Define Irony

Definition #1: Michael Moore making a small fortune from a film decrying the financial model that will in fact enrich him. Yes today was the release of the movie “Capitalism, A Love Story” by the documentary film mogul Michael Moore. Michael does an excellent job showing how the definition of Capitalism has changed over the last sixty years. Capitalism has gone from being associated with hard work, free enterprise, and competition to a virtual stranglehold of Wall Street and mega corporations over our entire political and economic systems. Michael’s proposed solution is to reintroduce the basic principles of democracy into our economic systems – one man, one vote. Still the irony remains …

Definition #2: People enslaved to a system of oppression and hardship that defend the very system that oppresses them with their lives. How do you entice someone to act against their own self-interest, on only a promise that things will someday “get better”. Surely humans would not remain compliant in such a state would they? Surely, someone would rise up and ask the obvious question like “When” will things get better and perhaps “How” will it happen. People would not blindly follow a system of slavery and oppression if offered a choice would they? And yet we do. Still the irony remains …

Definition #3: Becoming the author of evil itself, and as such, casting all the blame for everything wrong in the Universe on to the purest being in the Universe, and watching the lie get repeated and believed by the masses. One third of heavenly angels bought into this lie, but in fairness had little historical context for the consequences. But man buys into it today after nearly 6,000 years of recorded history. We should know better, but do not seem to. Instead we question what is the “will of God” and imply it may well be His will that we suffer from some catastrophe caused by the evil one. In a sense we repeat the devil’s lie that permission implies consent, instead of balancing the cause and effects of freedom of choice for sentient beings.

Irony surrounds us all. We believe it does not exist within us, until someone calls out the elephant in the room. If you could live a better life, would you? The answer seems intuitively obvious, yes. But then, why do you remain in bondage to the pain you inflict on yourself? How long do you ‘try harder’ to rid yourself of it, before you admit that trying harder just is not working? How long do you buy into the concept that one-day in the future things will be magically better? People treat the idea of heaven this way, like a far off antidote for the sin and pain in their lives, like a distant cure that just cannot be reached until the someday arrives; so far from the truth, and the plan of God’s Salvation.

Americans blindly protect the rights of the rich hoping to one day join their ranks. But it is an empty promise. For every dream of stardom and exuberant wealth that we hold on to; is the reality that less than one in a million will ever achieve it. The other 999,999 dreamers will have to settle for lives working at Walmart and struggling from paycheck to paycheck. In our world today, in our country today, even the ranks of middle class are quickly disappearing. Soon the dreamers will be forced to lower their standards to shoot for the middle class as the ultimate prize, achieving real wealth will become merely the stories of fantasy. Capitalism has changed. Still the irony remains …

Has it ever come to your attention that perhaps focusing on self lies at the heart of both problems in our world. The naked pursuit of self interest leads corporate executives to care nothing for the lives they destroy in the pursuit of wealth they make. Self interest holds you prisoner to the promise of future wealth, while keeping you in the servitude that will prevent you from ever achieving it. Self interest holds you captivated to the momentary pleasures of evil that ruin everything of real value in your life and leave you poorer than when you began. Serving self, is the surest way to destroy the thing you are trying to serve. This is definition of irony for me.

Americans hear words like Socialism and Communism like fingernails on the chalk board. Americans prefer to keep the charity they provide in proper perspective to the wealth they have amassed. The typical church demand for ten percent seems like just the right amount of charity against income for most. And into the decision of where to give this ten percent of income away, enters all the bias and prejudice of the giver. We cannot give a homeless person cash money for example as we do not know where they will wind up spending it and on what. So we give to places like the United Way, Salvation Army, or the local Church we attend. Our charity, what little there is, is almost never directed at our neighbors where it might actually make a real difference in someone’s life. Instead we prefer the haze of organized charity than direct human to human giving.

Our trend towards isolationism has given us the freedom from facing the pain that surrounds us. We are insulated behind our TV screens and Internet surfing preferences from the human tears of our neighbors as they lose their homes to foreclosure. It would be much harder to sit on our front porches every day and look into the eyes of the people who live right next to us on our very streets. We don’t really want to be touched by their pain. We don’t really want to have to feel for the poor. Or we just might have to do something about it. We prefer our conscience in a state of denial, than in a state of guilt; all in order to preserve the self interest that literally destroys us. Still the irony remains …

Why can’t people admit their weakness? Why can’t people experience the liberation of giving over their burdens, their cares, their needs, their wants, their desires, and the evil they cannot win against to the only God who asks for us to do just that? This is the plan of Salvation to save us from the evil that infects our lives, poisons our thinking, atrophies our will, and denies our potential. Self is the enemy. We are the enemy. The only cure for us, is God. The only being capable of changing the core of who we are from selfish to service is our God. And He longs to do this FOR us, IN us, and perhaps even in spite of us. Giving up to win. That is the kind of irony I want to embrace.

I can speak from personal experience that allowing God to remove the evil that infects you, addicts you, and controls your mind is the most liberating experience any human can have. It is epiphany. It is enlightenment. It is more than nirvana. And it does not need to wait for a distant place, a distant destination, we call Heaven. Freedom from evil can be here and now. And when it begins to dawn on your life, He leads you to truth you could not comprehend before that moment. What you begin to see with the shackles removed from your eyes can astound you. It can humble you. It has certainly humbled me while at the same time inspired me beyond the measure of my own capacity.

I have done nothing to earn what I have. I have done nothing to conquer the evil I have faced in my own soul. I cannot even tell you how I was freed from it, only that I was freed from it. For you see, it was not me that did the work of saving me from evil, it was only my God. When the decisions and the path I walk lead upward, it is because I have relinquished the chore of making those decisions and taking those actions to the will of my God, not to myself. You see “I” cannot be trusted. But God can. “I” am inherently evil, and predisposed to failure, but what God is making me into is no longer slave to me.

I can understand someone languishing in evil and self-inflicted misery if they did not know how to get out. I could understand someone not being strong enough to get out, as no one really is. But I cannot understand how anyone could hear what the solution is, and not embrace it. I cannot understand why anyone would not want to at least try what I am talking about for themselves and see what it can bring to their lives. This is the irony that eludes my rational conscience, and the capacity of my finite brain. And when I think about it, I wonder if even the Almighty God I serve is able to come up with a reason that makes sense for someone to walk away from life itself. This is an irony I hope to never understand. And still the irony remains …