by Tom Pratt
The narrative of Scripture has now come full circle from the creation of Man in the image of God as His creative delegated ruler of the earthly domain and the skies above, to the Fall into sin and curse and futility, to the failure of all attempts to set things right, to the arrival of another just like Adam but without sin (Negatively) and full of the Spirit and wisdom (positively), to the just sacrifice for sin and its acceptance by the Creator, to the promise of His return to finish the work of new creation. The moral nature of the universe has now been “righted” by the work of the true Man of God’s choice. The question we ask here is what if this premise is true? How does one rule it out if it is not? It requires a rational process of assembling of data and interpretation of that data, a process Rand calls reason. No one is expected to simply accept the teaching of the church without rational assessment, but neither is it acceptable to simply dismiss it out of hand as an impossible construct in light of known reality. The question is, Who is Jesus Christ? Paul called him the “last Adam…the second man…the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:45-49) whose mission is to infuse His Spirit into a new race of men and women who will be fit for the new creation that is coming. Thomas bowed to Him after the resurrection as he saw the wounds in his body and called Him “My Lord and My God” (Jn 20:28). Jesus Himself claimed “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6). Simon Peter preached that “There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). John wrote, affirming the connection between Jesus and life, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 Jn. 5:12). C. S. Lewis put the Aristotelian proposition like this famously in his Mere Christianity:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
To anyone who has spent any time studying objectivism and the works of Ayn Rand without the premise that the biblical narrative correctly assesses reality as we know it, we would offer this proposition. Give the same diligence to the study of the primary documents of Christianity found in the Bible. Read it through again and again as you have Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. Check out the works of a great scholar like N. T. Wright who is not known as some kind of right-wing obscurantist but a seasoned observer of the world and a churchman and world-class biblical scholar. Read Rodney Stark, Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief, as an orientation to the current state of studies in comparative religion. Use the Apologetics Bible as a tool and study aid. Be sure to use a good translation like the English Standard Version or the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Do the spade-work of a Randian rationalist and assess the claims of the Bible against reality as you know it. Answer the question Jesus put to his disciples one day: He asked them first about the opinions of others, and then He put them on the spot—“Who do you say I am” (Mt. 16:15, 16). Answer it for yourself and make John Galt proud of your individualism. Who is Jesus Christ?
John Galt & the Christian Church
A final word is in order to the Christian taking time to consider Atlas Shrugged against the context of our time and the claims of Christ. The “altruism” against which Rand rebels in her characters is the essence of the true “hole” in the heart of today’s Christendom. It is a mistaken refusal to live for the only “Other” that matters in the way that Christ did—as one who brings life to the dead and dying, not by living for them but living and dying completely in harmony with the will of His Father, with whom He was in complete agreement. He refused to live out the caricature of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob on offer in the Judaism(s)[89] of His day. He refused to conform to their folk religion, for it was the way of death. Only His was the way of Life. It is this sense in which John Galt refused to live out his life for the sake of another man. He would only sacrifice himself, his ego, in the service of those things that drove his own values (regardless of whether we agree with his values or not) which he saw as compatible with the life worthy to be lived. Jesus would not consent ( or “sanction” in Galt’s use of that term) to the conformity required of him by the authorities of Rome and Jerusalem so that he might go on living a life of sorts—a life lived at the point of a gun. No, He confronted that thing in the soul of Judaism (the kind that would come to dominate Jewish “religion”) and Roman patronage and said, “Whom seek ye?” He conformed to the will of the Father, His only value in life that mattered to Him and said take me and let these around me go. And He did it because He and the Father were authors of the only plan that would lead to LIFE for both Himself and His followers. In this is LIFE for all who follow both His way and His words. Galt would say that this particular way is mistaken and unknowable, but he would also affirm that if it is real and knowable, nothing must be allowed to get in the way of attaining it (cf. Phi 3:12-14).
