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.
To preface this, with a disclaimer/warning - I have been reading Atlas Shrugged. I have read it before, but it has been a while. If you know of Atlas Shrugged, you probably are also aware as to its author's political and phillisophical persuasions - so when I say "I love it" you may now make a decision as to whether or not you'd like to continue reading. I'll give you a moment to decide.
[crickets chirp]
Here's something that's really fascinating to me - Christian guilt. To expand on my last entry, I'm not sure I ought to be so paternalistic as to say one way or the other whether or not "poor" people are happy. I'm sure they have just as much right to be unhappy or happy as Bill Gates does. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's none of my business whether they are happy or not. Because people ought not be what makes other people happy. If someone can make you "happy" then they can also, [insert appropriate obnoxious latin phrase to demonstrate I went to law school], make you unhappy.
In the traditional American Christian, we find a particularly interesting breeding. Here is a capitalist - the more successful the better. This person has a sense of individuality not to be found in inhabitants of other countries, especially if he were raised here. He is moved to joy by the fruits of his own labor - who among us is not proud when we finish something that doesn't turn out shotty? The American Christian is self-motivated - he succeeds at work because he doesn't make decisions based on irrational motives, but on fact. That which will yield the better result, will make the bottom line fatter, that is the one he chooses. And when he makes the wrong decision from time to time, we are ok with that. But what if he is always right? What if he makes TONS of money? Then, suddenly, we villify him. His name is synonamous with greed and evil: he is selfish. He only wants to make money, he seeks to make a profit. As we ride on his airplanes and talk to our friends on his iPhones, we make sure to point out what a horrible person he is - he has no social conscious. I mean, what has he ever done for society? [Never you mind that competition breeds innovation, and that the all-mighty dollar as a motivator probably pushed the development of the vaccines that kept you alive so far to read this on your wonderful machine that I suppose appeared out of thin air without the aid of any entrepreneurial intervention.] How has his money grubbing done anything for a single human being on earth [besides of course keep him in business - but who ever needed pasturized milk anyway]? Selfish, selfish, selfish: disgusting.
When we approach this American Christian at church or in a religious setting, we remind him that he has much and others have little. We inform him that he has no right to be joyful in what he has created, invented, improved, because others don't even have that which he has improved upon. We tell him that he is responsible for the weak - that he owes to them all that he has because to he whom much is given, much is expected. And if the guilt works, the American will allow himself to live a dual life - one in which he believes in self-motivation and self-reliance as virtue, and one in which his guilt at others' failures and lack of opportunity enable them to live off of him. Our ability to control his giving depends not on the quality of his conviction in the value of life, but in his acceptance of guilt. Now, unable to remain consistent, he begins to be afraid of himself. He fears what his instincts tell him - that he should pursue the right decisions in business -those that make him profit. He is now unwilling to act on what he believes in. Supposing that were the definition of virtue, what sort of stumbling block is our social conscious?
Can this really be the way in which God wanted Christians to tend to the hurting world? Consider this excerpt taken from Atlas Shrugged, that would demonstrate the absurdity in this line of thinking:
"I mean, we're only human beings - and what's a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones - so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he's good - that's when he's rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he's done."
"But if a man knows that what he's done is good?"
"Then he ought to apologize for it."
"To whom?"
"To those who haven't done it."
When we apologize, as a nation for having more money than [insert country here], we allow them to live off our system, and our government, our people, they just hand over the money. What does that do? It eventually will destroy the American Christian's ability to make a living and live comfortably, and his apology to those who do not live comfortably will be his joining them on a lower socio-economic level, standing in solidarity with the poor he can no longer afford to assist. This would be the consequence of the ever expanding social conscious, would it not?
But what if we were selfish? Would that help anyone? Next installment - same bat time, same bat channel.
