The Enduring Revolution by Chuck Colson. Still a prophetic message for America and the West.

I recently came across an old cassette of Chuck Colson's 1993 address, "The Enduring Revolution", which he delivered before an audience made up of people from many different religions in an event connected to the Templeton Prize at the University of Chicago.  His remarks were a respectful but unapologetic statement of his Christian faith while at the same time an insightful look at modernism and postmodernism and the challenges they present to society.

His remarks are as relevant as the day he delivered them 20 years ago.  You can listen to them here. You can read it here.

Regarding his faith.

I speak as one transformed by Jesus Christ, the living God. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He has lived in me for 20 years. His presence is the sole explanation for whatever is praiseworthy in my work, the only reason for my receiving this award (the Templeton Prize).

That is more than a statement about myself. It is a claim to truth. It is a claim that may contradict your own.

Even then he noted that religious liberty was the first liberty or freedom.

Yet on this, at least, we must agree: the right to do what I've just done--to state my faith without fear--is the first human right. Religious liberty is the essence of human dignity. We cannot build our temples on the ruins of individual conscience. For faith does not come through the weight of power, but through the hope of glory.

It is a sad fact that religious oppression is often practiced by religious groups. Sad--and inexcusable. A believer may risk prison for his own religious beliefs, but he may never build prisons for those of other beliefs.

It is our obligation--all of us here--to bring back a renewed passion for religious liberty to every nation from which we came. It is our duty to create a cultural environment where conscience can flourish. I say this for the sake of every believer imprisoned for boldness or silenced by fear. I say this for the sake of every society that has yet to learn the benefits of vital and voluntary religious faith.

The beliefs that divide us should not be minimized. But neither should the aspirations we share: for spiritual understanding; for justice and compassion; for proper stewardship of God's creation; for religious influence--not oppression--in the right ordering of society. And for truth against the arrogant lies of our modern age.

For at the close of this century, every religious tradition finds common ground in a common task--a struggle over the meaning and future of our world and our own particular culture. Each of us has an obligation to expose the deceptions that are incompatible with true faith. It is to this end I will direct my remarks today.

He then talked about the four Horseman of the present apocalypse.
The first is the myth of "goodness of man".

Four great myths define our times--the four horsemen of the present apocalypse. The first myth is the goodness of man. The first horseman rails against heaven with the presumptuous question: Why do bad things happen to good people? He multiplies evil by denying its existence.

This myth deludes people into thinking that they are always victims, never villains; always deprived, never depraved. It dismisses responsibility as the teaching of a darker age. It can excuse any crime, because it can always blame something else--a sickness of our society or a sickness of the mind.

One writer called the modern age "the golden age of exoneration." When guilt is dismissed as the illusion of narrow minds, then no one is accountable, even to his conscience.

The irony is that this should come alive in this century, of all centuries, with its gulags and death camps and killing fields. As G.K. Chesterton once said, the doctrine of original sin is the only philosophy empirically validated by centuries of recorded human history.

It was a holocaust survivor who exposed this myth most eloquently. Yehiel Dinur was a witness during the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man behind the bulletproof glass--the man who had presided over the slaughter of millions. The court was hushed as a victim confronted a butcher.

Then suddenly Dinur began to sob, and collapsed to the floor. Not out of anger or bitterness. As he explained later in an interview, what struck him at that instant was a terrifying realization. "I was afraid about myself," Dinur said. "I saw that I am capable to do this...Exactly like he."

The reporter interviewing Dinur understood precisely. "How was it possible for a man to act as Eichmann acted?" he asked. "Was he a monster? A madman? Or was he perhaps something even more terrifying...Was he normal?"

Yehiel Dinur, in a moment of chilling clarity, saw the skull beneath the skin. "Eichmann," he concluded, "is in all of us."

Jesus said it plainly: "That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man" (Mark 7:20).

The second myth is utopianism.

The second myth of modernity is the promise of coming utopia. The second horseman arrives with sword and slaughter.

This is the myth that human nature can be perfected by government; that a new Jerusalem can be built using the tools of politics.

From the birth of this century, ruthless ideologies claimed history as their own. They moved swiftly from nation to nation on the strength of a promised utopia. They pledged to move the world, but could only stain it with blood.

