For most people "To be No 1" is what means life worth-living. However, if not qualified by right values, success could lead to downfall. "Work hard, study hard, nothing comes easy..........there are no short cuts. Charles Colson recalls, "No matter how menial the job, the important thing is to do it well". His was a family of small means. To meet expenses his mother would sell off household items. One day Colson returned from school to see strangers were carrying away chairs from living room. He determined that he would be an achiever.

Success in academics, a stint with the Marine Corps and later as campaigner for President Nixon, Colson tasted status and power and this emboldened him to disregard ethics in getting things done. Eventually Colson went to prison after pleading guilty to Watergate-related charges. In prison he underwent a transformation. “I shudder to think what I would have been if I had not gone to prison.” He was broken man because of the various accusations against him as the hatchet man of Nixon, and the humiliations he suffered. A friend gave him a book by C S Lewis on spiritual issues.

He read, ".....it is the pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and individual or family. Pride always leads to enmity, not only between man and man but also with God.” Looking back he realised that it was pride that had propelled him thru life and he recognised that "pride is spiritual cancer. It eats up the very possibility of love, contentment or even common sense."

But God does give another chance to those who are willing to repent and reorder their lives based on moral and ethical standards. Power could do much good it used for common benefit in the conviction that leaders are here ‘to serve and not to be served’.