An Objectively Bad Way of Looking at Life
"In the land of death you try to find a happy life."
Last weekend I attended a meeting of the Association of Theological Schools at the Hilton in downtown Atlanta. Another conference was taking place there at the same time. It was called “Levelup.”
Its attendees were numerous and young (in their 20s and 30s), and appeared to have come from different parts of the world. Naturally I began to wonder what kind of conference this was. I walked by the various exhibitor tables to browse their wares. A few were promoting what looked like philosophical institutes and free speech. One in particular was promoting objectivism (more on this later). I was approached by a friendly atheist who was stumping for Atheists for Liberty.
A quick Google search revealed this conference is organized by a group called OSI: the Objective Standard Institute. OSI is an organization committed to a philosophical school called objectivism. You may never have heard of objectivism, but you’ve probably heard of its founder, Ayn Rand, author of such works as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Put very simply, objectivism asserts the following:
Reality is objective. It’s not a matter of perspective or what we want to be true.
Reason is the only means we have of understanding reality.
Selfishness—or “rational self-interest”—is good. It drives human beings to achieve their fullest potential.
We must respect the rights of others in their pursuit of rational self-interest.
Altruism is bad. It fosters weakness and dependency and thus inhibits human flourishing.
Morality involves the pursuit of rational self-interest.
If you want a quick summary of objectivism, check out this video.
Here’s another that gets into additional details:
I was a bit surprised to see an entire conference full of young people promoting objectivism. I thought this was primarily a mid-twentieth-century phenomenon that had come and gone. But it stands to reason that, as Christianity dwindles in the West, objectivism would re-emerge.
Human beings can’t function without some kind of framework that gives our lives meaning. To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything. We have to make sense of the world. Some people try to do this through scientism—the belief that science can answer every important question. On the other hand, the “spiritual-but-not-religious” tendency shows many people trying to create meaning by themselves, borrowing from the various religions of the world but beholden to none of them. As another example, look at how many people—young men in particular—are drawn to the psychological teachings of Jordan Peterson. The Western quasi-religious devotion to the LGBTQIA+ movement is another example. In the 1990s we would sometimes hear people refer to “causeheads,” people who would float from one cause to the next in search of a sense of self-importance. One day it was “Free Tibet!” and the next it was “Stop wearing fur!” We don’t hear about causeheads anymore, though, because causes aren’t enough. People don’t just need a cause they can get behind. They need meaning that translates into purpose.
Meaning-making is as central to our lives as food or water. Without it, we would descend into madness. But different systems of meaning and purpose will lead us to different ends, some of which will be disastrous. Rand, it’s worth noting, did not live what many of us would consider a happy life. Her personal relationships were often deeply troubled.
The message of Christianity is no less powerful or significant in this cultural moment than it has ever been. Let’s be honest, though: it’s a hard message to speak, and a hard message to hear. It’s even harder to live out. The Christian faith teaches us not to elevate the self, but to die to self. It teaches us not to indulge the flesh but to crucify the flesh. It’s much easier to affirm self-interest, to glorify human achievement and the pursuit of self-satisfaction. We like those things. They feel good to us. They give us pleasure. They do not and cannot, however, give us life. As Augustine wrote to those who seek pleasure in worldly pursuits, “There is no rest to be found where you seek it. In the land of death you try to find a happy life: it is not there. How can life be happy where there is no life at all?” To live life curved in on ourselves may seem alluring, but it will inevitably lead to misery.
A selfish life will invariably masquerade as a happy life. The selfish person may believe himself or herself happy. Our faith, however, teaches us that happiness consists in allowing our lives to be taken up into God’s life. At the heart of our faith is the idea that there is perfect Goodness, perfect Love, perfect Truth, perfect Beauty, who has given himself for us so that we can be taken into that perfect and eternal life. “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:3-4). Consider the weight of these verses: we become participants in the divine nature, and hence we are shaped by perfect Goodness, perfect Love, perfect Truth, perfect Beauty.
In this mortal life, we invariably face hardship, but do we want to try to face it in our own strength? What can selfishness give us in the face of cancer? What does it offer to confront extreme poverty or starvation? How can “rational self-interest” help us when our hearts are broken? And ultimately, we must all confront the reality of death. If our lives are built upon self-interest, they are ultimately meaningless as our bodies decompose and our great deeds fade into the recesses of history. All our high-minded platitudes are nothing more than breath, as Qoheleth would say.
I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor,
and this was the reward for all my toil.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun (Eccl 2:10-11).
Why do we search for life where there is no life at all? That is, I’m sorry to say, the human condition. It is our natural tendency. But there is a better way, one in which we realize that our lives are not our own, and we give ourselves to life in Christ, who gave his life for us.
Thank you! This is so true, and a needed message for our culture.
I have so enjoyed your last two posts! Thank you, I feel informed, challenged and encouraged by your writing. Love the Chesterton paraphrase.