for marriages to be reconciled-for the lions to lie down with the lambs.

But these great expectations miss the larger point, in the same way that political movements often miss the mark. We want everyone else to be changed. But we are oblivious to the primary task, which is renewing ourselves.

Those who read the Old Testament will remember that after Nehemiah had rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem, the inhabitants settled in and soon enough started acting like, well, modern-day Americans. Far from following God’s law, they did pretty much what they felt like.

After an absence, Nehemiah returned to the city and demanded that its residents clean up their act. But he also prayed an extraordinary prayer, which on first reading almost seems inappropriate. After reciting the transgressions he had confronted, he said,”Remember me … oh my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.” Why did Nehemiah ask mercy for himself? He had not broken God’s law. The others had. The answer is simple and profound: The way you change the world is by changing yourself.

I encountered this in a very dramatic experience last fall in Spain. A group of young Christians had formed a community on a dusty plain an hour and a half south of Madrid. Out of nothing they had built a halfway house for people being released from prison who had no home. I was invited to speak to the inmates.


I was struck by the smiles of the volunteers. This was indeed a joyous place. But when I was ushered into the room to address the 35 former inmates, I was shocked by the sight of sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. Every one of them was dying from AIDS.

I’ve given speeches all over the world, comfortable with my testimony and defense of the existence of God. Standing before this group, I gave every argument I’ve ever used. Yet nothing happened. I ended my address feeling I’d been a total failure.”You preached a wonderful message. It was just terrific, but it didn’t get through to them,”said a volunteer who seemed to feel my pain.”They can’t even hear you. They have to see Christ’s love lived out in us. We simply have to be here so that they’ll see Him, even as they die.” What she described was no easy task: In fact, this volunteer had recently had a female patient die in her arms and had taken on the job of caring for her children. Yet she, like the other volunteers, radiated joy. They freely mingled with the halfway house residents, sharing meals, caring for them, raising their children. All joyously.

It then struck me that the person who changed that night was not a dying inmate. It was I. When we minister to others we realize that often we are being changed more than the people we serve. This is not only a religious insight. Therapists of all types recognize that one way to combat depression in patients is to guide them to helping others.”Remember me, Lord,”was Nehemiah’s prayer. Similarly, Jesus instructed us to remove the beam from our own eye before attending to the speck in the eye of a neighbor. In these days of pressure-group politics, when good-hearted people all too often call upon others to change while ignoring what must be done in their own hearts, an ear for this wisdom would work wonders.

LJB1 END COLSON

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