HIGH SPIRITS: The Gift of Redemption
Aitken, Jonathan
"HIGH SPIRITS" JONATHAN AITKEN The Gift of Redemption ONE WERE TRYING TO THINK OF A GROUP of people who would be difficult to interest in listening to an address about matters of faith and...
...Merely to ask the question that way is to start with a glaring misconception...
...For the title of my talk was "Ruin, Rehabilitation and Redemption: A Biographer's Reflections on the Lives of Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson...
...k Jonathan Aitken's next biography, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed, will be published by Doubleday in June 2005...
...By his best-selling books, his impeccable behavior (he never accepted honoraria for speeches), his prescient articles and addresses on international affairs, he fought his way back to unexpectedly high peaks of respect and influence...
...Anyone can reinvent himself, but nobody can redeem himself...
...DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 61...
...They included long dark nights of the soul, being "convicted of sin," turning to God in penitence, getting humbled and bruised by God's chastenings, and eventually showing the fruits of his repentance by dedicating his life to faithful and committed service to his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ...
...For the attendees of the Union League Club soiree included CEOs of large corporations, Wall Street executives, partners from white shoe law firms, academics, authors, publishers, advertising bosses, and famous media personalities...
...So it was with some trepidation that I recently accepted the challenge of delivering just such an address to a 300-strong audience assembled in the Union League Club on Park Avenue under the auspices of an organization called Socrates in the City...
...Because he is a God who stays faithful to his promises, we can be reasonably certain that he does bestow the gift of grace on his faithful servants...
...But for all his worldly failings and political cynicism, there was a deep spiritual dimension to Nixon too...
...HIGH SPIRITS JONATHAN AITKEN The Gift of Redemption F ONE WERE TRYING TO THINK OF A GROUP of people who would be difficult to interest in listening to an address about matters of faith and spirituality, an assembly of elegant and sophisticated New Yorkers would be high on the list...
...On the way to Andrews Air Force Base he recited a couplet from the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton: I am hurt but I am not slain...
...Nixon had complicated relationships with everyone—including God...
...It is not, however, a biographer's judgment that matters...
...and in his personal conversation, to be sure, that the redemption of Richard Nixon is, to say the least, an open possibility...
...He succeeded in implementing it, for by the time of his death in 1993 Nixon was widely thought to 60 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 JONATHAN AITKEN have rehabilitated himself as an elder statesman and sage of foreign policy...
...As his biographer, I caught enough glimpses of this side of him in his private writings...
...in what we know about his prayer life (he knelt down and said his prayers every night in his later years...
...I will lay me down and bleed awhile Then I will rise and fight again...
...For redemption is God's business...
...I hope my audience from Socrates in the City (most of whom did not rush off prematurely to the bar of the Union League Club) now understand it too, particularly at this season of the year when the word made flesh came to dwell among us to give us the blessing of "the fullness of his grace" (John 1:16...
...This provided ample scope to draw on my repertoire of anecdotes about the 37th president and his once notorious "hatchet man" before getting down to the real business at hand, which was a spiritual analysis of the three alliterative terms in the first part of the title...
...For while rehabilitation has to do with self-will, redemption has to do with God's will...
...On one of his many visits to Britain to give speeches on foreign policy during this 18-year campaign, he once said to me: "Failure is not falling down...
...The impact of Colson's life, writings, and work has been an enormous one on the Christian life of America and of the world...
...One thing is certain...
...Colson, for example, is today America's most prominent Christian leader after Billy Graham, and he is lionized by millions of admirers, from President George W. Bush onwards...
...I am sure I was making a fair judgment when I gave my forthcoming biography of him the title, Colson: A Life Redeemed...
...Redemption is the gift of God's grace...
...As Nixon's helicopter took off from the White House lawn on the day of his resignation, he found himself thinking not of the past but of the future...
...Although the hard core of Nixon-haters could never bear to admit it, the pariah of Watergate had transformed himself into a rather popular ex-president...
...As an exercise in personal rehabilitation, Nixon's post-resignation years were something of a triumph...
...With greater certainty, we can speculate that if the vote did go against him, he would now be fighting back with a new celestial election campaign...
...But where does this leave Richard Nixon in the redemption stakes...
...Bleed awhile he certainly did...
...That, in a nutshell, was his philosophy...
...Judge not that ye be not judged" must be the appropriate Biblical advice here...
...For different reasons, neither Nixon nor Colson ever believed that they were completely ruined by their personal catastrophes at the time of Watergate...
...At least I had chosen a subject that had a chance of holding the attention of Manhattan's movers and shakers for longer than an overtly theological topic might have done...
...That service has taken the form of creating a worldwide Prison Ministry, which today operates in 108 countries...
...As one of the stars in the last galaxy, Dick Cavett, took the seat next to mine, I realized that the dialogue we were about to have on "the examined life" would be no easy ride...
...But then he began his unique journey of rehabilitation, which consisted of running for ex-president...
...But did he also redeem himself...
...The best we mortals can do is to position ourselves so that we may be able to receive the divine gift of redemption...
...Wise old Socrates would surely be proud of his 21st-century devotees in today's Big Apple...
...Is it possible for a human soul to be ruined...
...For more on Socrates in the City, go to www.socratesinthecity.com...
...Some Nixon watchers might speculate that his election to the heavenly host would have been achieved only by a wafer-thin majority...
...Colson set off on a post-Watergate voyage of spiritual discovery that took him through various well-known phases of a Christian journey...
...CHARLES W. COLSON, whose White House years were characterized by hubris, dirty tricks, and his notorious observation, "I would walk over my grandmother for Richard Nixon," was quicker than his ex-boss to understand redemption...
...Failure is falling down and not continuing life's race...
...Nixon understood the vital difference between rehabilitation and redemption...
...It cannot be earned by self-effort or self-promotion...
...They often get worldly rehabilitation too...
...My instructions were to combine urbanity and spirituality in a blend that would not result in too many of these eminent Socratians heading off to the bar prematurely...
Vol. 37 • December 2004 • No. 10
