The Lonely Soul: The Ultimate End of Individualism

Growing up in a conservative part of the United States, I was bred on the ideals of independence and individualism, self-reliance and autonomy. These are the ideals that built the country. These are what make a man. Hard work and a firm reliance on you and you alone is the best state for a man to be in. It is the independent and individualistic man that strikes out on his own, that dares to defy the crowd and that succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of those lesser men mired in collectivism.

As I grew into manhood myself, I began to live my life according to these ideals. I became very libertarian in my political views, and this was rigidly grounded in my firm belief in individualism.

Taken together as a philosophy, these ideas inevitably led me to the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. When I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time, I was blown away. Here was a woman that got it, that understood what the American man should be. The ideals and values expressed in Atlas Shrugged and in The Fountainhead, which I read later, matched up with mine almost exactly. I was hooked. Here was a philosophy that seemed to explain the secular world. I should have immediately been suspect, however, because Objectivism conflicted with my Christian religious philosophy in key areas.

For starters, Ayn Rand was a firm atheist. The very fact that she did not believe in a God at all should have tipped me off that perhaps her philosophy was not for me. But I ignored this and other contradictions for the time being, hoping that maybe later I could reconcile these differences.

The thing that intrigued me the most, that dangerously hooked me, was the idea that selfishness was a virtue. This was not something that I had ever heard expressed elsewhere, and it seemed to make perfect sense. In fact, if you are an atheist or a non-Christian, then yes, Rand’s philosophy makes perfect sense. Selfishness should be a virtue, for it is when we are acting solely in our own interests that we benefit mankind the most. This is shown vividly and brilliantly in Rand’s novels.

But notice what I said: if you are an atheist or non-Christian, then Rand’s philosophy makes perfect sense.

The problem was I was a Christian, and I found myself now at a crossroads.

Here was Christianity telling me that selfishness should be abandoned, that selfishness “is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” – James 3:14-16

And here was Objectivism and Ayn Rand saying, “To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else,” and “My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.” – Anthem

Objectivism was attractive and enticing to someone who had grown up believing that self-reliance was one of the most important things in life, that independence was to be valued above all else. Objectivism was even more attractive as a philosophy because it gets a great many things right.

And here is the most dangerous thing about Objectivism: that it is right in many aspects.

If the philosophy was all wrong and all anti-Christian, well then it would be very easy to have avoided the whole thing. I have never been tempted to convert to Islam; it is too clearly wrong and anti-Christian. I have never been tempted to become a Wiccan or a Satanist; these systems are too clearly wrong and anti-Christian.

But Objectivism is dangerous for the very fact that many of its teachings are right. Objectivism believes (rightly) that there is an objective Reality and thus, an objective moral Right and Wrong. This is where the name comes from. Objectivism believes (rightly) that an individual should stick to his own beliefs no matter what the prevailing views of the collective crowd are. Objectivism believes (rightly) that a man should rely on his own morals and values, and not those of modern society. Objectivism believes (again rightly) that man is capable of Reason and that Reason is a real and objective thing and that it should be followed and valued.

All of these premises are true. But Rand takes them and because of her atheism, extends them into immoral territory. For one simply cannot believe in Objectivism in its entirety and still be a Christian.

This was what I finally had to admit to myself as I matured in my Christian faith. I could not hold on to both; I could not have one religious philosophy and one secular philosophy, especially when they contradicted each other.

So I had to make a decision. I had to give one up. And I very nearly chose wrong.

You see, I did not want to give up my rigid belief in individualism. I thought that to give any ground in this aspect was to surrender myself completely to the terrors of the collective, to the unintelligent hivemind of group-think. I did not want to give up my ego and my self-identity to a group of men who were going to tell me what to do and how to think. I was under the mistaken impression that to give up selfish individualism meant that I had to give in to mindless collectivism.

But those are not the only two options. We don’t only have the choice between individualism and collectivism. In fact, either of those extremes leads to the Demoniac in the end. For one gives the soul only selfishness and isolation to feed on, while the other surrenders the soul completely and dissolves it into the nothingness of communism and group mentality. Neither is Christian.

