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THE BRIGHT LIGHTS ON BROADWAY #3
FEEDING EGOS OR PRISONERS
He was just 38 years old when the phone call came,
back in the fall of 1969. Ordinary guy and lawyer Charles Colson — “Chuck”
— found himself standing on the huge blue-and-gold rug in the Oval Office
of the White House. Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America,
wanted Chuck to become his Special Counsel and trouble-shooting lawyer.
As you can imagine, it took about four seconds for unimaginable doses
of POWER to come Chuck Colson’s direction. He writes about it in his two
Christian bestsellers, Born Again and Kingdoms in Conflict, both books
we highly recommend, by the way.
“Deep down, though I wouldn’t admit it,” he writes,
“the White House represented the pinnacle of the power I had pursued all
my life.”
And just a bit later, he adds:
“A Newsweek feature heralded my arrival with the news that I was now on
the top of every Washington hostess’s guest list (ironic, since I never
attended parties) and that the mere mention of my name ‘makes the tensions
come in like sheet rain.’ In Washington that means power.”
You might recall a line in the old Watergate film,
All the President’s Men, with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in it.
They referred to Colson . . . and it was clear from the context that anybody
dumb enough to CROSS Colson would end up ground into hamburger. This was
the man who would “(quote) run over his own grandmother” to get Nixon
reelected. Colson could say just a word into a phone, and get all of your
IRS 1040 tax returns audited, going back for the last 200 years.
In a chapter entitled, ironically, “The PROBLEM With Power,” Colson tells
an interesting anecdote on himself. In June of ‘71, the Nixon White House
faced a crisis when the New York Times printed the infamous “Pentagon
Papers,” which had been stolen by Daniel Ellsberg. One evening Nixon phoned
Colson with instructions that he ought to call up the former president,
Lyndon Johnson, about the mess. After all, Nixon said, the Pentagon Papers
came from LBJ’s administration; the least Johnson could do was to support
the President in this critical time. “Tell Henry Kissinger what we’re
up to, then call Johnson. But don’t bother me again,” Nixon said. “I’m
tired, and I’m going to bed.” “Yes, sir,” Colson said.
But when Colson called Kissinger about the deal, the national security
adviser went ballistic, as we say now. Understandably, he’d had a bad
day as well, with the leaking of the classified papers. And now this flunky,
Colson, was going to call LBJ? “That should be MY job,” he told Chuck.
“I’M the national security adviser, not you.”
But Colson wanted to make the call. This was heady stuff, calling with
a message from one president to another. “Henry, Nixon told ME to call.”
“But I want to.” “So what if you do. I got there first.” “Huh UH.” It
honestly was like two five-year-olds wanting to sit by the window.
And finally Colson said, “Look, Nixon ordered ME to do it. Case closed.”
And Henry responded: “Then I’ll call Nixon and have him reverse that order.”
“You can’t,” Colson protested. “Nixon’s gone to bed. He told me he wasn’t
to be disturbed.” Oh. Finally Colson said, “Look, Henry, this can wait
until the morning. Then at our eight a.m. meeting we’ll ask the President
who should make the call.”
“Okay,” Kissinger said. “That’s good. Very good.”
Then Colson said: “Okay, but promise me, Henry, that you won’t call Nixon
tonight and bug him.”
“Oh, I promise, Chuck,” Kissinger said in his thick accent. “You have
my word.”
Well, it didn’t take Colson more than about ten minutes to get suspicious.
After all, this was POWER. If Colson made the call to LBJ, that was just
one more little piece of territory sliced out of Kissinger’s kingdom.
So Chuck called the White House switchboard. “Uh, did anybody call for
Nixon in the last few minutes?” he asked the operator. “Oh, sure,” she
said. “Kissinger just got off the phone with Nixon.” Later that night,
Henry Kissinger placed the call to Johnson and reasserted his control
over his little empire.
He tells another little juicy story, so dumb you’d hardly believe it .
. . until you and I look in the mirror some mornings and pray about our
own power trips. In July of 1974, the Nixon reign was in its last days.
The president was virtually powerless, just going through the motions.
