Swimming Upstream

It's a story Chuck Colson told many times, but it's worth re-telling-especially as many of us see our culture, our society, darkening day by day.

Back in the 1990s, Chuck was witnessing the growth and the effectiveness of the ministry he founded, Prison Fellowship. From its humble beginnings with a couple of employees and a handful of volunteers in 1976, Prison Fellowship had exploded across the country with volunteers and ministry in every state. Untold thousands of inmates had come to Christ. Their children blessed by Angel Tree.

And yet ... the nation's crime rate kept rising. Prison populations were growing faster than new prisons could be built.

What was going on? Chuck wondered. And then he came across a 1977 study by Stanton Samenow and Samuel Yochelson called "The Criminal Personality."

MORAL CHOICES

In Chuck's words:

Samenow and Yochelson rebutted the conventional wisdom that crime was caused by environment-like poverty and racism. It was caused, they said, not by that, but by individuals making wrong moral choices. So the solution to crime, they said, was "the conversion of the wrongdoer to a more responsible lifestyle." ... And [then] I read Professors Herrenstein and Wilson's book, Crime and Human Nature. It posited that crime is caused by the lack of moral training in the morally formative years of young people.

I finally had figured it out.

Crime was rising because our nation's moral fabric was unraveling. We were no longer teaching our kids right from wrong. We had failed to instill in them, or in our culture, a morally sound, Christian worldview.

In other words, the nation's crime problem, and all its other problems–economic, political, moral or otherwise–were a symptom of its faulty worldview. The real problem lay upstream.

And as Chuck remained committed to working downstream by ministering in prison, he also determined to work upstream of societal problems; to focus on helping the Church re-capture and live out a solidly Christian, biblical worldview, and in turn become salt and light, changing the culture for the better.

His logic was flawless. Our worldview affects how we approach the important issues facing our culture, among them the dignity of human life, morality and sexuality, and the institution of marriage. For instance, how we view human life (as a product of mere chance or as made in the image of God) determines whether we support abortion and euthanasia or fight them. How we view marriage (as a covenant between one man and one woman for life, or as a mere contractual arrangement that can be broken easily) affects whether we support policies that strengthen marriage and families. If we fail to support strong marriages–or worse, undermine them–then we reap very real societal consequences; divorce, family breakdown, fatherlessness, which in turn foster delinquency, poverty, drug use, etc., among children.

I believe Chuck was right. Our best hope for tackling the pressing issues that challenge the Church and the culture is to work upstream. Shaping the way people think, helping them see through the lens of a biblical worldview. And from there, working downstream with others to bring about meaningful change for the good.