Bishop Shocks: Atheist “Ayn Rand Led Me To Christ”

Weekend Libertarian ^ | July 1, 2011 | B.P. Terpstra

[AustralianConservative]

B.P. Terpstra

Another week. Another shocker. Yes all is revealed in Bishop Edward S. Little’s post on Christianity Today, about how one anti-Christian philosopher prepared him to hear the gospel. Her name: Ayn Rand. The Bishop explains:

Ayn Rand changed my life. When I embraced her philosophy, Objectivism, the conversion was far more dramatic than my decision, several years later, to follow Jesus Christ—more dramatic, but in the end transitory. Yet Rand, the novelist, philosopher, and uncompromising atheist, inadvertently opened a door for the gospel. I don't believe dead people spin in their graves, but if they did and she could read these words, I imagine Rand would be twirling violently.

As many have noted, Rand's ethic of rational self-interest is incompatible with the gospel, and leads to social as well as spiritual disaster. “Most observers see Rand as a political and economic philosopher,” wrote Gary Moore last year in Christianity Today. “I believe that she was first and foremost an anti-Christian philosopher.” A six-foot dollar sign wreath towered over her casket, Moore pointed out, an icon of the false gospel she labored to proclaim. I agree entirely that Christianity and Objectivism are utterly incompatible. But my gratitude to Rand remains profound.

As an awkward teen, growing up in a secular family environment, Ayn Rand was treated like an all-knowing cult figure:

Because my family lived in New York City, I was able to enroll in a 20-session “Basics of Objectivism” course at the Nathaniel Branden Institute. (Branden, an early Rand associate and a psychologist by training, spent many years teaching Objectivism in partnership with Rand.) The course included sessions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and political and economic theory, with a heavy emphasis on laissez-faire capitalism.

But? The rest is here.

[Notary Sojac]

Lots of Bible thumpers lead folks away from God.

Quite true. There are some Christians here on FR (NOT you) who have helped reinforce my unbelief over the last few years.

[Larry Lucido]

Amen to that! :-)

[Migraine]

They sit together, pop a Heaven beer, and talk about stuff.

Ah, but that would require that they, two philosophical giants, BOTH, in life, had been as far from the truth about heaven as the east is from the west -- and thus hardly worth discussing: she, by having categorically denied the existence of such a place, and he, by having categorically denied the possibility of his ever sharing such a place with the likes of her.