Chuck Colson is dead. He was 80. He died of a brain hemorrhage (cue inevitable comments from people shocked that he had a brain in the first place).

A lot of the obituaries you’re going to see about him over the next day or two will focus on his connection to Richard Nixon and Watergate. Or the prison ministry he began. They’ll talk about how Colson redeemed himself after a fall from grace. How he made lemonade out of lemons. How he did something positive with his life.

Don’t accept any of it.

Because, even in his glory, he was spewing bullshit like you wouldn’t believe.

Here’s just a smattering of comments he made and wrote *after* he had been “redeemed” — comments that should be condemned no matter who says them.

Like the time he wrote about how everyone *knew* one little boy was gay:

A little boy I’ll call “Stevie” was a beautiful, healthy child. But by age five, his parents suspected something was wrong. Stevie loved Barbie dolls, the color pink, and dancing around like a ballerina. … Without intervention, [Dr. Joseph] Nicolosi said, Stevie had a 75-percent chance of growing up homosexual, bisexual, or transgender.

Yep. The color pink will do that to you…

Or the time Colson got mad at the Oxford Junior Dictionary for changes it made in a recent edition:

Gone were words like “coronation,” “willow,” and “goldfish.” In their place were words like “MP3 player,” “blog,” and “biodegradable.” Not surprisingly, words reflecting Britain’s Christian heritage were especially hard hit: “abbey, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, monk, nun, pew, saint,” and “sin” were all axed. Even Christmas took a hit: “carol,” “holly,” and “mistletoe” were removed. In their place, kids got “tolerant,” “interdependent,” and “bilingual.”

Nooooooo! NOT “TOLERANT”! *Cue end of the world*

And remember how Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion of a 7-part “belief continuum” (7 was absolute certainty that God did not exist) and how he placed himself at a 6, leaning toward 7?

Here’s how Colson interpreted that passage:

Even atheist Richard Dawkins admits that there is a one-in-seven chance that God might exist. He simply chooses to take, as he sees it, the six-in-seven chances that God does not exist. That’s a bad bet.

Umm…. no. Not even close. But, you know, he said it with authority, so it just slipped through most Christians’ lie detector tests.

Anyway, it’s interesting Colson even called Dawkins an “atheist,” considering he didn’t even believe in our existence:

I have, in fact, never met an atheist. When a person professes to be one, I ask him to offer me the proof that God does not exist. I’ve never had anyone successfully respond to that question. Most retreat and say they’re really agnostics. I then ask them if they have examined every religion exhaustively. Their answer is usually no. I explain they cannot be agnostics unless they are sure that God can’t be known. There are no atheists. There are simply people whose pride overwhelms their innate knowledge.

But wait! Atheists *do* exist! Colson considered us a threat to Christianity… along with Muslims… and other Christians:

Colson, 75, spoke at a conference that precedes the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, which begins here Tuesday. At one point, Colson said “Islam is a vicious, evil … ” and then before finishing the sentence, said, “Islamo-fascism is evil incarnate.” … The second threat, Colson said, was evident in the popularity of several best-selling books espousing atheism by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and others. “This is a virulent strain of atheism which seeks to destroy our belief system,” Colson said. … Colson also dismissed a burgeoning movement known as “the emergent church,” popular among younger Baptists and other evangelicals, as “abandoning the search for truth” in favor of “conversations in coffee shops.”

Damn atheists and their book-learnin’!

Must. Keep. People. From. Getting. Educated.

…

To top it all off, Colson was awarded a Templeton Prize.

…

I’m sure if you looked even further into his writing, you’ll see more bigotry, more contempt for non-Christians, more attempts to make himself look better than the image he deserves.

People will say Colson remade himself after prison. He didn’t. He just transitioned from one form of despicability into another.