This is what the Apostle Paul is describing when he says to the Corinthians, “Death works in us, but life in you.” Paul knew that he could conform to Corinthian expectations and live without controversy and within the approval and support of the congregation if he would only give in to what was becoming the folk religion of the Corinthian church. This he refused, pointedly, to do and made it a matter of the survival of the true Gospel. That was the hill Paul was willing to die on. He, like Christ before him and in him, clarified his values to the church and challenged them at the heart of their conformity to cultural expectations. He refused to become anti-Christ, approving their acquisition of Roman and Greek and Judaistic expectations, for this was the only way to LIFE for the church. He knew within himself that, whether he could see it happen before his eyes or not, LIFE would follow his death for the Gospel of the cross for which he felt no shame (2 Cor 4:11).
The modern church needs the same leadership from its pastors and teachers and elders and deacons today. It needs some who will learn from John Galt as they seem unwilling to do from Jesus and the Apostles that "Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us", and, "I saw that evil was impotent ... and the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it." (It is this insight that causes Galt to vow to stop the motor of the world by persuading the creators of the world to withhold their sanction, that is, their guilt-driven struggle to make the world a better place through their own efforts.) It needs those who will not “live” at the point of a gun (the promise of financial security and communal approval inside and outside the local church) while their parishioners and those in the largely nominally “Christian” society around them proceed apace to death and judgment.
The church of the Lord Jesus Messiah requires those whose only values worth living and dying for come from the Father whose Son preceded them in death and LIFE. It does not need, and is now dying from, a supposed “altruism” that soothes the spectators at “worship” on Sundays in the name of “seeker sensitivity” or “reaching people” or “helping others” or any one of a dozen other shibboleths designed to mask the search for success and security and temporary relief from pain and inconvenience at the expense of real living. Every Sunday in America (and increasingly around the world) millions sit and stand on cue and wave their hands and move their lips and clap their hands to the beat of culturally conformed and hollowed out “worship” and listen to therapeutic moralism pur
veyed as the “Gospel” presented in twenty-minute sound bites (or 30-40 minute “performances” repeatedly advocated by one of the most successful of these “communicators”) that will not disturb the dead.
Galt, the Christian believer and preacher, might say, cease wrapping the gospel call for repentance in a soft film of a “love” that will not dare to tell the truth for fear of being without a job, no matter that it is defended as actual loving concern for others and their felt needs. In this case the gun being held at the head of preachers and “worship leaders” is a value system based not in the revealed Word and Will of God but a conformity to the expectations of church-goers who pay the bills and give the assurance and approval needed by “leadership” unable to satisfy its own cravings for self-esteem and respectability. Surely you would not do it for the money or the acclaim and approval of peers, or would we? Is there not more than a little of this danger in the attempt to “do church” without discipleship?
This pattern is not Life and will not bring it to the dead who sit in pews and chairs and stand and bounce about to the beat of mediocre “rock,” while mouthing words no psalmist would think to put on scroll or paper. No life will come to those whose only real reason for attendance is to get the next fix on self-help formulas and personal improvement plans and “principles” for successful living in the family and on the job and in the social climate of the day. There is no life in a “forgiveness” that requires no repentance or change of Lord-ship. That life can only be found in dying the death that He died when He refused to conform to such folkish ways. There is no point in pretending that such a life at the point of a gun is worth living.
Remember that a “church” without discipleship requires the sanction (that is, not just complicity reluctantly but participation through love of the thing required) of those who practice and lead in it. Further, it requires their creativity to be channeled into its stream of shallow wanderings through soft meadows of societal conformity to standards of conduct and ways of life that would shame the prophets and apostles that have gone before you, not to mention the man from Nazareth. By all means, its mantra says, do not offend or challenge with the sounds of repentance or the imagery of the Cross, at least not too soon. We must avoid sounding “hateful” lest we be misunderstood. We must maintain the façade of political correctness. We must not thin the crowds by speaking “hard sayings” about munching and crunching flesh and blood (Jn 6:53, 54). We must not confront even the inner circle, willing to go on alone if we must (Jn 6:68-70). That would be egotistical and unloving and hateful and selfish, not to mention impractical and futile and foolish and unsuccessful. Let us instead engage in “feeding the poor,” (meeting “felt needs”) which Jesus refused to do on demand and found Himself in such conflict that A. T. Robertson headlines that period of His ministry, “The Collapse of the Galilean Campaign” (Harmony of the Gospels, John 6). We must ever keep hope that some vestige of the truth will manage to poke a hole in our irrational process and convert the sinner and revive the church without giving “offense” (in the biblical sense) to either. We ignore the unmistakable fact that Jesus was murdered for His words, not his loving deeds (Jn 7:19, 25; 8:37, 40).
