It is good to grapple with such questions.
For a Christian the greatest commandments are these: (1) Love the Lord with your whole being; and (2) Love your neighbor as yourself. Of course, in Jesus’ day, these two commandments were well know to every Jew. Jesus expounded on “neighbor.” He said your neighbor is he who acts as your neighbor, not somebody of your ethnic or religious group.
Let’s turn to Rand. Supposedly her greatest commandment is to love yourself. BUT ... coming in number two is to love others who share your values. Now, what about the God thing? Rand would say there is no God. But, if you follow her novels, you find that objective truth is her God, and the objective truth is that we are made to be free. This is such an enormously important thing, that it is rational to give one’s life in witness of it.
So, in my book, here’s the difference: First, as Christians, we have a personal relation with a loving God and assurance of salvation. This speaks to our emotional needs. Atheists have an anonymous relation with nature and no assurance of anything. Atheists must have very strong characters. I don’t know how they do it. Having been in the military, I’ll just say that without God I don’t think I could handle it.
Second, as Christians, we love others as ourselves. For followers of Rand, they love others as instrumentalities of their own happiness, not as ends in themselves, not because they share with us in the same dignity that comes from being a child of God. I think I exaggerate this difference. I really sense from her writings that Rand’s characters come to truly love others. So, maybe there really is only one difference and his name is Jesus.
BTW I think the movie “Life of Pi” did a good job in contrasting belief in God and belief in reason. The rational self and the emotional self are both valid and both good. And, it is important to tie one’s emotions to reality.
Logic and emotion are both gifts from God; I suspect they were intended to balance our souls, and placing more emphasis on one over the other seems to invariably lead to dysfunction.
I think you make several good points. Miss Rand did say that the Christian tenet to love one’s neighbor as oneself is at the very least rational because it does permit one to love one’s self.