First Century Christianity

So, I promised to write more on the book Atlas Shrugged. Here goes.

This post is a spoiler, so if you haven’t read the book and want to, you might want to come back and read this later. As critical as I am about Atlas Shrugged, I still think it should be read by just about every American.

Overview for this post is that Atlas Shrugged is a fictional application of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, a writer from the mid-20th century. She came to live and work in the USA after defecting from the USSR. Her real-life perspective was one where socialists had destroyed innovation and free markets by demonizing producers. She witnessed the socialist takeover of a decent country and had fled it outright, as everyone ought to. It’s amazing at how much this book parallels modern day politics in the USA. Rand’s conclusion about the ultimate end result of socialism is very accurate and I agree with that part of the book in total.

A couple of the characters in the book see the result of socialism coming about 12 years in advance. They start a secret society of producers who hasten the end of the nation by massive economic sabotage. Their hiding spot is a utopian valley of pure capitalism. The only people allowed into the valley are successful producers who are hand picked from the core group of capitalist conspirators. Here comes the eugenics part.

eugenics |yo͞oˈjeniks|

pluralnoun [ treated as sing. ]

the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.

Ayn Rand’s idea of a perfect society is one populated only by producers who have no problem leaving their family, friends, and millions of innocent non-socialists to die of starvation and violence while they chill out in the mountains until everything blows over. Their fictional plan, which was brought to fruition in the book, was to allow American society to completely crumble so they could emerge from said valley and take control of the entire country, transforming it into a Darwinian paradise. This new production utopia would now only be populated by the chosen people and whoever survived the destruction of the society - survival of the fittest in action. Oh, did I mention they didn’t bring any clergy with them into the valley? I think I alluded to that in the previous blog, but Ayn Rand’s image of a perfect America includes only people of industrial ability and absolutely no worship of any god whatsoever. That’s not my idea of utopia.

In order to gain entrance to the fictional utopia, the producers had to take an oath. Here’s the oath:

“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

This is the crux of the book, that a man should only be concerned with himself. The enemies in the book were collectivists and Rand’s utopia were solely individualists. The pendulum had to be on one side or the other - no middle ground, no self sacrifice, only profit or serving the collective. But, what does the Bible say about this? Could there be, maybe, a one sentence line from the Bible that might contradict this philosophy just a bit? I think so:

"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13 (NASB)

Jesus teaches us to be selfless. There is a big difference between being selfless, charitable, and caring about mankind and being a Marxist. The Bible does not forbid business but rather encourages it. Individualism and capitalism are both themes found in scripture; Paul writes that one must work if one wishes to eat and Jesus is coming back to judge the living and the dead, on an individual basis and using absolutes. Jesus said specifically that those who have been given much will be judged more harshly than those who haven’t. These are good life principals. Eugenics and survival of the fittest are not good life principals.

One character I followed closely was the Eddie Willers. This was the life-long best friend of the heroine of the novel. He was immensely loyal to his friend, doing her bidding, and serving her in unquestioning friendship to the bitter end. The book ends, the chosen people are in the valley, and she left him out in the cold. Yeah, there’s a utopian society for you.