The Glory of Man and the Glory of God

O how great is the nothingness of the children of men; yea, even they are less than the dust of the earth. – Helaman 12:7

I recently read Ayn Rand’s short novella Anthem. I was struck by how true this book is, and also how false. The story follows the life of a man living in a totalitarian collectivist dystopia where everyone exists for everyone else. To exist for oneself, or to privilege one’s own interests over those of others, or even to have desires for one’s own good are forbidden. Indeed, one should not ever think or work alone, but only with and for everyone else.

I noted as I read the story that Rand weaves some interesting imagery into the collectivist society– much of which evokes the Garden of Eden and the Fall.

As in other classic works of totalitarian fiction (e.g., 1984 and Brave New World), our hero comes to realize that his idealist society is more bondage than privilege, and attempts to escape to a higher state of being, always with the help or inspiration of a woman.

By escaping the collectivist Eden, Rand’s hero (who later takes the name of Prometheus, he who took fire from the gods to impart to men) understands the glory of being a human, and more so, of being an ego— a sole, individual mind with self-determined will and destiny, dependent on no one. The final two chapters of the story contain the ‘Anthem,’ in which Prometheus exults in what it means to be ‘I’ instead of ‘we.’ The anthem begins with the simple, existentially fraught assertion: ‘I am.’

These passages stir a deep, celebratory spirit in me. They also sound much like a familiar poem:

INVICTUS
by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

I’m sure many of you are also familiar with Orson F. Whitney’s reply:

Art thou in truth? Then what of him
Who bought thee with his blood?
Who plunged into devouring seas
And snatched thee from the flood?

Who bore for all our fallen race
What none but him could bear.—
The God who died that man might live,
And endless glory share?

Of what avail thy vaunted strength,
Apart from his vast might?
Pray that his Light may pierce the gloom,
That thou mayest see aright.

Men are as bubbles on the wave,
As leaves upon the tree.
Thou, captain of thy soul, forsooth!
Who gave that place to thee?

Free will is thine—free agency,
To wield for right or wrong;
But thou must answer unto him
To whom all souls belong.

Bend to the dust that head “unbowed,”
Small part of Life’s great whole!
And see in him, and him alone,
The Captain of thy soul.

I wonder if anyone else feels a conflict of loyalties between these two eloquent positions. Elder Whitney’s tone seems a bit harsh, given that Henley’s celebration is borne from a stubborn sense of self that most of us share. And yet, there is no question that man, for all his sound and fury, is ultimately nothing of himself.

With her evocation of Adam’s fall, Rand introduces even more complexity than what’s at stake between the dueling poets. This is so because the freedom and individualistic exuberance is available only after the escape from Eden, only where commitments and promises to others are severed. Man exists in his intended, glorious, demi-godlike state only where he is unencumbered by the chains of enforced groups and societies and external rules and dogma.

Even though her error is more clear than Henley’s I still agree with a great deal of Rand’s point. I think we often fail to realize what an enormous lift we got from the Fall. Our language, even our name for Adam and Eve’s transgression, suggest a shameful tragedy. The LDS view has improved upon the rest of Christianity by showing how necessary this was. But Rand seems to have pushed beyond even that position: by painting her pre-Fall society as something awful, she shows how the Fall is actually glorious, defining, liberating in every sense.

And I think she speaks the truth, even though I don’t see Eden as containing anything but light and goodness. Despite this, isn’t it true that our expulsion from Eden was a simply revolutionary step forward in exploding mankind into a truly glorious creation? In what ways were Adam and Eve above the animals in Eden? In what ways were they above the animals in the lone and dreary world? I submit that the addition of moral agency in the latter setting hurled them light years ahead. I don’t think Prometheus’ anthem to human-ness would have been too foreign in Adam’s mouth, after he tasted the sweetness of his powerful existence in a real world. Having tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he had become like the Gods. (Again, I am speaking about the glory of being Adam and Eve, individuals with God-like potential, fully-formed in God’s image. The glory is in the affirmative advancement, not in the negative sense of having left the beautiful garden and with it the transcendence of God’s presence. I do not believe Eden was unpleasant in any way).

But if I find Rand’s focus on the brilliance of being a human being with free will and reason to be true, I, like Orson Whitney, believe it to be woefully incomplete. Rand’s analysis, in this and her other works, seems to be that this is the greatest good, to be self-interested, to act for oneself. As one who has seen where these gifts have led in my own life, I simply can’t agree.

Soon after one understands the beauty of being a Prometheus, free to wander the earth and build and create, one also realizes that this freedom leads one to brushing up against forces far greater than oneself. We eventually yearn to be Gods ourselves, and we build towers to Heaven, steal fire from the Gods, and end up with our language confounded, shackled to a mountain. The glories of personhood and agency dissolve, and we become low, like the beasts again. Thus, when we speak of the fall, we do not only mean a fall to free will and moral reason, which are good, but a fall to the places those gifts will lead us if we use them unchecked in a fallen world. This is no glory at all.

I sometimes think the Good News of the gospel would be more poignant if we learned only the bad news for a while, before finding out the good part. What if we could know the effects of the fall, see the suffering and error that we inevitably devolve toward, and could see no solution? What if the glory of man was all there was to believe in? How long would our yawps on the rooftops last before the black pit and the menace of the years swallowed us whole again?

The gospel is Good News only when we’ve realized how terribly, horribly bad off we would be if we were indeed our souls’ only captains. This is why Ayn Rand doesn’t think she needs the gospel– she hasn’t realized how bad the bad news really is. Like Rand, we must find a way to celebrate the triumphant gifts that are our agency and individuality and ingenuity. Taken by themselves, these things are among the most awe-inspiring creations we can behold. We must exult in our unconquerable souls. But we must also see how fruitless, how empty and how completely miniscule are those things the moment we begin to use them– for we will always use them badly.

And then, seeing the dilemma, we may realize how very good is the Good News. How sweet it is that even as we were released into the world, to act out there our children’s game of being kings and titans, someone clothed us in protection, set limits on the devourer, and ultimately promised to come and save us from ourselves. How much sweeter is the good news than the simple half-truth that we are great in our humanity?

In the end, I believe that we too, like the survivor in Invictus, and like the revolutionary in Anthem, must come to a point of celebration of ourselves. I would be a fool not to see the glory it is to be a being so beautiful as me. But this cannot last. The moment after we begin singing our praises we go too far. At that moment, we must praise another even higher than us, more beautiful for his ability to use these same gifts in a way that actually privileges others over self, and commitments over independence. It’s a stunning reversal to see how much glory is contained in our former shackles. But we cannot argue that glory is His.

I may say, briefly: I am my own. I may enjoy that moment. Then I must grow, and learn to say: I am not my own– I have been bought by one far greater than me. By this knowledge, I will become something extraordinary. And only then can I imagine a time in a future too distant to know, when I will look down at another being just as majestic and puny and beautiful as I am now, and I will reach down to him, and I will say rightfully and with authority: I am.