In communism and fascism we have seen rulers who bear the mark of Cain as a badge of honor; who pursue a savage virtue, devoid of humility and humanity. We have seen more people killed in this century by their own governments than in all its wars combined. We have seen every utopian experiment fall exhausted from the pace of its own brutality.

Yet utopian temptations persist, even in the world's democracies--stripped of their terrors perhaps, but not of their risks. The political illusion still deceives, whether it is called the great society, the new covenant, or the new world order. In each case it promises government solutions to our deepest needs for security, peace, and meaning.

The third is moral relativism.

The third myth is the relativity of moral values. The third horseman sows chaos and confusion.

This myth hides the dividing line between good and evil, noble and base. It has thus created a crisis in the realm of truth. When a society abandons its transcendent values, each individual's moral vision becomes purely personal and finally equal. Society becomes merely the sum total of individual preferences, and since no preference is morally preferable, anything that can be dared will be permitted.

This leaves the moral consensus for our laws and manners in tatters. Moral neutrality slips into moral relativism. Tolerance substitutes for truth, indifference for religious conviction. And in the end, confusion undercuts all our creeds.

 And the fourth is radical individualism.

The fourth modern myth is radical individualism. The fourth horseman brings excess and isolation.

This myth dismisses the importance of family, church, and community; denies the value of sacrifice; and elevates individual rights and pleasures as the ultimate social value.

But with no higher principles to live by, men and women suffocate under their own expanding pleasures. Consumerism becomes empty and leveling, leaving society full of possessions but drained of ideals. This is what Vaclav Havel calls "totalitarian consumerism."

A psychologist tells the story of a despairing young woman, spent in an endless round of parties, exhausted by the pursuit of pleasure. When told she should simply stop, she responded, "You mean I don't have to do what I want to do?"

As author George MacDonald once wrote, "The one principle of hell is 'I am my own.'"

And answer to this looming crisis?  A return to our roots to, our heritage as a society and civilization, to Christianity and it's truths about man and a society.

Make no mistake: This humanizing, civilizing influence is the Judeo-Christian heritage. It is a heritage brought to life anew in each generation by men and women whose lives are transformed by the living God and filled with holy conviction.

Despite the failures of some of its followers--the crusades and inquisitions--this heritage has laid the foundations of freedom in the West. It has established a standard of justice over both men and nations. It has proclaimed a higher law that exposes the pretensions of tyrants. It has taught that every human soul is on a path of immortality, that every man and woman is to be treated as the child of a King.

This muscular faith has motivated excellence in art and discovery in science. It has undergirded an ethic of work and an ethic of service. It has tempered freedom with internal restraint, so our laws could be permissive while our society was not.

Christian conviction inspires public virtue, the moral impulse to do good. It has sent legions into battle against disease, oppression, and bigotry. It ended the slave trade, built hospitals and orphanages, tamed the brutality of mental wards and prisons.

In every age it has given divine mercy a human face in the lives of those who follow Christ--from Francis of Assisi to the great social reformers Wilberforce and Shaftesbury to Mother Teresa to the tens of thousands of

Prison Fellowship volunteers who take hope to the captives--and who are the true recipients of this award.

Christian conviction also shapes personal virtue, the moral imperative to be good. It subdues an obstinate will. It ties a tether to self-interest and violence.

Finally, Christian conviction provides a principled belief in human freedom. As Lord Action explained, "Liberty is the highest political end of man...[But] no country can be free without religion. It creates and strengthens the notion of duty. If men are not kept straight by duty, they must be by fear. The more they are kept by fear, the less they are free. The greater the strength of duty, the greater the liberty."

The kind of duty to which Action refers is driven by the most compelling motivation. I and every other Christian have experienced it. It is the duty that flows from gratitude to God that He would send His only Son to die so we might live.

But even more fundamentally, to truly strike at the heart of the situation we need to return to the enduring revolution of the cross and resurrection and all that entails.

Admittedly the signs are not auspicious, as I have been at pains to show, and it is easy to become discouraged. But a Christian has neither the reason nor the right. For history's cadence is called with a confident voice. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob reigns. His plan and purpose rob the future of its fears.

By the Cross He offers hope, by the Resurrection He assures His triumph. This cannot be resisted or delayed. Mankind's only choice is to recognize Him now or in the moment of ultimate judgment. Our only decision is to welcome His rule or to fear it.

