Ayn Rand & Christianity

How can I be so inspired by both Christianity and Ayn Rand?

An Article by The American Refugee

Many TEA Partiers love Ayn Rand.  We adore her novels and many of us were profoundly changed by Atlas Shrugged.  Some people are confused by the popularity of Ayn Rand and aspects of her objectivism among Christian TEA Party conservatives.  As a Christian and Catholic, who is a constitutionalist conservative, I don’t have that problem.  I am absolutely inspired by Ayn Rand and pray that she found Jesus in the moments before her death.

America is rooted in rugged individualism and liberty as well as Judeo Christian morality and aspects of altruism.  Forced charity, by the state, is not charity at all.  It is tyranny.  It harms both those who have their money confiscated against their will and those who become dependent on what is not a safety net, but a dependency trap.

Ayn Rand tells us to act in our own rational self interest.  Christ taught us to love our enemies.  Love is a verb.  We love people by putting our desires aside and doing what is best for the other.  These two concepts are not contradictory.  Doing what is best for the other person rarely involves giving that person money.  It often doesn’t involve giving that person what he is asking for.  It sometimes involves doing something for him that he will curse you for.

We receive benefits each time we act in the interest of others. We experience good feelings, friendship, and experience the emotional form of love. Believers also believe that they are pleasing God by doing His will. There is no escaping that the fact of the matter is, that it is in our rational self interest to “Do unto others”. It is in our rational self interest to live by the will of God. It is in our rational self interest to ignore the selfish desires of our flesh and work for the glory of God and the betterment of others.

There is no doubt that Rand was an atheist.  I am not trying to minimize the difference between Rand and believers.  I am simply stating that most of Rand’s ideas are not at war with Christianity in the way many Objectivist Purists and liberals think.  Rand unfortunately only knew reason, and not faith, but the two are not incompatible.  Reason has lead me to many of the same places that faith has.

We do the moochers no good when we feed them.  We enable them in their destructive lifestyles.  We can help them by not denying them the dignity of the consequences of their own mistakes.  We can help them by opening a business, encouraging them to work for a living ,and offering them a job.  We teach them to fish rather than giving them fish.

At the same time, there are suffering children and those who are too broken to be able to take care of themselves.  We do a moral good, when we help them of our own free will.  We are not being heroes. We are simply acting in our own rational self interest.