M.P.s told to trust in God, not themselves

Press, 29 August 1980, Page 4

M.P.s told to trust in God, not themselves

By

Briar Whitehead

When Parliamentarians fc'egin to trust in God instead of themselves, real leadership begins, according to one of former President Nixon’s closest advisors, Mr C. W. Colson. Mr Colson served seven months of a maximum ithree-year prison sentence imposed in 1974 for a Watergate-related crime. He now heads an organisation for prison and judicial reforms, and travels widely, speaking to national leaders about the “bom again experience” that he says made him change his plea to guilty. Mr Colson is the author of the book “Bom Again” which describes the Watergate years, and has been made into a film. He is in New Zealand at the invitation of Prison Fellowship, a group formed to help rehabilitate prisoners. He is the guest speaker this morning at a parliamentary prayer breakfast.

“Too much today, the govemment is the arbiter of economic and social interests,” Mr Colson said. “It has to be more than that. It has to be a moral authority. The legitimate role of government is to promote human justice and restrain evil.

1 “There will always be tension between political expediencies of the moment, and moral obligations based

on the Bible, because members of Parliament are elected by the people and represent the people.” When Biblical guidelines and the demands of the electorate came into conflict, a Christian M.P.’s duty was to resist the latter, even to the point of breaking with his party or getting out of government.

Some United States politicians had resigned from government when they could not reconcile these. A lot of others had followed Christ and not political dictates, and survived in office, Mr Colson said.

A government could not legislate morality, but it

could form just laws based on the Bible.

One of these would be to provide alternative sentences to imprisonment. “Prisons are not. used for punishment of crime anywhere in the Scripture. Restitution is the pattern. You have to do something that is restorative either to the victim or to the individual. “Restitution, community service, week-end incarceration are alternatives. The key thing is not to break up the family or the individuals’ community

roots. “The man who has passed a bad cheque, or been involved in a burglary does not belong in prison. He should be doing something constructive, for society, both for his own and society’s good. Why should we be paying thousands of dollars a year to keep him in prison?” ' “Violent offenders have to be incarcerated. They are dangerous. But prisons are a necessary evil, to restrain a greater evil. You should not use them any more than you have to.” Mr Colson said.

His organisation, United States Prison Fellowship, forms groups of Christian inmates from seminars and Bible studies held in maximum security jail and follows them up after release. Re-offending rates of those in the groups is. only 4 per cent, Mr Colson says. The United States average is 75 per cent, the British, 80 per cent.