Scrooge figured it out

I listened to a great podcast today: “History of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”. I learned a lot about this fascinating book, and enjoyed the discussion. But it reminded me of a part of the story that had always bothered me. Scrooge is obviously supposed to be the villain, but Dickens is uncharacteristically subtle in his design of this complex character. I always felt that Scrooge was simply written to represent adulthood, and that the story was about Scrooge’s journey back to childhood. I’ve read analysts that believed that Scrooge couldn’t reach the salvation of Jesus Christ until he completed this journey back to his original state as a child, much as God came to Earth in the form of a child.

There’s a lot of fascinating stuff there, but the basic concept bothers me. Like Rousseau’s worship of the noble savage, Dickens tended to put more faith in the innocence of youth than he did in those who faced the grim realities of the world (and with his childhood, this is a perfectly understandable hangup). And there is something to the idea that we can only approach God when we have left our worldly concerns behind (including all that comes with adulthood, like earning a living, and other things that Scrooge understood). And even in our post-Christian society, we seem to grasp the sense of freedom gained from giving oneself over to God and trusting completely in his love and wisdom, as you can see in everything from “Jesus Take the Wheel” to “Groundhog Day” to “Mary Poppins” and so on.

But while I can accept all that, I still find it hard to believe that as I move further and further into adulthood, that I move further and further away from God. My willingness to take on responsibilities for others somehow makes me less compassionate. My long work hours make me less dedicated to things that really matter. My financial responsibility makes me misguided. It’s tricky stuff, but I struggle to understand that only by abandoning maturity and responsibility can I hope to gain the favor of God.

I rationalize this troubling aspect of this brilliant book by supposing that Scrooge is not an adult who must become a child to gain God’s favor, but rather that he is a control freak who must forfeit his arrogance to be capable of accepting God’s grace. Scrooge thinks he can plan and build, lacking the perspective of the Proverbs admonition that man plans and God laughs.

He’s not abandoning adult maturity and responsibility. He’s abandoning human arrogance and desire for power.

Charles Dickens’ disdain for the wealthy would probably make him a Democrat today. But he may have unintentionally illustrated one of the great flaws of modern leftism in his brilliant, brilliant book: Human arrogance and desire for power tend to lead to evil, like Scrooge early in the book. When we seek power over others, it tends to lead to misery and suffering.

We should take care of our immediate responsibilities, and leave the God stuff to God. As Scrooge did later in the book.

Scrooge figured it out. Leftists have not.