Dear Reader...

You ask some interesting questions about Objectivism and Christianity: the differences and similarities between the two worldviews, Christian Libertarianism, Christian Anarchism, and Rand's politics, and my own view. I'll do my best, in a nutshell.

Rand is a committed atheist. She believes in absolutes, but not in a Giver of absolutes. Taking a page from Aristotle, she marks her own life as the highest possible occupation of her soul; not others, not the collective, and certainly not God. About every decision and every value, she asks "Will this promote, maintain, or enhance my life?" If so, it's a virtue. If not, it's a vice. After all, she reasons, without my own life I could have no values; my life is therefore the Supreme Value. A person must produce, or create value, in order to sustain their life. So, in all of Rand's fiction, the Producers are the Prime Movers, the heroes and heroines.

Mother Teresa, in Rand's view, was not a hero and neither was Jesus. In her view, both were moochers, and deserve scorn for their self-sacrifice. Ayn Rand was a passionate individual and a brilliant thinker, but I don't think she truly understood the Gospel. She railed on Christianity, but it was a shallow Platonic version that focused on Victorian religion and Kantian duty. Nothing like what John Piper calls "Christian Hedonism." To the extent that Rand advocated that individuals pursue their highest possible joy, I applaud and appreciate her. But her passion falls short; she "settles" like Lewis's "child making mudpies in the slums..."

Through a journey that began with cancer when I was 17, Jesus drew me to himself. The deepest longings I have felt throughout my life have only been met in Him. Still, my hunger for his presence grows. Today, I can't say that I'm an Objectivist, or even an Objectivist Christian. I would say that Objectivism finds its fulfillment in the Gospel because the truest and highest occupation of my soul is not myself, but God the Father, through Jesus Christ.

Objectivism and Christianity share a strong passion for life, a vibrant work ethic, a conviction around moral absolutes like honesty, integrity, and respect for the individual. Unlike many postmodern thinkers, both Objectivism and Christianity recognize objective truth and see truth as exclusive. The Objectivist becomes arrogant, because he has achieved something that has eluded his contemporaries. The Christian becomes confident based on the achievement of salvation, but humble, because he had nothing to do with it.

Rand's politics are economically conservative and socially liberal. Ayn Rand raged against the Libertarians of her day because they were anarchists; they believed that government had no place, and its authority should be avoided altogether. Today's Libertarians, like Rand, advocate for limited government. Rand believed that government's role is to protect the rights of the individual (the smallest minority in the world) from criminals at home and abroad. It is the function of our Constitution, she said, to protect the individual from government.

I suggest approaching today's new atheists (for whom Rand's thoughts are seminal) with three elements in mind. First, articulate their worldviews accurately and clearly, avoiding oversimplification and caricature. Next, identify areas of truth and validate, wherever possible, the values we hold in common. Finally, show how the Gospel values these truths even more highly than the atheistic worldview. While they may not be converted after the conversation, they go away wishing that Christianity were true.

I have attached an essay by John Piper entitled, "The Ethics of Ayn Rand: Appreciation and Critique." I think his view is accurate and balanced. There are two new biographies of Rand that hit the shelves in October. Jennifer Burns' "Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right" is focused on Rand's politics of capitalism; critical, but balanced. Even more critical, Anne Heller's "Ayn Rand and the World She Made" gets into the destruction she caused through her brilliance, eccentric passion, and emotional sterility.

Inflammatory Propaganda Against Rand

 In Bloomberg article (interview) with a Rand biographer, the author says this:

For people who are passionate about what seems to me to be an unrealistic view of radical individualism, she makes the strongest possible case.What she lacked was empathy and a sense that there’s a social contract.

The interviewer betrays her view in the question, "Don’t Rand’s views seem incredibly naive?" Without reading the book, I think the interview is unfairly slanted against Rand and her philosophy. I'm guessing that's the point, but I don't enjoy an article that implies that "Don’t Rand’s views seem incredibly naive?" is an argument instead of simple, inflamatory propaganda.

Ayn Rand and Whole Foods

Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, takes his vision for reshaping (or returning to) capitalism from Ayn Rand and others. From Danielle Sacks at Fast Company:

Once Mackey started running his own company, he quickly found himself on the dark side: His customers thought his prices were too expensive; employees complained of being underpaid; and the government "was slapping us with endless fees, licenses, fines, and taxes." "According to the perspective of the political left," he wrote, "I had become a greedy and selfish businessman." The identity crisis sent him into an existential tailspin. Then Mackey, the son of an accounting professor, discovered the writings of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, the high priest and priestess of modern free-market capitalism. He slipped on the Libertarian mantle. "What I love most about the freedom movement, another name for the Libertarian platform," writes Mackey, "are the ideas of voluntary cooperation and spontaneous order that, when channeled through free markets, lead to the continuous evolution and progress of humanity." The beauty of Conscious Capitalism, says Mackey, is that self-interest and altruism can not only coexist, they can both thrive simultaneously without a lot of government meddling. 

Book Review Basis

From the blog of Scott Aaronson, I found this juicy tidbit:

So, having now returned to Atlas out of curiosity, what can I say?  Numerous readers have already listed the reasons why, judged as a conventional novel, it’s pretty bad: wooden dialogue, over-the-top melodrama, characters barely recognizable as human.  But of course, Atlas doesn’t ask to be judged as a conventional novel.  Rand and her followers clearly saw it as a secular Bible: a Book of Books that lays out for all eternity, through parables and explicit exhortation, what you should value and how you should live your life.  This presents an obvious problem for me: how does one review a book that seeks, among other things, to define the standards by which all books should be reviewed?

