Quotes from Charles W. Colson

Columnist Joseph Sobran writes, "The prevailing notion is that the state should be neutral as to religion, and furthermore, that the best way to be neutral about it is to avoid all mention of it. By this sort of logic, nudism is the best compromise among different styles of dress. The secularist version of 'pluralism' amounts to theological nudism."35

True happiness … is found in fulfilling our higher nature, shaping our lives and our circumstances to reflect the way we are hardwired.

One of the most startling commentaries on this century is the fact that millions more have died at the hands of their own governments than in wars with other nations — all to preserve someone's power.

When the church aligns itself politically, it gives priority to the compromises and temporal successes of the political world rather than its Christian confession of eternal truth. And when the church gives up its rightful place as the conscience of the culture, the consequences for society can be horrific.

Powerful people were about to make Nien Cheng their favorite sacrificial lamb—or to die trying. They thought she could be used to discredit their opponents. The ransacking of her house had been only a first step.

I'd always follow Nixon's orders, but you can't order somebody to be happy.

Noble in defeat, he (Nixon) was now without grace in victory. I had seen the president show rare courage when others are around him shrank in fear. Since I had come to respect the president for what he was at his best moments, I learned to accept him for what he was at his worst. Loyalty, like love, creates its own image of what we see.

How magnificently has God honored the covenant of our forefathers. How richly has he blessed our nation. So deep are our religious roots, but so far have we strayed.

A Christian writer has summed this up well: "The 'Christian state' is one that gives no special public privilege to Christian citizens but seeks justice for all as a matter of principle."6

For most of us, life is messy and confusing, filled with paradoxes. We wake up in the night, worrying about our jobs, our kids, or the best laid plans, which suddenly unravel due to the pressures of living in our high-tech, fast-moving world. One day we seem to have things under control; the next day we get steamrollered by events. If you haven't experienced this, please write me; you would be the first person I know to have life all together.

Almost every new movie I see these days features a bright, good-looking, talented young man who is so downright sad, he can barely lift his head. I want to scream, "What's wrong with this guy?" Then I feel a profound compassion because his generation has been forbidden the one thing that makes life such a breathtaking challenge: truth.

Suffering is rightly called "the school of faith," for it is only through trouble, difficulties, and setbacks that we are brought to the end of ourselves. The normal human tendency, particularly for strong-willed people, is to rely on our own strength and resources. But when those are not available to us, when everything has failed, when we have to abandon every other hope, we are forced to trust God alone.

S. Lewis, coined the phrase "The

Today the concept of delayed gratification is seen as a denial of some inherent natural right

The question for the child is not, `Do I want to be good?"' Bettelheim writes, "but Who do I want to be like?

The culture war is not just about abortion, homosexual rights, or the decline of public education. These are only the skirmishes. The real war is a cosmic struggle between worldviews-between the Christian worldview and the various secular and spiritual worldviews arrayed against it. This is what we must understand if we are going to be effective both in evangelizing our world today and in transforming it to reflect the wisdom of the Creator.

For we should read God's word not for what we can get out of it, not for what it will do for us, but for what it will teach us to do for our God.

For deep inside we know that obedience to the Scriptures without concern for consequences is penetrating and painful. It requires us to die to self and follow Christ. It demands that we recognize the sin in our lives and that we acknowledge and repent of that sin.

Man goes to great lengths to avoid his own responsibility.

Justice without mercy is tyranny, and mercy without justice is weakness. Justice without love is pure socialism, and love without justice is baloney. JAIME CARDINAL SIN speaking at a Prison Fellowship International conference in Nairobi, Kenya, 1986

The New Testament is clear: there is to be no merger of church and state until Christ returns and the kingdoms of this world become 'the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.' As [Francis] Schaeffer writes, we must not 'confuse the kingdom of God with our country... or wrap Christianity in our national flag.

What holds our society together is not force or even laws but moral suasion. Presidents rule not by fiat, but by the sufferance of free men. Without the collective goodwill of 200 million Americans, glibly called "public confidence," government is impotent, anarchy—or worse—inescapable.

What the audience heard was like nothing they had ever encountered.

G. K. Chesterton described as "a taboo of tact or convention, whereby we are free to say that a man does this or that because of his nationality, or his profession, or his place of residence, or his hobby, but not because of his creed about the very cosmos in which he lives.