It is also worth remembering that many christians have trouble distinguishing between personal charity and sacrifice called for in the bible and collective efforts that are really sloughing off those responsibilities to "someone else".
They in fact have trouble distinguishing between giving to the poor and giving to the state. Mainly because of the constant flood of lies and brainwashing from the government-controlled media. Can you blame them? Partially perhaps. Pity would be more appropriate.
It was a novel.
Rand wrote several novels attempting to illustrate her philosophy, but she wrote dozens of non-fiction books as well as hundreds of essays in which she explained her thoughts in more specific terms.
Now, of course, she remained an atheist and I understand the resistance to her here for that. But even a thorough reading of "Atlas Shrugged" is not enough to understand what the woman was saying.
Her writings were deeply influential in my thinking. She was brilliant. She also allowed her personal beliefs to cloud her thinking [her beliefs on abortion, for example, can't be supported by her own philosophy in my opinion] and her life was chaotic. In short, she was quite human.
But you don't have to be a convert to Objectivism to gain some wisdom from her writing.
Aren't you a little confused?