Charles Colson Quotes
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You are called not to be successful or to meet any of the other counterfeit standards of this world, but to be faithful and to be expended in the cause of serving the risen and returning Christ.
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Repentance is replete with radical implications for a fundamental change of mind not only turns us from the sinful past, but also transforms our life plan, ethics, and actions as we begin to see the world through God's eyes rather than ours. That kind of transformation requires the ultimate surrender of self.
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Some labeled Jerry Falwell an American version of the Ayatollah Khomeni. People for the American Way, a group organized to counter the Moral Majority, launched a slick media campaign attaching the Nazi slur to the religious right.
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Today's marginalization of Christianity is a direct result of our failure to understand our faith as a total worldview.
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I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by the decay around us. The hope that each of us has is not in who governs us, or what laws are passed... Our hope is in the power of God working in the hearts of people.
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If the polls are right, our Judeo-Christian heritage is no longer the foundation of our values. We have become a post-Christian society.
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It is not what we do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us. God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience. The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of paradox, where through the ugly defeat of a cross, a holy God is utterly glorified. Victory comes through defeat; healing through brokenness; finding self through losing self.
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We must be the same person in private and in public. Only the Christian worldview gives us the basis for this kind of integrity.
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Remain at your post and do your duty - for the glory of God and His kingdom.
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When it comes to the culture, there's no such thing as peaceful coexistence. If we're not defending truth, fighting for Christian values in all of life, the truth will be sacrificed on the altar of mainstream secularism.
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I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
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Few things are so deadly as a misguided sense of compassion.
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We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.
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God is dead not because He doesn't exist, but because we live, play, procreate, govern, and die as though He doesn't.
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Many people are trying to remove religion from public life. Under the banner of pluralism, cultural and political leaders are seeking to push all talk about God out of the public arena.
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The average college graduate's proficient literacy in English [the ability to read lengthy, complex texts and draw complicated inferences] has declined from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent ten years later.
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The church's job is to equip the saints for works of service in the world.
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Culture is religion incarnate.
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Nearly every grave moral failure begins with a small sin.
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People who reject transcendent authority can no longer persuade one another through rational arguments; everything is reduced to personal opinion. Debates about ideas thus degenerate into power struggles; we're left with no moral standard by which to measure the common good. For that matter, how can there be a 'common good' without an objective standard of truth?
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That Solidarity was a religious movement no one, least of all the Soviets, can deny. In November 1981, Pravda denounced 'religious fanaticism' as a grave challenge to socialism; failure to contain it, Pravda said, was at the root of the problems in Poland.
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But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious -- all my achievements meant nothing in God's economy. "No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure -- that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation -- being sent to prison -- was the beginning of God's greatest use of my life; He chose the one thing in which I could not glory for His glory.
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Hostility to religion is having an effect. In 1963, the number of Americans who said that they believed the Bible is literally true was 65%. Today, the number has dropped to 32%.
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I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.
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Why, I wondered, is there such hostility to one faith in this Hindu culture that believes all roads lead to heaven? They should be the most tolerant of all. What is it about the Judeo-Christian message that makes it so offensive? Ironically, the Indians may understand the heart of the gospel - that Christ is King, with all that portends - better than many in the 'Christian' West.
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In college, [Christian students] are assaulted by secular relativism, and if we don't prepare them, they will be like lambs led to slaughter.
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Who speaks for God? He does quite nicely for Himself. Through His holy and infallible Word - and the quiet obedience of His servants.
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God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience.
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It's part of the buzz of the city among Christians. It wouldn't surprise me that it got to George Bush. He reads, he picks stuff up, he talks to people. And he's pretty serious about his own Christian beliefs.
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Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good.
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Charles Colson
- Born: October 16, 1931
- Died: April 21, 2012
- Occupation: Former White House Counsel
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