This is the altruism that Jesus would not, nor would His converted Apostles, practice to the satisfaction of the crowds or the expectation of religious and governmental authorities. He did not resist, nor did they (after the Resurrection), when he was taken to the tree, but He did not sanction what they did by continuing to live in their world of feigned allegiance to His Father. He told them they were doing only what had been predicted and planned, but He pronounced woe upon them for doing it (Lk 22:22). He loved the cosmos of His Father and gave Himself up for it, but He did not do it willy-nilly for some altruistic entity known as “others.” He did it for the Father and those who would be “drawn” to the Father through Him (Jn 3:14, 15; 8:28; 12:32). He enacted a justifying sequence that was the most purposeful and productive act in history, for it actually procured the salvation of souls and preserved their eternal life and initiated the new creation. And all the while He made it plain He would never coerce anyone to follow Him. As the personification of Wisdom, He made it unmistakable that those who miss Him sin against themselves, for “all that hate me love death” (Pro. 8:36).
To the modern church we also say, Who is this Jesus Christ you say you serve? Who is this man whom we say went about feeding the poor and healing the sick and somehow got himself crucified? Who is this man whose purpose was to fix everybody’s love life and home life, make everyone successful in business and profession, motivate championship performances in athletics, turn people into beauty queens and muscled up hunks, who responds to music suitable for the bluesy angst of the forlorn lover? Who is this “friend” of the disobedient and uncommitted and inactive and unconcerned? Is this the man they crucified between two thieves while his own disciples fled in cowardly fear? Or is it? Who is Jesus Christ? Is He the man who said these words to the crowds with a special eye on his disciples for their future mission (Matthew 10:26-39)?
26 “So have no fear of them [those who oppose and persecute], for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter- in- law against her mother- in- law. 36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Is He the one who rebuked Simon Peter with these words?
“Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. 28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
If this is the man, Jesus Christ, the American church needs a wake-up call—check your premises!
Epilogue
Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things that stand beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go so far as to realize that. –Pascal, Pensees
Ayn Rand believed the universe was benevolent because it was rational. She did not allow for the irrational, except as an aberrant quality of the mind of man that was essentially a leftover of some pre-cognitive condition that we might label “stupidity.” Because of this “benevolence” she could posit that while one might not actually “know” everything omnisciently, one could be confident in the quest that it would yield to the superior mind at the very least. For those incapable of pressing on to this boundary there was always the sincere desire to know and the willingness to
aspire to knowing and achieving creative productivity on the basis of adherence to Aristotelian principle—that is, do not try to live irrationally in a rational universe. Along the way one could admire and be grateful for enjoying the benefits of the lives and minds of those “outliers” (our current term) who are able to benefit all mankind through their superior efforts. To refuse to strive and appreciate is to become a “second-hander,” riding the output of the producers without one’s own strivings to achieve and create (this term applies also to those who only get their values from others). Those who simply take hand-outs with the help of the collective or from the immediate guilty sanction of the producers are called “moochers” (a generalization with many nuances in the Rand novels), and those who organize coercive efforts to take directly from the producers and give to others and themselves are called “looters.” These “second-handers” are the source of evil in the world, and the whole process of constructing an altruistic morality (man must live for others) to justify this transfer of value from the individual to the collective is what’s “wrong with the world.” The only way out of this labyrinthine “economy” of life (a broader term than mere business) is the willingness of the individual to insist on his or her right to life regardless of the sanction of others. Man/woman must insist on a selfishness that makes one’s own rational judgment supreme over the collective. This judgment is, of course, an enlightened one that eschews self-destructive living.