To be the No. 1 - this is what seems to make life worth living for most people today. However, if not qualified by right values, success could lead to downfall. "Work hard, study hard, nothing comes easy...there are no short cuts. No matter how menial the job, the important thing is to do it well." Charles Colson recalls his father's words: "Tell the truth always, for lies destroy you."
His was a family of small means. To meet expenses, his mother would sell off household items. One day, Colson returned from school to see strangers carrying away chairs from the living room. He determined that he would be an achiever.
Success in academics, a stint with the Marine Corps and later as campaigner for president Nixon, Colson tasted status and power and this emboldened him to often disregard ethics in getting things done.
Eventually Colson went to prison after pleading guilty to Watergate-related charges. In prison he underwent a transformation. "I shudder to think what i would have been if i had not gone to prison," he was to remark later.
The accusations levelled against him as the hatchet man of Nixon and the humiliation made him "broken inside" though he put on a tough exterior. A friend gave him a book by C S Lewis that spoke of spiritual issues.
He read: ''...it is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and family. Other vices may sometimes bring people together; you may find good fellowship, jokes and friendliness among drunken or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity; not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.''
Looking back, he found it was pride that had propelled him through life. And he recognised, too, that "pride is spiritual cancer. It eats up the very possibility of love, contentment or even common sense."
Sensitised by repentance, he could now empathise with the fellow prisoners trapped by circumstances and marked by tragedy and injustice. Haunted by the desperation and hopelessness he saw Colson knew he must do something to help those left behind once he was out of prison. To this end, he set up the International Prison Fellowship ministries in 1976 now operating in more than hundred countries.
Colson received 15 honorary doctorates, and in 1993 was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, the world's largest annual award - amounting to over $1 million - in the field of religion, given to one who ''has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension''. He donated this prize to further the work of Prison Fellowship, as he did all his speaking fees and royalties. In 2008, he was awarded the Presidential Citizens' Medal by then president George W Bush.
Colson's life is a reminder to those, in and out of office, of seductions of power and rewards of service. His now famous redemption story written in Born Again, a best-seller, will remain an inspiration to all those holding top offices anywhere in the world. Power often corrupts the one who wields it; but God does give another chance to those who are willing to repent and reorder their lives based on moral and ethical standards.
Power could do much good if used for common benefit in the conviction that leaders are here 'to serve and not to be served'. Servant leadership is the answer.
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