The man who boasted he would “walk over my own grandmother” to get Nixon reelected. Seems like he reformed after his prison term and went on to be a good citizen, but we should remember the bad along with the good.
Do we have to remember the bad right now?
If you're a Christian, does God? Does HE "remember" your evil? If you're one of his... NO! So why should we make a "special effort" remember what this man did? You want to throw rocks at folks, look in the mirror first. This man was one of the people most directly responsible for bringing ME to Jesus Christ after I read his first book. I'll always be grateful for that.
"As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our sins from us."
“...we should remember the bad along with the good.”
Why?
God doesn’t remember repented sin, washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Why should I?
How many years does a man need to live a transformed life before folks accept he was born again - a new creation?
For my part, I thank God for the example Chuck Colson set.
“Who would dare to accuse us, whom God has chosen? The judge himself has declared us free from sin. Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ, and Christ died for us, Christ rose for us, Christ reigns in power for us, Christ prays for us!
Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, pain or persecution? Can lack of clothes and food, danger to life and limb, the threat of force of arms? Indeed some of us know the truth of the ancient text: ‘For your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter’.
No, in all these things we win an overwhelming victory through him who has proved his love for us.
I have become absolutely convinced that neither death nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything else in God’s whole world has any power to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord!” - Romans 8
Others have commented and said most of what I would have said, but I do think a bit more needs to be said.
The sincerity of repentance is often indicated by whether people remain steadfast in their professed repentance. I have some problems with Colson’s theology but it seems crystal clear, after four decades, that Colson has replaced his “GOP” with “GOD” as the object of his worship.
Based on Colson’s long record of persevering in his profession of faith, I don't see a reason to hold his past against him, but on the other hand, we are not instructed by Scripture to forget the past history of Paul as a persecutor of the church. Paul himself made repeated references to his sinful past; David wrote an entire psalm repenting of his wickedness with Bathsheba.
To acknowledge the repentance of a notorious public sinner — which Colson would surely describe himself as having been — does not mean we ignore his past. On the contrary, let's remember that God can convert even the most awful sinners among us, and let's be grateful to God that he didn't abandon us all to hell, which we would richly deserve due to our own sinful wickedness which, while it may be less public than Colson’s, is just as deserving of God's wrath.