According to Rand, the framework that she uses to evaluate her own work is the framework that every rational person should use to evaluate every work. She's called arrogant, but that descriptor is like calling someone arrogant who says that they know with certainty that 1 + 1 = 2.

Moral Issues: Profit vs. Government Regulation, the Weigh-in at Church

Quoted in a  Bloomberg article  entitled "Profit `Not Satanic,’ Barclays Says, After Goldman Invokes Jesus", several bankers spoke about the compatibility of Christianity and Captialism. 

Bankers became too obsessed with short-term gains in a financial crisis that is a “profoundly moral issue,” Lazard’s Costa said in the church of St. Katherine Cree on Oct. 15.
“These are long-term commitments,” Costa, 60, said of banking careers in a sermon at the church, one of a few to escape the great fire of London in 1666. “They are not one- night financial stands,” he said. “Impatience is no recipe for a healthy economy or society.”
Banking’s core business of moving money around to fund people, companies and countries lifted millions out of poverty, Varley said last night.
“There’s no conflict between doing business in an ethical and responsible way and making money,” Varley said. “We make our biggest contribution to society by being good at what we do.”

Sure, it might be a little overboard the way the press is categorizing the debate, but I really like the focus on 1) the immorality of breaking commitments, 2) emphasis on the long-term, and 3) rational self-interest as long-term beneficial. These are moral issues. I concede that corporations need to rethink compensation, and that they have stumbled in the accountability area. But I would hate to see the pendulum swing too far in the direction of more government regulation.

Reason TV Ayn Rand Retrospective

Reason TV kicks off its Ayn Rand retrospective this week with a look at how suddenly relevant the philosopher and novelist has become. A-list Hollywood stars want to make a movie from Atlas Shrugged, and suddenly “going Galt” has become a popular catchphrase for producer strikes. Who would have guessed that the era of Hope and Change would have produced Rand as a counter-cultural phenomenon?

Check out the first scene in the video. It's a clip from Mad Men, referencing Atlas Shrugged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRqNV6tNH5c&feature=player_embedded

Counterfeit Gods

The chapters in The Soul of Atlas that serve as the first examples of the Objectivist-Christian conversation are entitled Money, Sex, and Power respectively. It's no coincidence that Tim Keller identifies these as the most prevalent "counterfeit gods" in our society today. (Full disclosure: I got it from him, not the other way around.) In a recent post, Tim tells his story, which is similar to mine, except for the details. In The Soul of Atlas, I talk about my experience of two father figures in my life, one an Objectivist and the other a Christian. In myself, as well as my two father figures, I have seen these counterfeit gods play themselves out. Here is Tim's story:

I often get asked how I personally became acquainted with the pervasive influence of idolatry in the human heart.
Like many younger ministers I worked far too many hours, never saying "no" to anyone's request for my pastoral services. When salary increases were offered to me, I turned them down. When administrative help was offered to me, I declined. I was quite proud of being the kind of person who worked very hard, never complained, and never asked for any help. This regularly brought me into conflict with my wife, who rightly contended that I was neglecting my relationships to her and to my young sons. It also led to health problems, although I was only in my early thirties.
Nevertheless, I continued to feel that the way I was living was noble and good. I believed I was sacrificially committed to the ministry of the Word. I was especially delighted to make sacrifices that nobody saw -- not my people or even my family. That made me feel most noble of all. If all this created some problems for me personally, wasn't that just evidence of how truly devoted I was? It was a very dangerous situation. My future was bleak, though I didn't know it. In the short run, this kind of ministry workaholism is often rewarded by admiring people all around.
Some well-meaning friends, however, saw the problem and literally "laid the law" on me, showing me that I was violating the commandments of taking Sabbath and of honoring my family. I usually responded with incremental changes that never endured. Others used the modern technique of self-esteem -- "You need to think of yourself; you need to do things that make you happy." I despised that advice as terribly selfish. I valued self-sacrifice.
It wasn't until I began to search my heart with the Biblical category of idolatry that I made the horrendous discovery that all my supposed sacrifices were just a series of selfish actions. I was using people in order to forge my own self-appreciation. I was looking to my sacrificial ministry to give me the sense of "righteousness before God" that should only come from Jesus Christ. People make idols out of money, power, accomplishment, or moral excellence. They look to these things to "save them" -- to give them the sense of purity, value, and acceptability that only Jesus can give. In my case, I was using ministry (and my own people) in this way.
Without the category of idolatry -- a good thing turned into a pseudo-salvation -- I would never have been able to see myself. Nothing but the concept of counterfeit gods could have blasted me out of my illusion of virtue and superiority. I thank God for this life-saving insight -- though I still struggle mightily with the implementation of what I've learned.

Redeemer's Mission in New York City vs. Ayn Rand's

After listening to Tim Keller talk about Redeemer's Vision for New York City, I reflected on Ayn Rand's vision for transforming the world through her philosophy. Remarkably, the two visions have several elements in common. However, the Gospel employs a much different means to reach the ends sought by Ayn Rand.

Redeemer's videos are also here: http://www.facebook.com/RedeemerNYC?ref=nf