But this gives everyone hope. For this is a vision beyond a vain utopia or a timid new world order. It is the vision of an Enduring Revolution. One that breaks more than the chains of tyranny, it breaks the chains of sin and death. And it proclaims a liberation that the cruelest prison cannot contain.

The Templeton Prize is awarded for progress in religion. In a technological age, we often equate progress with breaking through barriers in science and knowledge. But progress does not always mean discovering something new. Sometimes it means rediscovering wisdom that is ancient and eternal. Sometimes, in our search for advancement, we find it only where we began. The greatest progress in religion today is to meet every nation's most urgent need: a revolution that begins in the human heart. It is the Enduring Revolution.

In the aftermath of the tragedy in Waco, Texas, and terrorist bombings in New York, we heard dire warnings, even from the president of the United States, of religious extremism. But that, with due respect, is not the world's gravest threat. Far more dangerous is the decline of true religion and of its humanizing values in our daily lives. No ideology--not even liberal democracy--is sufficient. Every noble hope is empty apart from the Enduring Revolution.

This revolution reaches across centuries and beyond politics. It confounds the ambitions of kings and rewards the faith of a child. It clothes itself in the rags of common lives, then emerges with sudden splendor. It violates every jaded expectation with the paradox of its power.

The evidence of its power is humility. The evidence of its conquest is peace. The evidence of its triumph is service. But that still, small voice of humility, of peace, of service becomes a thundering judgment that shakes every human institution to its foundation.

The Enduring Revolution teaches that freedom is found in submission to a moral law. It says that duty is our sharpest weapon against fear and tyranny. This revolution raises an unchanging and eternal moral standard--and offers hope to everyone who fails to reach it. This revolution sets the content of justice--and transforms the will to achieve it. It builds communities of character--and of compassion.

On occasion, God provides glimpses of this glory. I witnessed one in an unlikely place--a prison in Brazil like none I've ever seen.

Twenty years ago in the city of San Jose dos Campos, a prison was turned over to two Christian laymen. They called it Humaita, and their plan was to run it on Christian principles.

The prison has only two full-time staff; the rest of the work is done by inmates. Every prisoner is assigned another inmate to whom he is accountable. In addition, every prisoner is assigned a volunteer family from the outside that works with him during his term and after his release. Every prisoner joins a chapel program, or else takes a course in character development.

When I visited Humaita, I found the inmates smiling--particularly the murderer who held the keys, opened the gates, and let me in. Wherever I walked I saw men at peace. I saw clean living areas. I saw people working industriously. The walls were decorated with biblical sayings from Psalms and Proverbs.

Humaita has an astonishing record. Its recidivism rate is 4 percent compared to 75 percent in the rest of Brazil and the United States. How is that possible?

I saw the answer when my inmate guide escorted me to the notorious punishment cell once used for torture. Today, he told me, that block houses only a single inmate. As we reached the end of the long concrete corridor and he put the key into the lock, he paused and asked, "Are you sure you want to go in?"

"Of course," I replied impatiently. "I've been in isolation cells all over the world." Slowly he swung open the massive door, and I saw the prisoner in that punishment cell: a crucifix, beautifully carved by the Humaita inmates--the prisoner Jesus, hanging on the cross.

"He's doing time for all the rest of us," my guide said softly.

In that cross carved by loving hands is a holy subversion. It heralds change more radical than mankind's most fevered dreams. Its followers expand the boundaries of a kingdom that can never fail. A shining kingdom that reaches into the darkest corners of every community, into the darkest corners of every mind. A kingdom of deathless hope, of restless virtue, of endless peace.

This work proceeds, this hope remains, this fire will not be quenched: The Enduring Revolution of the Cross of Christ.

It's a powerful message worth studying.

[re]connecting Pastor/Youth Seminar

Sign up now for [re]connecting Pastor/Youth Seminar August 4th and 5th at New Hope Church, New Hope Minnesota.

Topics include:
Understanding Youth Culture
The Difference a Worldview Makes
Is Christianity Really a Worldview?
Have We Lost Our Minds: The Challenge of Postmodernism

CLICK HERE for a complete agenda.
CLICK HERE to register.

