Each year Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol plays to sold-out
crowds at the Indiana Repertory Theatre.
It’s a great show. I’m glad when people like Scrooge occasionally decide
to be generous. I’m touched by Victorian
Christmas sentiment, and I can’t resist Tiny Tim’s pronouncement of blessing on
the whole affair: “God bless us, everyone.”
Yet, A
Christmas Carol asks me to imagine a man changed from a miser into a
generous servant through a series of apocalyptic nightmares. Humbug.
Scrooge’s dead business associate, Jacob
Marley, returns from the grave to warn Scrooge to change his ways. Jesus’
parable in Luke 16 doesn’t work that way. Scripture refuses to give a rich,
dead man permission to return to warn anybody about the misguided love of money.
Jesus teaches that if people like Scrooge do not respond generously to God’s love,
“they will not be convinced even if
someone rises from the dead.”
So, Dicken’s whole structure is troubling
from the start. The Ghost of Christmas Past then asks Scrooge to consider all
the opportunities for happiness he’s squandered. The second ghost tells Scrooge he’s responsible
for gut-wrenching images of suffering.
The third ghost shames Scrooge by showing him that his neighbors
wouldn’t bother coming to his immanent funeral.
These are images of Scrooge’s regret,
failure, shame and impending doom. Dickens seems to believe you can scare the
hell out of people.
I
don’t. As true as the judgments pronounced
on Scrooge are, Jesus comes at Christmas redeeming our past, with all its
regrets, creating new possibilities, forgiving all our failures, and freeing us
from the condescending judgments of small people. He soothes fears, leading a freedom march
through death itself. The Apostle Paul
asks us not to show “contempt for the
riches of [God’s] kindness…not
realizing that it’s God's kindness which leads toward repentance?”
Scrooge is selfish because he’s scared.
Amplifying threats won’t help. Love has
to drive out fear. Moral change happens
when we’re gripped by visions of mercy triumphing over all judgment.
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