David Henderson was on Christmas break as a senior in college when he finished reading Ayn Rand\u2019s novel, \u201cAtlas Shrugged.\u201d He was at a point in life where he was seeking truth and the book made a lot of sense to him. Ayn Rand\u2019s premise was that putting your effort anywhere short of meeting your own needs is foolish and self-destructive. Your own happiness is the highest moral purpose; selfishness is the greatest virtue.<\/p>\n
In a moving finale, lead character John Galt argues passionately, \u201cA doctrine that give you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altar of others is giving you death as your standard.\u201d<\/p>\n
David had finished the book just before joining some friends for dinner. When he sat down at the table he found they were in the middle of a discussion. They were talking about how they, as followers of Jesus, could become less preoccupied with themselves and more concerned for others.<\/p>\n
Fuses started blowing in David\u2019s brain. He blurted out, \u201cDon\u2019t you see what a waste that is? It\u2019s the moral equivalent of suicide, throwing your life away on other people!\u201d<\/p>\n
But his friends knew something that David had yet to learn: Jesus inverts everything. He takes all the world\u2019s values and turns them on their head. Nowhere is this more obvious than in his practice of calling us to self-abasing servants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David Henderson was on Christmas break as a senior in college when he finished reading Ayn Rand\u2019s novel, \u201cAtlas Shrugged.\u201d He was at a point in life where he was seeking truth and the book made a lot of sense to him. Ayn Rand\u2019s premise was that putting your effort anywhere short of meeting your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,13,371,4209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}