I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon and I don’t mean to be insensitive,
truly. Perhaps there are rules that govern these things, and I am
violating them, or maybe I am just missing some vital piece of
information. I don’t know. But I have been to a wide variety of
Christian blogs and news sites reading the obituaries and memorials and
remembrances of Charles Colson and have been surprised to note that they
are have been very nearly uniformly, unabashedly positive.
I am
not convinced that we are doing right here. I suppose I would rather
wait a little while to say this, but then the opportunity will be
gone. At least to my understanding, Colson’s legacy was both more and
less than people are making it out to be. I didn’t really understand the
man in all his inconsistencies and complexities while he lived—the
combination of good and bad baffled me—and I certainly don’t understand
him now that he has died.
Don’t hear me say that Colson was a
complete villain, but do hear me when I say that he leaves behind a
legacy that is far more multi-faceted, far more multi-dimensional, than
most people have been saying. It is a legacy that includes some dark
chapters, and not only prior to his conversion.
Charles Colson
leaves behind a testimony of a man who encountered grace at his darkest
hour. He leaves behind a legacy of a ministry that seeks to extend grace
to those who are likewise in their darkest hour. He sought to teach
Christians how to think—to describe and define a biblical worldview. And
then he sought to lead in the application of that biblical worldview,
and this is where things become hazy, where a positive legacy collides
with a woeful one, where his work for the Lord encounters his work against the Lord’s church. Continue at Tim Challies
