Should We Shun "Shrugged"?

Jason calls our attention to an article at First Things in which Joe Carter takes conservative Christians to the woodshed for their inexplicable fascination with Ayn Rand. Rand, Carter points out had a diabolical philosophy that conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, should avoid like, well, like they should avoid the devil.

He makes a very good case, but one that in the end I don't find completely convincing. It can be said of Rand that when she was bad she was very bad and when she was good she was pretty good. Rand's militant atheism is off-putting, her eccentricities were weird and her personal morality was, in keeping with her overall egoism, repugnant, but when she wrote about the collectivist state, the sort of state envisioned by modern progressives, her marksmanship was excellent.

Carter seems to urge us to shun her for her vices, but should we shun scientists, historians, and filmmakers who are hostile to Christianity and traditional morality? There's much about Rand that I find objectionable but much else that I find valuable. It seems to me that we should separate the wheat from the chaff and hold fast to that which is good while discarding what is not.

Perhaps we should have the same attitude toward Rand that Augustine urged his readers to adopt toward the pagan society of his day. Writing c. 397 A.D. Augustine argued that:

[I]f those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it.

For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use, not doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God, the Egyptians themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which they themselves, were not making a good use of; in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth....

These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also,--that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life,--we must take and turn to a Christian use.

....that most faithful servant of God, Moses, had done the same thing; for of him it is written that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

Should we make Rand a hero? No, I agree with Carter about this. Should we urge people to read her novels? Yes, for the same reason we should urge people to read books and watch films made by liberals and skeptics for the insights and lessons they offer. Rand's ability to skewer the pretensions and fatuities of collectivism is much needed and has had a salutary influence on generations of people who would never read Hayek or Friedman, but who would take time to read a novel, even an overlong and somewhat tedious novel like Atlas Shrugged.