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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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The church bus was dark and quiet as we rolled through the middle of Arkansas late at night. We were on the way back to Alabama from a youth mission trip to Oklahoma City. But I was terrified — with a racing heart and sweaty palms — because of what I was about to ask the beautiful woman sitting next to me.

Gail and I were both freshmen in college. We had known each other for years. I had had a crush on her when we were in junior high school, but she had become just another girl in my graduating class by the time we finished high school.

We had reconnected a few months before this because of a college class we shared. We had first started talking. Then we started spending time together. I had fallen for her — but I was terrified that maybe she just saw me as a friend.

The time had come for me to ask her if she was willing to have a romantic relationship with me.

I have no idea what I said, but I somehow got the words out. She gladly accepted the offer. My heart was full and I thought my life would never be the same again.

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