Unable to walk the talk on abortion.

I came across a commentary by Chuck Colson on a recent Washington Post Magazine story about a pro-abortion medical student, Lesley Wojick.

The Post article chronicles her experiences as a medical student and the interplay of her pro-abortion views and her actual experiences assisting doctors perform abortions.

The article reveals her post-modern thinking on truth (We really can't know it.) and the reality of actually seeing an abortion and her belief she couldn't go through with being an abortionist.

Her mindset -- what's true for you maybe not be true for someone else -- is classic moral relativism; morality is like having a preference for vanilla or chocolate ice cream. And we can't really know what's true is postmodernism.

At the lunchtime discussion, Lesley was surrounded by people opposed to abortion. A pediatrician from Johns Hopkins was discussing her practice of refusing to prescribe birth control pills to adolescents because she is morally opposed to it.

Hearing the doctor made Lesley wince. She herself had spent many hours teaching teens about contraceptives. She had won an Albert Schweitzer fellowship to develop a health education program at Mountain Manor, a residential treatment facility for teens in Baltimore, that addressed sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, abortion and adoption. She'd shown the girls at Mountain Manor how to use a condom and urged them to carry condoms with them.

She couldn't imagine refusing to prescribe birth control pills to girls who were sexually active. "Just keep your mouth shut," Lesley said she told herself. "Don't say anything." She knew she wasn't going to change minds.

But later, before she left, she did ask the doctor one question: "How do you advise patients without appearing judgmental?"

The answer -- that appearing judgmental wasn't the doctor's concern, only doing what she felt was right for patients -- made Lesley realize that "there are people who wholeheartedly believe they are doing their patients good" by not mentioning abortion or prescribing birth control pills. She found that problematic. "You can't assume what is right for you is right for the patient," she decided.

This led her to ask herself another question: When is it appropriate to interject our judgment, and when isn't it? Nobody really knows, she concluded. Not Medical Students for Choice, not the Catholic students, not the medical school. But they were important questions to explore, she told Litty later. Litty agreed.

If we can't know the truth, then how can we say the holocaust was wrong and evil? Or was Stalin's murder of millions wrong if done for the greater "good" of the state? This is why postmodernism and moral relativism are so dangerous to a society and culture.

Another abortion patient she encountered highlights the person who will cavalierly destroy unborn life within her if that life is viewed as an obstacle to getting what she wants in life.

A third patient, a 23-year-old college student wearing red high heels, had become pregnant because the patch she used as birth control kept falling off. She didn't realize she was pregnant at first. Now she needed a second-term abortion. Lesley was struck by how resolute the young woman was. She was earning a degree, and said she couldn't care for a child if she wanted to achieve her goal. She was scheduled for the procedure for the following morning.

Lesley decides she doesn't want to be an abortionist, because she didn't want to be "[v]acuuming out a uterus and counting the parts of the fetus," but she's still glad she did it.

As for obstetrics, the once-perfect mix of medical, surgical and preventive care for women, Lesley hadn't loved very much about it. Even as she'd shadowed the abortion doctor, Lesley knew in her heart that this would not be the right place for her to make a difference. It was a big disappointment, she said. "I really thought I'd love it."

The things she cared about -- taking care of women, seeing them through the process -- hadn't happened. It was the nurse practitioner who cared for the patient. Vacuuming out a uterus and counting the parts of the fetus did not seem like a desirable way to spend her work days. It took a unique person to do that on a daily basis, she said.

Lesley still believed passionately in abortion rights and was proud of what she'd accomplished at Maryland with her activism. She didn't want to let people down. Even so, she had to follow her heart. Somebody else -- maybe Laura Merkel, the new chapter president of Medical Students for Choice -- would become an abortion provider. But it wouldn't be her.

One can see her shutting off her conscience but not completely. Though she's still "proud" of her pro-abortion activism, she doesn't want to perform them.

I think as more and more people understand the reality of abortion the tide will begin to turn in society as a whole. In a sense that's what happened, to a small degree, with Lesley; she can't see her walking the talk and become an abortionist. She did, in some respects, take a step back in her embrace of abortion.

