Review: Lies That Go Unchallenged
Colson is enlisting cultural warriors
John H. Adams, The Layman Online, he says, faithfulness or accommodation.
Throughout Lies, Colson is a myth-buster: The First Amendment was not intended to repress religion but to foster it. Your assignment, too, he says, is to read the constitution, American history and the Federalist Papers and see why that’s so. Where’s the right to an abortion when it destroys the right to destroy the life of the unborn? What are the consequences of same-gender marriages and same-gender parents? Why should activist judges be allowed to reject the democratic process?
He gives you a sample of his own indignation. In 2002, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the nomination of Judge Charles Pickering to serve on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Pickering made the mistake of telling a young man whom he sentenced for murder: “It’s not too late for you to form a new beginning … You can become involved in Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship or some other such ministry and be a benefit to your fellow inmates and to others and to their families.”
That statement was cited during the committee hearings to demonstrate that Pickering was soft on separation of church and state. He was not confirmed.
Colson says,
- It says something about how distorted the confirmation process has become that an act of compassion can disqualify a man from sitting on the Federal Court of Appeals.
In fact, from a strictly secular view, inmates’ participation in Colson’s Prison Fellowship is a money-saver for the criminal justice system. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the participants are less likely to commit infractions while they are in prison – and far less likely to return to prison after they are released.
Although it ranges widely, Lies is an orderly text. It introduces a topic – many of them digests of Colson’s Breaking Point radio commentary – and then follows with two brief sections titled “Things to Consider” and “Group Study.” Each of those vignettes is covered in two to four pages.
Colson leaves the hard work to the reader. At the end of the book, he includes 12 pages of source material in small type.
Summed up, the contents are more than enough to raise the vigilance of Christians who are not content to let their communities and nation – as well as their churches – continue to slide down forbidden paths.