Was Jesus Really a Hardcore Randian Capitalist?

Reposted from Thom hubbard Blog

As a non-believer who often finds himself in conversations with devout Christians, I find it strange, and a bit disturbing, that I am often the one who ends up preaching the Christlike messages of compassion and charity. Where have these ideals gone? This strange brand of Christianity fails to address the issue of human suffering, a staple of Christian theology. In this Bizarro World, it is the successful, employed Christian who is the one suffering, while the welfare recipient is reaping the spoils of capitalism. This is upside-down thinking, and is precisely where religion fails.

Humanists adhere to a code which not only rejects scripture as a moral guide, but which requires that we act with the goal of reducing suffering. Whereas we understand that we are not always capable of reducing the suffering of people at all times, we support the funding of organizations which are equipped to address the problem of suffering on a mass scale. Are there flaws in some of these services? Is there waste? Do some people abuse the system? Sure. But they are successful in reducing suffering in most instances, and working to improve these services is preferable to tearing them down.
Isn’t it odd how so many Christians seem to have totally lost sight of the true meaning of their theology, if they ever had a clue about it at all?

I find it disturbing that so many of the most outspoken Christian supporters of unregulated capitalism today count themselves among the followers of a hard-line atheist and anti-Christian, Ayn Rand. I’ve read nearly all of Rand’s books and I promise you, no one despised nor mocked Christianity and religion in general more than Ayn Rand. How her free-market, greed-is-good philosophy became tied to fundamentalist Christianity in twenty-first century America is beyond all rational thought.