This was what it took me a very long time to understand. I had to do much reading and prayer in order to come to this realization. Christianity, when it asks us to surrender ourselves, does not give us only communism and collectivism in return.

When Christ asks us to surrender our personality to Him, that personality is not destroyed. It is taken up, Redeemed, and returned to us Anew, perfected into the individual personality that Christ desires for us. This is a personality that can be a part of the group without being consumed by it. It is a personality that can have fellowship with believers, that can commune with fellow Christians, and still maintain its uniqueness, its exceptionality, its individuality.

For Christ does not want us to be dead slaves of a hivemind. Each of us Christians has our own unique gifts and talents, and those are not meant to be abandoned. Christ does not want to destroy these. He wants us to surrender them fully to Him, so that He can take them and work them to His Glory. This does not mean we lose our uniqueness when we surrender fully to Christ. Rather our unique personalities are melded so that they fit into the crowd more fully. Through membership in the Church we do not lose our individuality. We become members of the Body of Christ, and our individuality is turned to the glory of the Whole. For a foot cannot do the work of a hand, and a tongue cannot do the work of an eye. Each Christian believer is a unique personality, an individual, but an essential part of the larger Body. We all work together to be the mystical Body of Christ.

Once I came to this idea, I understood Christianity more fully. I understood that Christianity is not hostile to individualism at all. Rather, it is the perfection of non-selfish individualism. It is the perfection of the selfless ego. How can an ego be selfless? Isn’t that contradictory? Well, yes. But in this is the spiritual mystery. While the selfless ego is as apparently contradictory as Jesus being both Man and God at the same time, it is true nonetheless.

This was what I had to learn. I could surrender my individuality to Christianity without fear.

Christianity is not Communism. Communism desires the complete annihilation of the individual. The individual is consumed within the group; in the face of the group, the individual is nothing. Yet this is not Christianity. This is as antithetical to Christianity as rabid individualism is.

I had to understand this in order to finally and fully deny the false philosophy of Objectivism. For the various things that Objectivism gets right, Christianity perfects. The few truths that Objectivism imperfectly espouses are perfectly espoused in Christianity.

Objectivism is partially right; Christianity is perfectly right.

After I had done this, after I had abandoned Objectivism and came home fully to Christianity, I realized something more. Looking back on those selfish beliefs, I came to understand the terrifying Eternal Danger that they represent.

In short, too much individualism is quite literally Hell.

For in Heaven, we will have Communion with the Lord. We will be one with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, one with the Saints, and one with the angels, and yet we will still be individuals.

Yet in Hell, we will be alone. Utterly, forever alone. We will be separated completely and finally not only from God, which is terrifying enough, but from everyone and every soul that has ever existed. You see, in our popular conceptions of Hell, we tend to picture a giant Lake of Fire where unbelieving and damned souls suffer together forever.

This is not Hell. In Hell, you will not suffer together. You will suffer alone.

And that is the most terrifying end of all.

To be forever in solitude, forever lost and isolated. A soul in Hell is a soul in eternal loneliness. Confined forever with only its regrets to tear at its heart, with only its mistakes to brood on into the Everlasting future.

Thus, the ultimate end of Individualism is Hell.

It can be nothing else. Right now, our eternal souls are trapped in our body. This is why we love the fellowship of friends, why we love spending time with other people, why we enjoy laughing and talking and joking and hanging out. This is what our soul desires. This is what Heaven will be. We will finally be able to shake off our mortal coil and join together in Eternal Communion with God and each other Forever. Again, this does not mean the destruction of our personalities. Rather it is their perfection in Christ that will be Heaven.

Individualism, while it may be attractive at first, can in its extremity, in the end, only have one result.

And that is the result I hope to avoid.

I desire Everlasting Life, so I must give up my individualism.

It is for this reason that Christ says, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

I give up my life to Christ, in the hopes that I might find it eternally in Him