On Mediocrity In a Christian Sense

I wonder what it is about Christianity that so many object to it on the basis of its mediocrity. Ayn Rand makes this objection in the form of one Ellsworth Toohey where lack of strength becomes a perverse strength. Nietzsche has a similar objection calling the faith an aberration grown out of a certain slave morality.

As a product of the Jewish culture, the slave morality objection cannot be avoided. It can only be endured. The Jews for a great part of their existence, wandering as vagrants with Abraham, enslaved in Egypt, lost in the desert with Moses, oppressed under the Judges, and eventually exiled in Assyria and Babylon. The Joshua eras, the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms seem to be the exception. Even after the Old Testament, whether that refers to the Maccabean rebellion or to Christians crawling through catacombs, little changes.

If the Jews were strong, they would not have been chosen. It was because they were a weak, miserable, worthless mess of a people that God chose them. It says as much in Deuteronomy.

Even Christian testimonies for the most part have much the same form:

"I couldn't do anything in life. I couldn't get good grades. I couldn't get a girlfriend. And that's when I found Jesus!"

or

"I had it all. I had money, power, respect, women but then I realized it was all worthless and that's when I found Jesus."

Christianity is for the most part predicated on failure.

And I can empathize with how Nietzsche and Rand feel. In fact, it's probably the front where I battle God the most. Other humans are only roadblocks to my true development as a person. That's what I get when I read Nietzsche and Rand. Other humans are rabble that want to feast on your individuality. They are only mobs of stupid and mediocre roaches that hate the light of genius and excellence.

Should this blog have a happy ending? Some twist at the end where I suddenly refute two great minds with one expert move? They wouldn't be great minds if I could do that. I'm not sure I can do that.

The best I have so far is that this is all seen from a human perspective. And that their anthropology is not particularly well done. Man was not made to live alone. Howard Roark, even married, is alone.

But that doesn't answer my deeper questions. Why is there such a tendency towards mediocrity and such an antipathy towards ambition and greatness? Why is it that so often the urges in me that I declare best and most worthy in me are crushed so violently in the vice-grip of church society?

There is an easy theological answer there too, but that doesn't much help. Easy answers never help.