I began to see the impact of this transformation on people around me. At Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, I and other faculty taught a course on ethics. Our students were ambitious, earnest, and ready to claim their corner on public policy truth--or to get their man or woman (or themselves) elected to public office. Our job in this course was to raise philosophical questions, to ask students about justice and right and wrong behavior in difficult situations. I began to consider how my personal spiritual experience and knowledge might inform this task of preparing people to confront the world of politics and public policy constructively.
I began to ask my colleagues questions about the relationships between personal spiritual commitment and the ethics of public service. I even circulated an excerpt of the book Born Again by Charles Colson, an infamous figure from the Watergate era. He was convicted of crimes committed while working in the White House and served time in prison. After his fall from power he began a relationship with Christ, and when released from prison he dedicated his life to ministry, especially among inmates.
I found Colson quite interesting on the question of hubris, or pride. This was an issue of great significance to me, because pride was a part of the sin in which I was entrapped. I suffered from a vastly inflated sense of my own importance, my own capability, and ow I was moving to the top. Nothing seemed beyond my grasp; the rules (whether moral or legal) were for others, not for me. I was an exception. "Everything be damned" was my view, as long as I got what I wanted, whether it be tenure at the best university, having my name mentioned in the New York Times, or enjoying the favors of some beautiful young woman.
In his memoir, Born Again, Colson described his own entrapment in the sin of pride. When I read it, I thought I saw myself. I also recognized, though not to the same degree, aspects of ambition and self-righteousness so characteristic of many young students at the Kennedy School training for careers in government.
I sought to communicate that, ultimately, personal morality must be the bedrock of professional ethics, and religious conviction can play a central role in empowering a person to adhere to such a moral code. I hoped my colleagues might recognize the limitations of our purely academic approach to the subject, given that, in the end, our aim was to shape the values and character of some future leaders of our country. Academic knowledge in ethics may influence our thinking about what we should do, but this is impotent compared to the transformation of our inner lives so that "what we should do" becomes what we want to do, and then what we in fact do. It has been rightly said that the longest distance in the world is from the head to the heart.
I am convinced that I was restored in part so that I might encourage others to integrate and enliven their lives in the academy through a relationship with almighty God. Ours can be a spiritually barren landscape. Declarations of faith are rare on campus, and those who make them are often marginalized. Yet as college teachers, we have the awesome responsibility of shaping the minds of young people who are at a critical phase in their development. A way must be found to patiently and respectfully challenge these young people on spiritual as well as conventional academic grounds. The simple, unadorned declaration of one's own experience with the Lord is one meants to convey such a challenge.
The quality of my family relationships improved greatly after my conversion. I began to have honest exchanges with a number of relatives. I saw a healing of my breaches with my sister and mother. A new and more fruitful bond developed with my two adult children from an earlier marriage with whom I had very nearly attenuated relationships after their mother and I divorced nearly twenty years ago. This healing happened tin part because I became willing, as a servant, to look at and to care for those relationships in a new way.
Our marriage, which I thought was dead, came to life. The Lord began to bless my wife and me with a family. We had our first son, Glenn II, five years ago. And now we have a wonderful year-old baby boy, Nehemiah Matthew. Our marriage was miraculously healed--that which was dead is now raised. Because of this encounter with Jesus Christ, the death and vacancy, the emptiness of my life, has been filled. There is life now.
There is nothing unique or special about me to attribute any of this to. I had done nothing to have earned these changes. But the Scripture tells us that this is why Jesus came and lived and died and was raised from the dead--that all of us could have this new life.
How do I know that the resurrection and the whole gospel are real? I know not only because of my acquaintance with the primary sources from the first century A.D., or even because of the words of Scripture. I know primarily, and I affirm to you this truth, on the basis of what I have witnessed in my own life. This knowledge of God's unconditional love for humankind provides moral grounding for my work in cultural and racial reconciliation, economics, and justice. Jesus Christ provides a basis for hope and for the most profound personal satisfaction. To paraphrase a currently popular rallying cry among many protesters for racial justice: No Jesus, No Peace.