On his last overseas trip before resigning in August, traveling to the
Soviet Union and then Iran and Israel, Alexander Haig and Ron Ziegler,
the press secretary, were on the plane with him. Things were winding down
and everybody looking on knew it. And yet — get this — Ziegler and Haig
were still so consumed with power, with influence, with “Who’s closest
to the President,” that advance men had been sent ahead with a TAPE MEASURE,
and with explicit instructions to measure at each stop and make SURE that
Haig’s bed and Ziegler’s bed were both exactly the same distance away
from Nixon’s bed. If one bed was 42 feet away, down the hallway, and the
other one forty-THREE feet down the other hallway, why, that was just
totally unacceptable. They had a tape measure, and the two beds had to
be exactly and equally close.
Dumb as that seems, Colson confesses that when he first moved into the
White House in 1969, he too maneuvered and pulled strings, getting his
office closer and ever closer to the OVAL Office. That was how it was
done; that was the game.
Well, as we said yesterday, it kind of comes down to one word: MOTIVE.
What DRIVES you to seek an office closer to the president’s? There might
be very good reasons why you would want to expand your borders and enlarge
your circle of influence; you might honestly have a dream about helping
more and more and MORE people out there — and having the ear of the Chief
Executive wouldn’t hurt. But is that your motive?
There’s an interesting piece of commentary in the New Testament letter
written to Paul’s friends in Philippi. Keep in mind that the Christian
Church was in its infancy. This was a fledgling, fragile movement. And
without a doubt, the Apostle Paul was the star in the center ring. He
was the main preacher, with big crowds and lots of conversions. And there’s
more writing by him than by any other televangelist going at the time.
But here in Philippians chapter one, he observes that there are a lot
of other preachers out there too, burning up the airwaves and making their
inroads. Maybe some of them were using names off his computerized donor
files. AND . . . he writes in verses 15 - 17, some of THEM had nasty motives.
“Some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry,” he writes.
“[They] preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing
that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.”
Here these rival ministries were growing, building
superchurches and Christian theme parks while he was under house arrest
in Rome. These were naked power grabs, and he, Paul, was on the losing
end. But do you know what he writes in the very next verse? Notice:
“BUT . . . what does it matter? The important thing
is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ IS preached.
And because of this I rejoice.”
That’s an amazing admission, isn’t it? These guys were
stealing his turf. BUT . . . Christ was being preached. They had lousy
motives, some of them. BUT . . . Christ was being preached. They were
free, and he was in jail. BUT . . . Christ was being preached. And so
everything was all right.
Let me close with this observation about Colson. All of this ladder-climbing
happened 25 years ago, of course, and you know that Mr. Colson is a born-again
Christian today. What is he doing now? He’s the director of Prison Fellowship,
a HUGE charity and ministry which spans the globe. He’s got chapters and
representatives and volunteers all around the world. He has a radio program,
“Breakpoint”; he has a column in Christianity Today. He and his co-authors,
Ellen Santilli Vaughn and Nancy Pearcey, have written some fantastic Christian
bestsellers.
Here’s my point: Colson didn’t get to be director of Prison Fellowship
— a vast, effective organization — without a bit of ambition. He had to
GO for it. He probably had to politick and schmooze a bit, stroke some
high donors. Certainly he has representatives in Washington, D.C., who
work for legislation favorable to the cause he champions, First Amendment
protections which allow him and his fellow Christians to keep working
in America’s penitentiaries with their Angel Tree program.
BUT . . . all with what motive? NOW to serve others. NOW to bring freedom
to others, not headlines to himself. Now to empower the lives of prisoners,
not his own political fortunes. As we said yesterday, quoting from a president,
and maybe from a Savior:
“Use power to help PEOPLE.”
You can read in Luke four where a young Preacher walked
into the synagogue one Sabbath. Already He had asserted some authority;
He had followers. He’d invited earnest men to join His entourage, be a
part of His fledgling kingdom. But to what end? With what MOTIVE? We find
it in His inaugural address, right there in verses 18 and 19:
“The Spirit’s power is with Me because He has chosen
Me to preach good news to those who are poor, to heal those with broken
hearts, to deliver those who are prisoners of sin, to give sight to those
who can’t see, to set people free from their heavy burdens, and to announce
that this is the year of the Lord.”
You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if those very words
are hanging in the wall someplace at Prison Fellowship.
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