"Twenty-five years ago, in the darkest days of Watergate, you read about all of my sins -- those of you graduating now. Younger students at least read about them in your history books. I am always appalled when people come up to me and ask for my autograph on airplanes because they read about me in their history book. But what I realized that night, twenty-five years ago, the toughest of the Nixon tough guys, the White House "Hatchet Man," was that it was true that I could be set free, and I realized what was in my heart -- not the stuff you read about in Watergate, but much worse. And I tell you I would suffocate in the stench of my own sins today if I did not know that Christ took them away. And what does that do with me? That inspires in me what Chesterton said is the "mother of all virtues." That inspires in me a sense of gratitude that I will do for my God whatever He calls me to do. And what he calls us to do is to live for him in biblical fidelity to the kinds of commands I read to you from the Holy Scriptures, and to be men and women of character who exalt virtue and go into a society which has disdained character, which is laughing at honor, which is mocking virtue, and saying, "No, we believe in truth, and we’re going to live our lives that way no matter what the cost." Be those kind of men and women."
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Cover-upsRepublican Party (United States)Political scandals in the United States1970s in the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
Chuck Colson, Geneva College Commencement Address, May 1998
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
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Watergate scandal
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