Jesus said to John the son of Zachariah, "If a man makes mention of you and speaks the truth, give thanks to God. If he is lying, multiply your thanks, for God will increase the register of your good deeds without exertion from you." (al-Tibr-al-Masbuk, Abn Hamid al-Ghazali)

To suffer unjustly -- and to do so with integrity, courage, and love -- is honored in all of the Abrahamic faiths.

In a 1964 interview Ayn Rand rejected this shared ethic.

Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the nonideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used.

Rand is right. And she is terribly wrong. She has accurately summarized the action and the symbolism. She utterly failed to perceive the power of self-sacrifice.

In Judaism we see, again and again the redemptive possibilities of struggling with our fate, wrestling with our God.

In Islam we can experience the blessings of submission, the bliss of giving over to God all our struggles.

In Christianity we are called to self-sacrifice by which our fractured condition is healed, made whole, and may find its potential and purpose.

The three faiths have each tended to specialize. I wonder if we might not be missing the synergy of struggle, submission, and self-sacrifice?