Obama, Postmodernism and the Definition of Sin

There's a devastating column by Jonah Goldberg exposing Barak Obama's postmodern and morally relativist thinking. Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes; that each person decides what is right and wrong. Postmodernism, as described by Chuck Colson in How Now Shall We Live?, "rejects any notion of a universal, overarching truth and reduces all ideas to social constructions shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity."

Goldberg points to the self absorption of Obama and his campaign as evidencing this postmodern mindset.

The Obama campaign has a postmodern feel to it because more than anything else, it seems to be about itself. Its relationship to reality is almost theoretical. Sure, the campaign has policy proposals, but they are props to advance the narrative of a grand movement existing in order to be a movement galvanized around the singular ideal of movement-ness. Obama's followers are, to borrow from David Hasselhoff — another American hugely popular in Germany — hooked on a feeling. "We are the ones we have been waiting for!" Well, of course you are.

What I found fascinating and disconcerting are Obama's religious views which only confirm this relativist, postmodern streak. Goldberg pulls a gem out of an interview Obama gave back in a 2004. When asked, "What is sin?" Obama's response? "Being out of alignment with my values."

Now Obama identifies himself clearly as a Christian. When asked what he believed, Obama states unequivocally: "I am a Christian." The problem with his view of sin is it's a decidedly non Christian view of sin. Sin is a transgression of God's laws not an individual's values.

Obama goes on to say: "So, I have a deep faith. So I draw from the Christian faith. On the other hand, I was born in Hawaii where already there are a lot of Eastern influences...And I'd say, probably I've drawn as much from Judaism as any other faith...So I'm rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people."

Here again Obama's postmodern, relativist thinking comes out. "I believe there are many paths to the same place." Again, that is a very non Christian perspective. Jesus was very unequivocal about Him being the way, the truth and the life.

The lessons to be drawn from Obama's comments are one, he is confused about what Christianity believes which isn't unique, because many people who identify themselves as Christian are equally confused, but second, his lack of a moral compass. He is the decider of what's right and wrong, not an objective standard.

I wonder if that's what's at play with his flip flop on so many issues. He has changed is views not because he's received new information and simple believes the new position is the right one. Rather, it's because he will do whatever it takes to advance his personal goals and ambitions; anything done in furtherance of personal ambitions is fine.

Now this isn't necessarily anything new for politicians. Many take positions or change them simply because it's to their advance politically. But Obama holds himself out as something different. A deeply spiritual man. A man driven by ideals. A broader vision.

This postmodern, relativist streak reveals something much different. A person driven by what advances himself.

For this reason, McCain's focus on Obama's character is wise. Is this the sort of president we want in the White House? Somebody with a shifting moral compass; driven by self and not bound by principles and a higher moral standard? We had that for eight years in the 1990s and things didn't go well.

Is what you believe really true?

The February 2008 issue of The Rake magazine came out with a story on The Truth Project a small group curricula designed to encourage Christians to study the implications of their faith, e.g. are Christianity's truth claims merely one's personal preference or are they true for all and every area of life.

The writer Alyssa Ford, who describes herself as having "left the flock" and "no longer a true believer", did I think a fair and balanced story on the program. (You never know whether a writer from one of the alternative magazines merely wants to trash you or geniunely tell a story.)

The Truth Project, which is a very basic, elementary discussion of a wide range of topics, asks the big question: what is truth? And it has struck a cord with an increasing number of evangelicals. There are a wide range of contradictory, confusing assertions in society about what is true. It's all the more incumbent then on Christians now to tackle the issues head on. I'm fully confident that Christianity can more than hold its own. In fact, I think it ultimately prevails. Why? Because it's true and is the only worldview which truly and accurately explains what we see, hear, experience, and understand in life.

From a public square standpoint, I think the cultural Left is rooted in an ideology bereft of a grounding in the truth. In many instances, they don't even believe in truth. At best, it's "my truth" as found in postmodernism. The truly dangerous folks are those so wed to an ideology that they're unwilling and unable to consider facts which counter their most deeply held beliefs. The most murderous ideology in the history of the world was the secular ideology of communism which led to the death's of a hundred plus million people in the 20th century.

The same challenge, debate is being played out in the religious arena between Christianity and Islam. What's so powerful about Christianity is it's rooted in history, reality not a person's private perspective of reality. That's Islam's Achilles' heel and why it will be found wanting.