David McElroy

This story is about me. Only me. It’s about my ego and insecurities and fears and needs.

I typically write what I think might be useful for others to know and understand, but this is different. It’s more like a diary entry. A confessional. A cry of frustration.

It’s the sort of thing I would address to a wife or partner or trusted companion — if I had a woman in that role. It’s my half of a conversation which I would need to have with someone who loved me and believed in me and was permanently a part of my life.

So this probably isn’t for you.

I’m struggling right now. In many ways, things are the best in my life that they’ve been for at least 20 years. I have stability and purpose again. I know where I want to go. I’m more clear about my values and my priorities than I’ve ever been in my life.

But I’m struggling with the gap between how things ought to be and the reality I see in front of me. And that gap terrifies me — because nobody lives forever.

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It’s become trendy among angry young left-wing Americans to claim that Jesus is a socialist.

These naive and affluent people think they love socialism. They know that Jesus preached about feeding the poor and needy — and they think that a socialist system would take money away from rich people — so they draw the conclusion that Jesus and socialism are compatible.

It’s an incredibly ignorant conclusion, but most of them genuinely believe this nonsense. And their good intentions pave a path straight to economic and social hell for the people they claim to care about.

Jesus told his followers to love their enemies, feed the poor and store up treasures in heaven rather than in this life. Some of his followers obeyed. Some who claimed to be his followers did not.

In both cases, it was a voluntary decision.

But can you find any instance in which Jesus told his followers to take money and material goods away from other people — without their consent — in order to feed the poor?

Go ahead and read the gospels. All four of them. I’ll wait. You won’t find anything close to that. And taking money away from other people without their consent — what we generally call theft — is one of the central tenets of socialism.

Without theft, socialism cannot exist.

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The man sounded genuinely surprised. Shocked, even. He hadn’t seen this coming.

He was calling to tell me some terrible news about his son. The kid had done something stupid. Again. This time, it’s going to have life-changing consequences. And I should mention that this irresponsible child isn’t 16. He’s 24.

But my friend has spent a couple of decades enabling this overgrown child to be irresponsible — and the kid has never faced any consequences. But even though everybody else could see the pattern — and could see where things were inevitably leading — my friend seemed shocked.

I kept my mouth shut, but what I was listening to made me feel crazy.

If you smash a hammer into a porcelain teacup, the cup is going to shatter into tiny pieces. It would be crazy to be surprised at the result. Any rational person knew the outcome before the hammer reached the cup. The outcome was inevitable when the choice was made.

But we go through life — both individually and as a culture — acting bewildered when our actions produce their inevitable results.

When I see this playing out — in the lives of my friends and in the life of my culture — it makes me feel as though I must be crazy. And it leaves me desperate to get away from the insane drama that produces this sort of chaotic dysfunction.

People spend months or years or even decades creating insanity in their lives — and then they seem surprised when the inevitable results of their decisions suddenly show up.

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